June

The Talented Mr. Ripley          Patricia Highsmith

A classic.  A young man of almost no morals, virtually borderline, escapes his low key tax fraud scam, by being sent to Italy to rescue Dickie Greenleaf, the son of a millionaire boat designer.  The switch from picturesque into sinister is done so effortlessly you realise you are in the hands of the very talented Ms. Highsmith.

Normal People     Sally Rooney

I found this also to be genius.  A beautiful book, of an unspoken lifelong romance.  She’s only 28 for heaven sake, but what a gift.   Just delightful.  Romantic and yet very modern.

Autumn               Ali Smith

A quite brilliant opening to a promised quartet of novels, my how this lady can write.  Buy more, soon.

Maigret and the Reluctant Witness    Georges Simenon

A strange, uptight wealthy family close ranks when the scion is suddenly murdered.

Cley                     Carey Harrison

The second in a quite brilliant quartet of books by this masterful novelist, author and dramatist.

Siege:  Trump under fire.        Michael Wollf

As gripping and as good as his Under Fire which exposed the chaos in the Trump Shite House.  This shows the crumbling of the man’s mind.  Everyone who meets him and works for him thinks he’s a moron.  A really must-read look inside the President’s mind.  Once again Bannon contributes largely to the understanding of what is going on.,

There There         Tommy Orange

Finely written from a new writer.   The Native American experience in Oakland and beyond.   Good characters.   Short stories melded into a novel.

The Whistler        John Grisham

A corrupt Judge in Florida aids an Indian Gambling Casino Crime Mob.  Efficient.  Readable.

Maigret and the Ghost    Georges Simenon

Strangely interesting people live opposite the scene of a crime.  Wealthy, corrupt and maybe guilty of something.

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.

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