Comments Off on January–March 2019 Reading

By Eric Idle, March 27, 2019 8:06 am

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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By Eric Idle, December 24, 2018 11:45 am

December

This has been the year I discovered Mick Herron.

There are two series of thrillers. The Slough House series, which is more modern Le Carré territory  and The Oxford series. I read both series in order.  They are completely addictive.  Perfect for the road. I began with Slough House and I recommend that to start.  Welcome to the world of Jackson Lamb.

I ended up with The Oxford Series, which is also terrific and consists of:

Down Cemetery Road              Mick Herron

The Last Voice You Hear        Mick Herron

Why We Die                                Mick Herron

Reconstruction                         Mick Herron

Wonderful.  Just brilliant.  Tense, taught and totally unexpected.  Everything you’d ever want in a thriller.   Set in Oxford, at a Nursery school, which ends up involving the Police and MI5.   A master of suspense at the top of his game.  I thought this was magnificent.

Smoke and Whispers               Mick Herron

An Oxford novel.  But this time Zoe Boehm is dead.  Drowned in the River Thames.  Or is she?   A masterly piece of character detective fiction.   He keeps you gripped to the page.   Absolutely addictive.  Read one, read the lot.

Nobody Walks                        Mick Herron

A stand-alone book.  But brilliant.  Totally absorbing.  I seem to have read everything.  Such a joy to discover a new writer (to yourself) and to binge.  I’m sad because I seem to have done the lot in such a short space of time.  I hope I missed something.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions    Stephen Hawking

My new Bible.  Beautifully and very simply written, from lectures and talks, this is a mind blowing, very simple summation of what we believe to be true in the Universe.   It makes belief in a God created Universe somewhat simplistic.  Many of the things described defy belief.  I now give it to people.  Don’t panic, there’s not an equation in sight.  With an introduction by Eddie Redmayne and a very beautiful postscript by his daughter about his funeral which is both touching and amazing.

Maigret Enjoys Himself      Georges Simenon

As always the perfect appetiser, or palate cleanser for longer reads.  Maigret is on holiday but stays in Paris and can’t resist watching how his colleague Janvier goes about solving a crime.  It’s his perspective on the reader who follows cases in the newspapers.

Moonglow                              Michael Chabon

I ran out of books and picked up this and the Doer in Sydney.   The hallmark of a great book is you can read it again.  This was even better for the second time.   I find this a lot with this amazing author.   Basically about his (fictional really as he admits in the intro) maternal grandfather.  It skirts a lot of territory, memorable chapters being about Werner von Braun and his attempted capture by the Americans at the end of the war, and his real involvement with the foul camp that kept the V2 running until almost the last month.  The camp that killed more than the victims of the flying bomb which would soon become the Saturn rocket that would take America to the moon.  He ends his days in an old peoples home in Florida searching for a Python.  Funny, witty, exquisitely written, I was hooked once again from the start.

This is what happened.            Nick Herron.

Spy thriller.  Or is it.  Spoiler alerts.  Latest thriller.  Always surprising, always entertaining.

About Grace.                              Anthony Doer.

Running out of books in Sydney I picked up two I was fairly sure I’d read, and re-read half of this before economising on my packing, knowing I have it at home.  Very fine writing about a boy who dreams the short future.  Bad things will happen.  No one will believe you.

The Affair of the Poisons      Anne Somerset

Murder, Satanism and Infanticide at the Court of the Sun King.                                        Reading on I Pad after enjoying the Netflix series Versailles.   It makes you want to discover whether it is all true.  This one confirms the poisoning and is very interesting about the sexual activity.  But of course it is France.   Nicely written and a good perspective on the most extraordinary of monarchs and his amazing creation of Versailles.  The gap between the glittering court and the poverty of the over taxed peasantry would of course soon be closed by the Revolution.

The Sun King                         Nancy Mitford.

I picked up my old copy of this excellent history, and dipped into it.

November

Milkman                                 Anna Burns

A very powerful, original, incredibly well-written and highly deserved winner of this year’s Mann Booker Prize.   An interior monologue about a young girl in Northern Ireland during the troubles.  Her skill in capturing the voice and the attitudes of a community under siege and locked into its prejudices, as the political ice slowly starts to melt and things begin to change is extraordinary.  I found it gripping, fascinating, fresh and honest.

The Age of Louis XIV             Will & Ariel Durant

We had been watching Versailles on Netflix and I was intrigued to know just how much was actual history.  I knew many scenes were completely made up obviously, so I turned to the masters, Volume VIII of their incredible Story of Civilization, a complete set of which was presented to me by my wonderful Spamalot Producer Bill Haber. Beautifully written this is the finest historical record ever and an amazing achievement.  Louis’ Age was of course 66, and he dies sadly, amidst the financial collapse of the gilded honeytrap he created to destroy the nobility.  The Revolution would complete the work in only a few more years.

The River in the Sky                Clive James

A long epitaph poem by Clive musing about his own life and forthcoming death.  Like his life, I enjoyed lots of it.

Love is Blind                          William Boyd

After being blown away by his short stories his latest novel somewhat disappointed me.  It’s a romance.  In the cinema sense.   Fascinating, and occasionally very moving, I never quite believed in this 19^th Century tale of the love of an Edinburgh piano tuner for an enigmatic Russian beauty. Mainly, I failed to believe in her.  And I often felt manipulated, in so far as things happened, because the plot needed them to happen.  That’s what I mean by cinema writing.  It might make a very fine movie.  I was never bored, I was engaged, until perhaps the last quarter, where I felt him thrashing around to find an end, and when he did it was pure movie writing.  Novels are bloody hard work, and I often wish novelists would write the end first, because even the best of them tend to run out of steam.  I think William Boyd is up there with the best of them, but this is not his best novel.

The Gifts of Reading               Robert Macfarlane

Somewhere along my book tour, possibly Manchester, some fan slipped this tiny Penguin book into my hand.  Like an idiot I signed it and tried to hand it back.  Mercifully I took it away with me.  It’s tiny, delightful and extraordinary and one I shall continue to re-read and I thank the anonymous donor.

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy”     Geoff Dyer

An extraordinary book, musing on the movie Where Eagles Dare.   Almost a scene by scene description of what happens in a movie I haven’t seen, with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, it is hilarious, very witty, occasionally wonderful rude, and captures something quite original, managing to talk about telling a tale on the screen and how unreal that world usually is.  I picked up a beautiful signed special edition published by and at Hatchards.  One for the stocking.

October

I spent this month largely on the road.  So, I packed some preferences for travel, Maigret of course and some Mick Herron, the new essential travel companion for binge reading, but then, a superb discovery, that William Boyd has become my all-time favourite short story writer. 

Spook Street                  Mick Herron

This, the fifth in his Slough House series, was easily my favourite, intensely plotted and very well written, kept me happily entertained during a long trip across America and many changing scenes and airports and hotels.  What a joy he is.   And so much as yet unread, waiting for me in the wings.   It’s such a pleasure to stumble on a new writer you’re going to treasure.  I began the month with him and ended it too.

The Drop                      Mick Herron

I found this at the end of the month in Waterstones and it was here almost before I was.  Very impressive to shop on a Saturday in London and start reading on a Tuesday in California. Short and sweet and almost a tease, as I want to know more, but I like his short Maigret length novellas, like a good appetizers it whets without satiating the palate.  Oo you pretentious git, says the inner editor.

Maigret Travels             Georges Simenon

Maigret out of his depth, a fish out of water, amongst the rich in a luxury Parisian hotel, with an attempted suicide by a countess and the sudden death of a billionaire.  He is particularly good describing  his inadequate feelings in the strange backstage world of the hotel, while plodding on regardless with his investigation into what does not feel right to him.

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth                       William Boyd

I stumbled across this book of short stories in Hatchards and was totally blown away.   I have never read a collection of stories like it.  He was always good, but now seems to have evolved into the finest short story writer I have ever read.  It was never my favourite form, but I devoured these, immediately bought the previous collection and then thoroughly enjoyed reading some of the earlier ones I remembered, such as On The Yankee Station, and Nathalie X now republished in a more recent collection as:

The Dream Lover           William Boyd

I re-read these.   This is what I wrote before.   “These funny, surprising and moving stories are a resounding confirmation of Boyd’s powers as one of our most original and compelling storytellers.”

Fascination                   William Boyd.

I enjoyed this, the second recent collection, even more than the republished older ones.   They seem to come out of nowhere with so much detail and precision, I found them over-whelmingly great. Powerful, germane, and almost out of nowhere.   Impressive and extremely enjoyable.

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By Eric Idle, September 29, 2018 2:43 pm

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.

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By Eric Idle, July 25, 2018 6:19 am

Born Trump                           Emily Jane Fox

I ordered this on a whim from Kindle. The Trumps of course are not interesting in and of themselves, they are rather like second-rate characters from a TV soap, but this writer did nothing to make me want to read about them, and I ditched it early.  She comes from Vanity Fair which has of late also become strangely dull.  Come back Graydon Carter, all is forgiven.   We needed your relentless hatred of the orange monster.

Maigret Sets a Trap                Georges Simenon

I was wondering why I wasn’t so knocked out by this when the denouement blew me away.  He is seriously good.  Once again weather provides the setting.  This time Paris in the dead days of August.  Hot and oppressive, waiting for a thunderstorm to clear the air.   This is about a serial killer, and he comes into the story after five murders!   Who else would ever do that?  Such confidence he has.

Call for the Dead                   John Le Carré

Confined to bed for twenty four hours I lashed into Le Carré, beginning with this his first novel, which is at least half a detective story and introduces the delightful character of George Smiley, who collaborates with Mendel to solve the mystery of the sudden suicide of Fennan.  Also appearing for the first time is the sinister Munch.  And also for the first time the name Le Carré.  “When people press me, I say, I saw the name on a shop front from the top of a London bus.  I didn’t.  I just don’t know.  But never trust a novelist when he tells you the truth.”   I enjoyed it so much I resolved to re-read the Smiley novels in order.

A Murder of Quality               John Le Carré

After twenty four hours I was done with the first two and was forced to download the next.  This one is set at Carne public school and features the struggle between town and gown when vile things break out in this ancient public school.  For a short time Le Carré even taught at Eton, and of the masters he says “I loathed them, and I loathed their grotesque allegiances most of all.  To this day, I can find no forgiveness for their terrible abuse of the charges entrusted to them.”

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.  John Le Carré

I was forced to download this since I thought I had reread it recently, but turns out I hadn’t.  Of course I’d seen the excellent movie again.  I’m glad I did, because I really liked it after all these years.  Intriguing to get back into that world of Checkpoint Charlie, and the Munt puzzle which he brilliantly revisits in his latest A Legacy of Spies, which I re-read with delight a month ago for no better reason than it looked fun in paperback at Vromans.   And it was.

The Looking Glass War           John Le Carré

This did pose a dilemma as I have read it recently, but I determined to continue in my quest and again I was rewarded.   He was of course panned for this, immediately after his grand success with the previous novel.  It reminded me that the only thing I learned from studying literature at Cambridge is that it is almost always pointless reading any criticism.  Most of it is penis envy, and though the envy may be big, the penis is tiny.   JLC meant it as a corrective to the romantic view of the Circus from his big suprising hit novel, a more accurate portrayal of the petty world of British intrigue and the seedy and sordid world of spying.  Perhaps that view did not accord with the times.  Anyway, it is well worth the trip.  So that’s the fourth of the Smiley novels and the larger, more famous works lie ahead.

However I have decided to put re-reading them all on hold, there are just too many good new things to read on my shelf this summer.   Perhaps on my book tour…

The Essex Serpent                  Sarah Perry

I had trouble sticking with this one.   It reminded me of the world of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but I kept being confused by the period setting, and the intrusion of things like the London Underground, cameras and so on into the world of the 1890’s.   I’m not sure I care enough to stick with it, but it’s the sort of thing I could pick up later and enjoy.   That’s me not it.

Seize the Day                          Saul Bellow

And despite all my ravings about Saul Bellow I kept finding myself putting this down.   Why?

Is it me, or can you smell gas?

Vengeance is Mine, All Others pay cash      Eka Kurniawan

I was quite enjoying this Indonesian novel.  Mainly a story of a dick, I may return to it.

The Moving Finger                 Agatha Christie

Sometimes one overlooks the obvious.   There is an excellent reason Agatha is the best read author in the world, she is actually very readable.  This short novel, which eventually even includes Miss Marple at the end, helping with the denouement, is narrated by a brother in a dry, ironic style. He and his sister retreat for peace and quiet, and physical recovery into the simple peace and quiet of the English countryside where, of course, they find anything but and become involved in a murder mystery,  a who-dunit about a poison pen letter writer.  Utterly pleasurable.

Maigret’s Failure                   Georges Simenon

The secret of Simenon is women.   He knows them.   Thoroughly.  He studies them.   He understands them.  He sees their sorrows.  He understands their heart aches.  Their betrayals.  Their sadness at growing old.  Their power over men.   Their hanging on to old illusions when their men have passed their sell-by date.  And of course in Madame Maigret he has created the ideal companion.  One who never complains or demands his time.  Who cooks at the drop of a hat, who even tries not to breathe when she has toothache so as not to disturb him.   Of course she is the least real of all his women.  It’s the sadness, and the drinking and the violence against women he perceives, because he was a lover of women.   Thousands.  A daily seduction was as essential to him as writing.  And he is not a good looking guy.  But women trust him and perk up when they see him like they do for Maigret, the ideal observer, who just smokes his pipe and says little until the whole crime falls into place.   Sometimes even in a dream.    This is a faultless Maigret which includes excellent examples of all this.

Tyrant                                   Stephen Greenblatt

The most brilliant take-down of the tyrant in the white house without a single mention of his name.   Stephen examines tyrants in Shakespeare history plays and what makes them tyrannous and how they grow into tyranny.  Richard 111, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus.  Madness and megalomania leads them all down a path that seems so familiar from today’s headlines.   A fascinating and brilliant read.  And you can be sure one illiterate traitor won’t be able to read it…

How the Wheel becomes it.      Anthony Powell

A brilliant novel, exquisitely written.  A short return to the scene in 1983 after the long and classic series of novels A Dance to the Music of Time.  I felt it was so wonderfully written and constructed with his characters scenes constantly illuminated by the hilarious comments of the off-stage narrator.  I thought it might make a play and I wanted to read it again.  I found a first edition somewhere on my travels.  It made me buy the first of his twelve volume epic classic: A Dance to the Music of Time, and eventually the whole set.   See July.

Churchill                               Paul Johnson

An essential gallop through the exciting and brave life of one of the most remarkable men in history.  And one of the greatest exponents of English prose.  Nicely told by Paul Johnson.  He was utterly fearless and seemed to actually enjoy being shot at… Things I picked up:  Hitler loved whistling, Churchill hated it.    He was fencing champion at Harrow school.

May

Uncommon Type                    Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks has no business being this uncommonly good at the short story.  Is there nothing he cannot do?

Warlight                                Michael Ondaatje

A book of very accomplished parts.  Fine writing, good characters, why does it not all then come together in triumph?  I think he has chosen a very difficult way to tell the story. It’s hard to tell a love story backwards and then only learn about it and the meaning and depth of it from the older eyes of the offspring.  It involves the world of secrecy.  Might have been better chronologically.

Loser takes all                        Graham Greene

Fifties pot-boiler, set around Monte Carlo and some lessons about wealth.  A little too over evident on second reading.

Robin                                    David Itzkoff

I missed him.  I didn’t find him in the book.  It read like his life was sad.  It was far from sad. It made me want to try and write something about him, a little longer than the final chapter I wrote on him in my Sortabiography, to discover for myself what I mean instinctively about his absence from these pages.  It’s not the Final Chapter of my book but it was the last chapter I wrote because I kept postponing it, knowing I must because I owed it to him, to recall him, in all his heart warming funny, sweet affectionate ways, but I was avoiding it for the longest time, dreading facing the reality of his loss. So maybe I will have a go or maybe that Chapter does it.   This is a perfectly fine canter through his life, but the essence is not there for me.

Crime and Punishment                    Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Loved her, hated him.