Was it last summer or the one before that Jean Raber was sitting in her back yard reading Trollope? I was into my Dicken's Marathon...reading Bleak House, or was it Our Mutual Friend? Certainly we were listening to Pickwick Papers driving around New York State--remarkable similarities!
My annual Dickens or Austen rereads were cut short this summer by a friend who in late April sent me Anthony Price, Other Paths to Glory, feeding my World War I obsession. The plot focus is on a WW1 battle site being prepared for a post-WW2, Cold War meeting. Of course, all the characters are Brits MI6 with a far-off Cold War Soviet spy in the background and a French tour guide (really 2ieme Bureau) nosing around for the hidden surprise! It was a good read, a second-hand paperback deleted from the Braintree branch of the Essex County Council Libraries. The brown paper and 9 point type attested to its authenticity.
My friend was teasing a bit but it put me onto the other 19 Price spy novels, which range in price from 2.25 to 2.95 at Alibris. The postage costs more. (12 down, 8 to go). The round of characters appear and don't in each novel with the brilliant David Audley, a medievalist, the focal point of the ever warring (internally and externally) intelligence service. Quite the page turners.
This raises the question: Why are the English such good story tellers, plot-makers, and character creators? As I wait for my next batch of Price novels, we are reviewing all the Endeavour shows to be ready for the fifth and final (so they say) season!
It doesn't sound like your summer reading list is junk reading. Mine, on the other hand....
ReplyDeleteBut you are right about the English being good story tellers. The latest British novel I have read was "Into the Water" by Paula Hawkins, of "The Girl on the Train" fame. Not quite Dickens or Trollope. But entertaining.
I have lately joined a book club at our local library. The July book was "Still Life" by Louise Penney. I was really more interested in the small French Canadian town and the people who lived there than "whodunnit". The August book is "Exit West" by Mohsin Hammid. So at least a variety, not all mysteries. Which is good because I am kind of burned out on murder mysteries.
My wife likes the Louise Penney books. I read one and said "no thanks" to the rest. I probably want more of a "guy read". But an intelligent and well-written guy read.
DeleteJim, you would feel sorry for the lone guy in our book club. Six or seven women and one man. Though everybody gets to pick a selection. I don't know if "Exit West" was his pick or not.
DeleteThere are two men in our non-fiction reading group, one a retired scientist, the other a retired radio announcer. Very handy knowledge base!
DeleteWill be waiting to hear about "Exit West." Is it magic realism translated to a Middle Eastern setting?
DeleteOh yeah, I read "Exit West". It was pretty good. Sorry to say, stronger in the first half than in the end. "Magic realism" is pretty apt. More real than magic.
DeleteKatherine, our library has tried to get guy book clubs spun up, but I don't think they've had much success. All of my guy friends are readers, though. Give them a Tom Clancy novel and they're set for weeks.
DeleteOur WW1 book group has ten men and two women...War's a winner for getting guys into reading groups! Give it a try.
DeleteWhat guys are reading; my husband likes the classic sci- fi such as Asimov. Also likes Tony Hillerman and Margaret Coel. Other than that he's pretty eclectic, whatever he picks up at the library sale. My dad is re-reading old favorites; he loves western writers such as J.Frank Dobie and Tom Lea. He too likes Tony Hillerman and Margaret Coel. Oldest son is into alternative universes. He recently read Babylon's Ashes by James Corey. Youngest son has three little girls and mainly reads Dora the Explorer and Paw Patrol.
DeleteAmericans write about sex and violence, I guess. Probably there is something profound to be adduced from that.
ReplyDeleteBtw, the best novel I've read in years is All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Should be on college reading lists. I've just assumed that Doerr is British: as you note, it has plot and character development; it takes place in Europe; and besides, his name is Anthony, which just seems like the first name of a British writer. But he's American. Just goes to show ya.
My mother was bugging me to read Doerr pretty much up to the day she died. I dismissed it because it sounded like one of those star-crossed romantic epics with an ultra-sensitive heroine that she loved. And I was still ticked because she told me Jane Austen was shallow and boring, and how could I waste my time.
DeleteNow I feel sad I didn't humor her.
The first romance she pestered me to read was "Jane Eyre" when I was 11. First time I got truly drunk on a book. Found her old copy among her effects after she died. Kept that one.
Yes, All the Light We Cannot See is a great novel.
ReplyDeleteI finished "The President Is Missing," the thriller by James Patterson and Bill Clinton. It's a page-turner about cyber security (paging Mr. Pauwels with a guy read).
ReplyDeleteFairly easy to spot the windy, thinly disguised editorials by Bill on how to REALLY make America great again. I didn't disagree, but it has become a bit trite.
It did, however, fit with my "old lit" theme.
Much better selection was "The Book of Eve": a 66-year-old woman abandons her suburban "paradise" for the messiness of the independent life in a Montreal tenement.
Paul Auster's "Brooklyn Follies," about an elderly man trying to keep the remnants of his extended family together was good, though the ending was a bit schmaltzy.
Can't say I enjoyed Kingsley Amis's "The Old Devils" much. Several couples in their 60s and 70s coming to terms with their dissolute past in a dissolute present. Interesting style, but Muriel Spark does this sort of thing better.
And Stephen King's "Insomnia." A 60-something widower and widow pair up to save the world from supernatural forces. This is interminable and not up to King's generally reliable standards.
Started on Nell Painter's "The History of White People," a lively look at how the Western world has looked at race and ethnology since the ancient Greeks.
I will check out the Patterson/(Ugh) Clinton book, with as open a mind as I can muster!
DeleteI don't think it's really worth it. They also steal a few elements from "The West Wing."
DeleteI'm reading Sydney Blumenthal's "A Self-Made Man: the Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1809-1849." Not a novel, but a great read nonetheless. Who knew the 1830's were so filled with drama? The chains of slavery wrapped around and entangling virtually every current and political event. Will take me the remainder of the summer to plow through it.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I'm always interested to see that some of our posts here generate 100 or more reads, even though it is always the same 6-8 of us commenting. Hey, lurkers out there, if you have book thoughts, I hope you'll share some of them.
ReplyDeleteThose guys may just be all of us coming back to the same post several times, sad to say ...
DeleteMy goodness, everybody sounds so... energetic. I just started my August Dickens. I do only one a year. We are back to Oliver Twist (I think Nancy may have been the first girl I fell in love with). I had forgotten Oliver's brief experience as an undertaker's mime.
ReplyDeleteAnthony Price does sound like fun.
Just finished 'Broadway, a history of New York City in 13 miles' by Fran Leadon. How many of you knew that, until Seth Low became its president in 1889, Greek was a prerequisite for admission to Columbia University? Or that John James Audubon built a house about a mile north of Alexander Hamilton's last abode? Before that I read Masha Gessen's account of how Putin changed the theory from communism to nationalism but kept Russia the way he found it. The guy with the red MAGA hat just returned from vacation. He spent his entire life fighting the communist takeover of the USA, so I don't know how he feels about his Dear Leader's torrid affair with the Prince of the KGB, but I learned from Gessen how to say (and will say to him), "Budushchengo net," which means "There is no future." The needle is sharpened.
Also have been re-reading some of W. B. Yeats' play in a desultory manner.
"his Dear Leader's torrid affair with the Prince of the KGB"
ReplyDeleteWhen you put it that way, it almost sounds like a beach read :-) Maybe that's why I'm so depressed about current events: I've been treating them as reality rather than a bodice-ripper.
About two years ago, I started reading Stephen King because I was curious about how the movies diverged from the no else. It, Green Mile, Dead Zone, Carrie. Also read 11/22/63 because it was the ultimate baby boomer fantasy, going back in time to save Kennedy. Of course, I would never do it if I could because it would erase people born after the event. About King, what is this thing about crazy, nasty mothers that seems to be an ongoing theme? Anyway, I think I'm done with him for now. On to, something else, don't know what.
ReplyDeleteCrazy nasty mothers are scary, Stanley. That's what's with them. He has abandoned his use of the "magic negro," praise be.
DeleteNo else = movies. Wot the heck?
ReplyDeleteMy junk reading right now is Daniel Silva's newest book. I got into a WWII novels kick a few months ago, because I have become increasingly concerned about the spread of white nationalism in the US and Europe. White "christian" nationalism, which seems devoid of understanding of what Christ actually taught. Although there has been an uptick in hate crimes directed towards Jews, here and in Europe, it really seems that in the US the scapegoat role of the Jews in Hitler's Germany has been assigned to Latinos and Muslims. Muslims are also targets in Europe, especially in eastern European countries.
ReplyDeleteSo I started reading fiction about WWII - some good, some not so, but several startled me with the "thinking" of various characters, thoughts and sentiments that seem very much like what we have been hearing in the US for the last 3 years. One writer did a very good job showing how "ordinary" Germans were seduced by Hitler's promises, and so slowly embraced his anti-Jewish rhetoric. The thoughts and dialogue were all too much like what we hear now in the US. These novels were written long before Trump's candidacy and election, so the similarities in Trump's rhetoric, and in the thinking of those who were attracted to it was very disturbing.
So I am now reading Madeleine Albright's book, Fascism: A Warning". And also Michael Hayden's book The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies.
Hayden is a 4 star General, former CIA director, former NSA Director, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence. He is among the several high level experts in National Security who continue to speak out publicly against Trump. This earned him a place in the tweets threatening to revoke security clearances from several high-level National Security experts, who are among the dozens who released a public letter before the election warning against Trump and the dangers he represents to the security of our country. Sadly, few in Trumpland paid any attention. I doubt that Fox News covered it much, and, if they did, most likely spun it so that nobody would take these experts seriously in their assessment of Trump as a danger to our country.
As a freelancer, I worked for more than a dozen years, on and off on a project basis, with companies with contracts in the National Security Community. Even though I wasn't an employee, and did not have a security clearance (I didn't want anyone to sponsor me for one either), and did not have access to classified material, I picked up a whole lot of knowledge. I trust Michael Hayden and the others whose voices Trump wants to quiet. Interesting to me that after his initial outraged tweets/threats toward these experts (prompted by former CIA Director Brennan's charge that Trump's behavior with Putin was near treasonous), he went silent. Guessing there may still be one or two adults in the room who might point out that these men, critics, do have First Amendment rights of free speech. Trump has the authority to strip them of their clearances, but it would be a very bad idea to do so. Even the spineless folk on the Hill with the letter (R) after their names might raise a fuss.
Anne, having taken endless security courses as a government employee and consultant, it is interesting who is a perfect match to a security risk. Trump, of course. Shady finances. Sexual libertinism. Strange foreign trips. Flapping mouth. Mental instability. He has it all.
DeleteWhaa???? He is a very stable genius.
DeleteStanley, I have thought the same thing many times. He and Kushner and a bunch of others would never have gotten security clearances had they applied for ordinary govt jobs.
ReplyDeletePS. Re the Daniel Silva novel, The Other Woman.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, several here did not like Silva's descent into graphic descriptions of torture. Those upset me as well, as I have enjoyed his novels, but I figured I would continue to read them, to see if something changed. So, now 3/4 through the latest, I think I am safe in saying that he does not include that in this novel. Unless it's at the very end. Perhaps Silva was pushed into it by publishers - maybe too much art, not enough graphic torture to attract as a "guy book"? And maybe the feedback wasn't good. Who knows. But so far, so good.
Put me down as a Louise Penny fan also. Maybe too much art in her books for some? My main problem with them is the carefully selected cast of characters, all of whom seem to be extraordinarily nice people - and more than a little stereotyped. The gay couple with the bistro, the "large" black woman with the PhD in psychology and the book store. The foul mouthed, unpleasant old woman who writes poetry and has a pet duck. The moody artist. Etc. Armand is a bit too perfect, as is his beautiful, cultured, ever-patient wife. That said, I enjoy the books, and a couple were well above the ordinary of the genre, even though the stereotypes take away a bit.
Of course, I now would like to go to Quebec (I've never been to Canada), to Montreal, and find the magical village that is out of range of iphone signals.
Silva has never hidden his political beliefs, and he takes more than a few digs at the "recently elected Pres of the US".
Ten of the Anthony Price novels are available as Kindle books for $4.99 each.
ReplyDeleteYes, I tried one; it's not the same as the brownish paper with 9 pt type!
DeleteAs it happens three Price novels arrived today and I am looking forward to reading "The Old Vengeful," which opens with David Audley and his young sidekick scanning a photo of a funeral for a deceased member of that ship. Audley smells treason! Paul Mitchell the side-kick is skeptical. We shall see.
ReplyDeleteWhile waiting for these, I was at B & N, where there was a pile of remainders. I read David Ignatius's column in the Wash Post, and was half-conscious he has written spy novels; there was one in the pile, "Body of Lies." It had the air of a true story: a CIA agent caught up in double and triple plots; it was nowhere as good as Price. And as Jim Pauwels noted of U.S. writing, full of violence..., but in this case only a tiny bit of sex.
I'm reading "Into the Water" by Paula Hawkins, author of "The Girl on the Train". A good English suspense novel.
ReplyDeleteI thought both of those were good; though I wanted to shake some of the characters at times.
DeleteExcellent "junk" reading are domestic thrillers of the 1950s and early '60s. I have a "best of" list around here somewhere left over from a paper I presented a couple years ago. Let me know if you want it. (The list, not the paper ...)
ReplyDeleteDomestic thrillers? What kind? If home invasions or Zombies in the basement, No. If spies, police, CIA, FBI, Yes!
DeleteIf not the paper, is there an abstract?
Jean, yeah, you should post the list.
DeleteOK, I'll dig I it up.
DeleteNow enjoying: "The Spectator Bird" by Wallace Stegner. Retiree and his wife in northern California bicker because she wants him to keep busy.
ReplyDelete