My friend and colleague from two offices down foisted this book upon me because he knew of my weakness for crime fiction, and because he enjoyed reading it.
He was right to enjoy it. The book has a nice feel to it, with characters that come to life; a sympathetic main policeman who has the usual struggles of family and work life, though happily without the failing family life so common of detective novels. It's a very European novel, imbued with the Italian way of life, and so unlike the kind of superhero American crime novels from the likes of Harlen Coben. The situations are complex and grey and the solutions never quite satisfactory - a bit like in the case of the Wallander series, except with a much more Italian feel, and perhaps without such good characterisation. All in all, though, I can see myself reading more.
For quite a while I held an irrational prejudice against Charles Dickens. It was irrational in the sense that I'd never read his books, but had assumed that they'd be worthy, dry, conservative victorian tedium. When I actually tried reading him, I realised that I was very wrong, and I have been enjoying in turns Hard Times (my attempt to start, since it was short), Bleak House (because I'd heard it was his masterpiece, and it's great), Barnaby Rudge (because I answered a question wrong about it when I was on 15-to-1) and Our Mutual Friend. I enjoyed them all rather a lot, finding him to be progressive rather than conservative, engaging and entertaining rather than dry, and (yes) often worthy, but not in a patronising way.
Great Expectations is perhaps his most famous work. Presumably not without reason, so in January, as I waited at Heathrow for a flight to Mexico for a conference, I got round to buying it. I ended up spending much of my time in Mexico City, sitting in the Zocalo reading it. It tells the story of Pip, a poor boy who finds himself thrust into money thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Finding himself with means doesn't automatically lead to hapiness for Pip. It affects his relationships with people he grew up with, and he has a poor sense of how to spend wisely. There is, of course, redemption, though it's not perhaps the cheeriest of stories (but what do I expect from Dickens?) and it's also played out alongside the tragic stories of his love interest and the iconic Miss Haversham.
I wasn't surprised to find that I loved the book - and will no doubt be reporting on others of his in future. Meanwhile I may even reconsider my irrational prejudice against Jane Austen, but chances are I will just realise that it was rational all along.
I mostly make a habit of reading books written by people I know (though thanks to a depressingly over-achieving bunch of friends, I'm pretty far behind) so when my friend's mum published her first novel, I bought a copy.
The book is set in the rural north Wales of Katie's childhood, and tells the story that unfolds in a village on the Llyn peninsula during the war. It's a lovely, gentle book that evokes a strong picture of the people and places. It's part pastoral, and part love story. I'm glad I do pick up these books by people I know - it's not the sort of thing I might otherwise have read, and I'm glad I have.
During some pre-christmas browsing in Borders, this book caught my eye, and the blurb on the back - describing the book as a fictional account of the meeting leading to the Munich agreement in 1938 - made it sound right up my street.
The story is told from the point of view of a journalist who tracks down Édouard Daladier, the French president and the only major player in the meeting to survive the war. The journalist manages to get the reclusive ex-president to give his side of the story, and we are given an account of the events of the meeting, and Daladier's feelings of shame at the failure of the French and the English to stand up to Germany, and to honour France's pact with the Czechs.
Despite the pervasiveness with which the events of the second world war have infused culture, I must admit to being largely ignorant of the details of the meeting described in The Ghost of Munich. This made it hard for me to know where the line between fact and fiction was drawn, but it really didn't matter. It certainly made the book a curious and unusual read, but it is well-written, and kept me gripped to the end - even though I sort of knew the outcome. The portrayal of the players was one of the things that made it a pleasure to read. The Germans and Italians were portrayed as humans, not monsters. Daladier, though flawed, was shown sympathetically. Only Chamberlin came across, probably with justification, as the anti-hero.
So, my plan of recording and reviewing all the books I read in the year did not work so terribly well. Mind you, my reading dropped off considerably after the birth of Flora, my lovely daughter, so I think I can be excused.
I won't attempt to fill in all the missing books, of which there are a few - a bunch of crime thrillers, my friend Raj Patel's book on the politics of the food industry, and the new Harry Potter book - and no doubt a couple more I've now forgotten, but can at least try to make some kind of repeat new year's resolution to start again in 2008 and see how I do...
I'm trying to remember what books I read over the last couple of months to get things back up to speed. One that I've missed is The Open Laboratory, a collection of science blogs, edited by science blogger Bora Zivkovic. I was asked to review it for Nature, so the review is available online. It's not available from Amazon, so I can't include a picture in this post.
Some time, a couple of months ago, before leaving the wretched community of train commuters, my publisher-cum-travelling companion gave me a copy of Let the Right One In, a book which they are hoping will be a great success when it is launched (which I think is this month, as I write). She might just be right. The story centres on the life of a teenage boy who lives in a housing estate in Sweden. He's a loner; a thoughtful boy who doesn't get on in his rough school, and gets picked on by bullies. Of course, the underdog comes good in the end, and this cliche is combined with another - vampirism - in a rather stylish way to make for a good read. The whole story is set in the real world and, rather like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, made almost plausible by good writing. Could well, like Buffy, be a cult classic.
Oh dear. I've really got rather behind on book reviews. I started Will Self's The Book of Dave while on holiday in Egypt at Easter, and finished it shortly after. I think the prospect of writing a review worthy of the book has put me off blogging about it and caused this backlog, but I shan't put it off any longer.
The Book of Dave is a novel set partly in the far future and partly today, and centres around the character of Dave Rudman, a London Cabbie who suffers a mental breakdown and writes a bizarre religious treatise directed at his estranged son. Dave buries the book in his estranged wife's garden for the son to find, but it is instead found in the distant future by the descendants of todays population who live on the archipelago resulting from sea-level rises. The deranged rant spawns the oppressive state religion of the future NuEngland.
Like any Will Self book, the language is delightful. As the book switches between today and the future, the language switches between the English of today and a stylised Riddley-Walkeresque Mockney of the future. There is so much going on that I don't know quite what the book is about. It seems to be partly a satire about religion, a compassionate tale of the difficulties of modern living, an animal-rights proponent, and Dave knows what else. For weeks afterwards my thoughts kept using the language of the future, and were about the book. It's powerful stuff, and I'd recommend it to anyone - though I am aware that there is something inherently blokey about Will Self's books, and it does require a bit of perseverence at first.
I read Stuart: A Life Backwards while lazing by the pool in Egypt. It's probably not the right setting for a compassionate, funny, yet harrowing book on the life of the subject, the eponymous Stuart who grew up living in children's homes then sleeping on the streets of Cambridge, dependent on drugs of bewildering variety and having all sorts of semi-disastrous relationships with people.
The backwards aspect, in which we are introduced to the grown man at the beginning, then learn more about his youth and childhood as the book progresses, makes it difficult for me to reveal much more about him without spoiling the story, but it works pretty well as a device. The author also spends an appreciable portion of the book describing the process of his researching and writing it, which seems only to detract from the subject, and make me wonder why a modest, though perfectly good, book seemed to take him years to write. That minor niggle aside, it's a worthwhile read.
The backwards aspect, in which we are introduced to the grown man at the beginning, then learn more about his youth and childhood as the book progresses, makes it difficult for me to reveal much more about him without spoiling the story, but it works pretty well as a device. The author also spends an appreciable portion of the book describing the process of his researching and writing it, which seems only to detract from the subject, and make me wonder why a modest, though perfectly good, book seemed to take him years to write. That minor niggle aside, it's a worthwhile read.
Nelson DeMille's The Lion's Game is hardly the sort of book I would head for in a book shop. It's a grown-up boy's own action thriller set in the backdrop of the US's war or terrorism. Following the death of his family in Reagan's infamous bombing raids on Libya in the 80's, Asad Khalil finally gets his revenge - and in a spectacular way. After an enormous act of plane-based terrorism, and numerous references to the World Trade Centre (and this book was published in 2000), Khalil sets about tracking down the flight crew that bombed his parents and siblings. On his trail are a cross-agency team of anti-terrorist professionals - from the FBI, CIA, and perhaps strangely, the NYPD. John Corey, from the latter is the hero in whose voice some of the chapters are written, and strands of his personal life are intertwined throughout the book. Of course he has women problems and drinks too much (though in a gentle American way). He's macho and cock-strutting, and is the one who does the roughing up when suspects come their way. Yet he's not entirely unlikable, and despite my wooly liberal inclinations, I enjoyed reading the book. It's well written, and is like the best action thriller movies - a bit silly in the portrayal of the super-skills of protagonists on both sides, but compelling and exciting. Like the best movies, it's not all black and white, and the deaths of Khalil's family are never presented as justifiable.
I read The Lion's Game partly on a plane, and partly around a hotel swimming pool here in Egypt. I was slightly embarrassed that a lot of other people around me were reading remarkably highbrow stuff - but not really; The Lion's Game is easily worth a diversion.
I read The Lion's Game partly on a plane, and partly around a hotel swimming pool here in Egypt. I was slightly embarrassed that a lot of other people around me were reading remarkably highbrow stuff - but not really; The Lion's Game is easily worth a diversion.
Though I've read most of his books before (including this one), my recent trip to Havana prompted me to re-read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. It is most famous, perhaps, for the scene in which Wormold, the man who unexpectedly finds himself in the role of a British spy, plays checkers using whisky miniatures. It is one of the books that Greene called an "entertainment" (as opposed to what he considered his more serious work). It is entertaining; it's a rather gentle black comedy about what can happen when one lie leads to a series of more lies until the lies start becoming true.
In an attempt to keep up financially with the wishes of his demanding daughter, Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, agrees to become an agent of the secret services. Not really knowing what to do, he fakes the recruiting of sub-agents (with generous expense allowances) who provide details of military installations. This gets the interest of the high brass, and the situation spirals out of control, until Wormold, at last redeems himself (if one needs redeeming from duping the secret services) by attempting a genuine and heroic spying act.
In typical Greene style, he captures the grubbiness of ordinary life; the flaws, the lies, but also the love. It makes lovely reading, and I see a renewed trawl though his novels coming on.
In an attempt to keep up financially with the wishes of his demanding daughter, Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, agrees to become an agent of the secret services. Not really knowing what to do, he fakes the recruiting of sub-agents (with generous expense allowances) who provide details of military installations. This gets the interest of the high brass, and the situation spirals out of control, until Wormold, at last redeems himself (if one needs redeeming from duping the secret services) by attempting a genuine and heroic spying act.
In typical Greene style, he captures the grubbiness of ordinary life; the flaws, the lies, but also the love. It makes lovely reading, and I see a renewed trawl though his novels coming on.
on Stuart: A Life Backwards