Eric Idle OnlineMy Life

By , June 7, 2020 4:24 pm

May

Until the End of Time    Brian Greene

I read this in a hurry as I was about to join him on The Infinite Monkey Cage, but now I find myself going back and dipping into some of the fascinating things he reveals about the Universe.   It’s more interesting than science fiction.  In fact the whole Universe is far weirder than the bearded conjurer theory.   I want to read more.

 

I downloaded two Don Winslow books on to Kindle because they are so heavy! Alas I began to read the wrong one.  I meant to read The Border, the third part of his trilogy but I inadvertently started….

The Force            Don Winslow

…so I continued.  It was very prescient, a book about Police Corruption and the Manhattan Police.  Fascinating.  A brilliant portrait of a corrupt cop and what happens on the streets of NY.

Now perhaps I can finish his brilliant Trilogy.

Laugh Lines         Alan Zweibel

My life helping funny people be funnier.

Hilarious.  I loved this book.  He is a wonderful man.  I’m so glad I have known him since SNL in 1976.  I am very proud of him.

Strangers on a Train      Patricia Highsmith

Was this her first?  Hitchcock made the movie.  This was not my favourite read of hers.

Catch and Kill      Ronan Farrow

I started this brilliant book in hardback when it first came out, but finished it recently on Kindle.  It is an amazing achievement and worthy of all the awards he picked up.  He takes down the appalling sexual bully and rapist Weinstein, as well as NBC and their misguided attempts to shield Matt Lauer from the retribution he totally deserved.  Along the way he has to face many attempts to stop him, including the attentions of Black Cube, which is, reassuringly a post Mossad group for hire, if you have, you know raped anyone recently.  They can help.

Talking to Strangers               Malcolm Gladwell

I finally finished this intriguing book.  He is always readable.  Like a feast for the mind.

Maigret and the Old People.     Georges Simenon

Wonderful as usual.

So you don’t get lost in the neighbourhood.   Patrick Modiano

A bit French for me.

American Dirt               Jeanine Cummins

Starts fantastically well but I felt it ran out of steam towards the end.  I prefer Don Winslow in the horrendous world of the Mexican cartels, but she is certainly impressive, and he recommends this, if indeed it is not quite The Grapes of Wrath.   The Rapes of Wrath?

April

Hi Five                Joe Ide

An IQ novel

Well into his stride now, his books are effortlessly readable.  I’m not quite sure I get much of a picture of IQ his protagonist, I still don’t quite have an image of him in my mind,  but I really enjoy reading his author.   This one concerns someone who is accused of murder who is a Multi, and that in itself leads to complications.  Highly original.  Good stuff.

No Bones             Anna Burns

The great thing about age is you can happily re-read a book you just read recently with only a dim awareness of what happens.  This was her first novel and I liked it very much. Her writing is wonderful, in Belfast rhythms with slang and issues, a young girl, her family and friends at the beginning of the Troubles. I did indeed read it in January 2018 and said then “ She manages to be both bleak and satirical at the same time, as well as the finest prose writer.”  I agree with me.

Lady in Waiting             Anne Glenconner

My Extraordinary Life in the shadow of the Crown

A highly readable memoir of the Upper Classes and the poor woman who was married to the loony Peer Colin Tennant, the King of Mustique.  She becomes Lady in Waiting to the less than fabulous Princess Margaret.  This is a fascinating glimpse of the children of the Bright Young Things. Her description of the Coronation, where she was one of the six ladies in waiting carrying the train of the Queen at that extraordinary event, is worth the price of admission alone.  Kindle.

Maigret in Vichy

A memorable one.  Maigret is a fish out of water, taking the waters in Vichy, when a little old lady he and the Mrs have been holiday watching is suddenly found dead. Of course the local police ask for Maigret’s help and of course he can’t resist.

Apropos of Nothing        Woody Allen

Interesting autobiography of America’s most famous comedian and director of our time.  Interesting that he says he is not an intellectual, and indeed he never went to college. It was fun to read about his movies.  But we were all waiting for how he writes about HER… and he does.

Read on Kindle.

 

By , April 19, 2020 6:07 pm

March

The Splendid and the Vile        Erik Larson

A terrific read.  About Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940, replacing Chamberlain as Prime Minister with the country in imminent danger of German invasion.  It’s about his crew, Beaverbrook and Tree and so on, his loyal family, his determination to bring America in, via Roosevelt during two years of one hundred and fifty German bombers overhead.  The cruelty of the Blitz, and the nightly raids which killed thousands of Brits is particularly relevant in the age of CV.  There are indeed worse things.

Framed                Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Why Michael Skakel spent over a decade in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

Robert F. Kennedy sent me this, because, unbelievably, the murder of Martha Moxley took place during the first ever broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on PBS in 1975 and several of the protagonists were racing home to watch it.  More importantly, I was convinced by this book that a major injustice took place, prodded by Dominik Dunne and Mark Fuhrman the OJ Cop, when Michael Skakel was suddenly accused of and shockingly convicted of the murder three decades later, despite never having been a suspect and having a cast iron alibi.  I think he is out now.  I hope so.

Vegas                  John Gregory Dunne

A Memoir of a Dark Season

I have been searching for years for this book and I finally found it at the Pasadena Book Fair. It was certainly worth the search.  A very fine semi-autobiographical novel of a writer and his nervous breakdown in Vegas. Sharp, funny and sometimes cruel.  I loved it.

February

The Hunchback of Notre Dame        Victor Hugo

I’d forgotten just what a damn good writer Hugo was.  The French Dickens.  This abridged version was really good.  Completely captivated me.  Musical anyone?

Frankissstein                Jeanette Winterson

Lake Geneva 1816 and Mary Shelley is writing her classic on a wet weekend in Switzerland with Byron and Shelley and meanwhile in Brexit Britain a man is making robotic sex toys

The Man in the Red Coat        Julian Barnes

Much as I love him he didn’t grab me with this odd tale of a bunch of Frogs in Angleterre in the summer of 1885. The Belle Epoch in London and of course very gay Paree.

January

A Very Stable Genius              Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig

A fine book on the Orange Monster.  But after a while I no longer wanted to continue reading about how crazy this terrible tyrant is and I put it away.  He is making everyone nuts.  Poor America. Will it ever recover?  The Trump Presidential Library is going to consist of nothing but books exposing what an insane malignant narcissist can do to democracy, when tutored by Putin and Roy Cohn.

The Catch            Mick Herron

He seems to be very good at these short novellas, perhaps inspired by Simenon.  This is great.

Maigret and Monsieur Charles         Georges Simenon.

Another brilliant one.  The great thing about the novella is it’s hard to run out of steam, as so many novels do.  Even great ones.

Serotonin             Michel Houellebecq

The same bleak view from a loser.  Compelling writing and total honesty.

Pal Joey               John O’Hara

Wonderful short letters from a Chicago nightclub singer to a better.   Became the basis for the Rogers and Hart musical.

Rogue Lawyer               John Grisham

Fine character.  A rogue lawyer.  Really interesting and very well told. I had picked up a large priont format but it was already very easy to read.

Maigret Hesitates           Georges Simenon

…but not for long.  Slight resemblance to another story of his, where he learns in advance a crime is to be committed. This one really surprises him and he hesitates to call the outcome.

More Than Likely          Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais

Fabulous memoirs from the two great writers (and Director). I loved every second of it.

Likely Lads, Porridge, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

By , February 17, 2020 12:19 pm

December

Agent Running in the Field     John Le Carré

Interestingly he seems to be writing a corrective to Nick Herron’s Slough House series…also it seems to be about the agent runner being seduced.   One might say penetrated.  But hard to tell so far.

The Two Faces of January      Patricia Highsmith

So often her novels concern two characters (usually men) circling each other, the one trying to murder the other. The would-be victim usually triumphs, often by killing his assassin, but in this particular long and complicated dance of death set in Greece, a young American aids and abets a rather nastier American in covering up a murder because he looks like his father, the intended victim saves his would be murderer from the Police.

Those Who Walk Away            Patricia Highsmith

A study in no revenge.  Set largely in Venice, a man will not kill or expose his father in law, after his very young wife has committed suicide in Majorca.

It’s Only Life                   Ash Carter and Sam Kashner

Mike Nichols in quotes from his 150 closest friends.  Witty, brilliant and I wrote notes all over it.

Talking to Strangers               Malcolm Gladwell

Misunderstandings and how to understand them and what they tell us about how we work.  Or don’t. Another fine book from the finest current essayist.

Grand Union                          Zadie Smith.

What can I say?  I adore her.  Favourites:  Downtown is wonderful and  Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets is wonderfully funny.

Maigret’s Patience                  Georges Simenon

A recurring character is bumped off.

The Madman of Bergerac        Georges Simenon

A very good one.  Maigret jumps on a train and is almost bumped off.  Who is the madman??

 

November

Winter                          Ali Smith.

Some discussion about how good we think this quartet is.   I didn’t finish this one.

Pity The Reader     Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell

On writing with style, from a master, nicely interpreted and linked. Finely chosen and edited.  Excellent advice for writers.

Dark Places                   Gillian Flynn

An early novel about the sole survivor of a massacred family, as she grows up and deals with just what happened that night when her brother may have murdered her entire family.

A Small Town               Thomas Perry

What joy to have a writer friend who sends you his latest thriller every year?   He always has a great premise.   Here a Prison Break devastates a nearby local town, and sets in motion a female cop with a million dollars bounty to destroy the twelve who plotted, murdered the officers, escaped, invaded the local town with murder rape and mayhem.  And he returns to his Jane Whitefield books theme with a powerful female, tracking, hunting and in this case eliminating some really nasty people.

Everything happens       Jo Perry

How fortunate to have a writer friend married to another writer.  I loved both the Perry books.  Stepping away from her excellent Dead Dog series, this is a fine novel where everything happens at the end.  It’s very short and I could have taken a lot more.

Queen Lucia. Part 1.  Make Way for Lucia.  E.F. Benson

Re-reading these wonderful books.  Lucia and Georgie are surely two of the greatest comic inventions in literature.  The book is exquisite, hilarious, and a delight.  A Curry cook appears as a Guru to fool Miss Map and her rival acolytes. Exquisitely bitchy novels about life in home counties rural England.

Camino Island      John Grisham

I’m not a big Grisham fan.  To me he writes like a lawyer.  I abandoned this. I wrote earlier (1995) about him the rather cruel line that he is “The MacDonald’s of writing.”  But see later. I really enjoyed one.

 

October

The Library Book          Susan Orlean

I’m afraid I put it back on the shelves.  I might give it another go, a) because I was on pain killers and b) I think it should be better than it is and I don’t want to misjudge it.   For me it’s always about the writing.  Are they good at writing a sentence?  Compare any page of this to Salman Rushdie’s latest novel and you’ll see the difference.  Salman’s prose sparkles.  It feels effortless, which of course indicates a great deal of effort went into it. I know that’s not fair because Salman is a genius. I think it’s the shape that she’s chosen and I might dip into and see why it doesn’t grab me when I like everything about the story.

Maigret’s Anger   Georges Simenon

Maigret is perplexed by the murder of a nightclub owner, which threatens his reputation.

The Captain and the Glory      Dave Eggers

The rather wonderful Dave Eggers sent me a copy of his latest book.  He dispatched the text to me in the summer and I giggled happily through the entire, though rather short, fable, about an ignorant, vain, hopelessly inadequate, newly appointed Captain of a ship. I can’t imagine who he had in mind.  I found it hilarious, and I sent him a quote, not just because he wonderfully interviewed me about my Sortabiography in San Francisco last year, but because I thought he successfully lampooned the Idiot in Chief where many I think have failed.   They allow their hatred into their writing.  Here he just gently, mildly mocks and it is so much more deadly.  He had me laughing out loud.  Not an easy thing to achieve. I hope it does well. The Trump Presidential Library will be a room filled with books about what a useless, treasonable, shite he is.  A new book drops every day.  Dave’s is different. It’s funny.  I think Trump is funny, though dangerously so.

Quichotte             Salman Rushdie

An exquisite read.  Salman at the top of his game.   His writing is delightful.  His take on Quixote is brilliant.  I shall re-read it soon.

Offshore              Penelope Fitzgerald

The Booker Prize winner from 1979.  A perfect short novel.  Entirely built up with close character observations of all the outsiders who live on the boats at Chelsea Reach.  Delightful, less is so more.  I was happy to read it again, and would again.

Joe Country         Mick Herron

A Slough House novel.  The 8th in this series about the losers at Slow House.   Great characters.  I think I’ve read every word he wrote.

The Beginning of Spring         Penelope Fitzgerald.

A Moscow novel set in 1913.  Interesting but not perfect.

 

July thru September

My Purple Scented Novel        Ian McEwan

Short, little novella.   About revenge.   Of the literary kind.  A tiny book which packs a punch.

Hapgood              Tom Stoppard

A play about Nils Bohr and Quantum Theory.  first produced in 1988. It is mainly about espionage, focusing on a British female spymaster (Hapgood) and her juggling of career and motherhood.

Jean de Florette    Manon Les Sources.      Marcel Pagnon.

Lovely French novels about the search for spring water in the south of France.

(Read in French.)

Written on the Body                Jeanette Winterson

A very fine writer.  I love her work.

City of Light, City of Poison     Holly Tucker

Abandoned.  Rather been down this Louis XIV a lot track recently. See Versailles on TV.

The Cartel            Don Winslow.

Part Two of the epic trilogy.  Totally gripping.

White Teeth          Zadie Smith

I love her.  This was the first.  Happy to catch up.

Ravelstein            Saul Bellow

Ravelstein is Saul Bellow’s final novel. Published in 2000, when Bellow was eighty-five years old, it received widespread critical acclaim.  It tells the tale of a friendship between a university professor and a writer, and the complications that animate their erotic and intellectual attachments in the face of impending death. The novel is a roman à clef written in the form of a memoir. The narrator is in Paris with Abe Ravelstein, a renowned professor, and Nikki, his lover. Ravelstein, who is dying, asks the narrator to write a memoir about him after he dies. After his death, the narrator and his wife go on holiday to the Caribbean. The narrator catches a tropical disease and flies back to the United States to convalesce. Eventually, on recuperation, he decides to write the memoir.

The Smiley Trilogy.

Great re-reading.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.             John Le Carré

The Honourable Schoolboy.            John Le Carré

Smiley’s People.                                John Le Carré

The Unsteady Captain             Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers sent me this book.   “Mr. Idle —Hope the summer’s been good to you and yours. No obligation to read this, but given your interest in politics and humor I thought I’d send this. After trying many thousands of ways to address this horrible time, I wrote a sort-of satire. Maybe it’s some kind of distant cousin to Hello Sailor. Do not bother with it unless you are very bored or somewhat medicated.

In other news, I hope you are well.”

I replied:  “It’s fucking hysterical. I was concerned at the beginning because a writer I admire failed to make a funny Trump book work.  There was too much hatred. I think what you got exactly right and why it works so well is the tone.  The form of the narrative.  It doesn’t seem to comment while delivering hundreds of brilliant back handers.  It’s a kind of naive narrative “Oh and then this happened” as if it were all perfectly normal.  For instance when we find out they haven’t yet left port.  Both the metaphor and the story play perfectly together. You manage to conceal every gag, which means for example, when you deliver the daughter gag, we hadn’t actually seen it coming.  The first essential with comedy. I laughed out loud so frequently I was amazed because I’m not that easy to make laugh out loud.

Hotel World.         Ali Smith

Hotel World is divided into five sections. The first section, “Past” tells the story of Sara Wilby  The second part, “Present Historic”, is about a homeless girl (Else) begging for money outside the Hotel. The “Future Conditional”, the third section of the novel, Lise, a receptionist. The fourth part is “Perfect” with its far from perfect character Penny. The fifth section of the novel titled “Future in the Past,” is entirely Clare’s memories on the life and death of her sister Sara. “Present” is the title of the last part of the novel.

The Constant Gardener           John Le Carré

is a 2001 novel by British author John le Carré. The novel tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing there is something behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money. The plot was based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria. The book was later adapted into a feature film in 2005.

Ripley Underground               Patricia Highsmith

Instantly addictive.  Binge novel reading.  I downloaded the next on Kindle.  I needed it now. She writes about the killing in the same low key uncommitted way she does about everything.   Brilliant.   Only now and again she lets Ripley’s underlying hysteria and madness bubble through, like a barely controlled manic episode.  In this he has a French wife and lives just beyond Orly.  She repeats her themes of killing and impersonating here, with a twist, when Tom disguises himself as a dead painter, whose work they have been forging, with the legend he is in Mexico. An American collector suspect his is a forgery.  Actually they are all forgeries.   The painter makes an assault on Tom.   There is a whole second story about the German fence.

April thru June

By , September 23, 2019 4:15 pm

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.