Comments Off on April thru June

By Eric Idle, 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.

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.