Born Trump                           Emily Jane Fox

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

Maigret Sets a Trap                Georges Simenon

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

Call for the Dead                   John Le Carré

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

A Murder of Quality               John Le Carré

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

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

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

The Looking Glass War           John Le Carré

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

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

The Essex Serpent                  Sarah Perry

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

Seize the Day                          Saul Bellow

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

Is it me, or can you smell gas?

Vengeance is Mine, All Others pay cash      Eka Kurniawan

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

The Moving Finger                 Agatha Christie

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

Maigret’s Failure                   Georges Simenon

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

Tyrant                                   Stephen Greenblatt

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

How the Wheel becomes it.      Anthony Powell

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

Churchill                               Paul Johnson

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

May

Uncommon Type                    Tom Hanks

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

Warlight                                Michael Ondaatje

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

Loser takes all                        Graham Greene

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

Robin                                    David Itzkoff

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

Crime and Punishment                    Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Loved her, hated him.

April

Is the cruellest month bringing the news of the sudden death of a favour writer just when I was joyfully settling in with his latest book.   Philip Kerr passed away at the very young age of 62. I met him at a party and we talked away happily though I was entirely ignorant it was him, one of my favourite writers.  Fortunately for me another favourite writer Howard Jacobson told him what a fan I was of his Bernie Gunter novels.  When I learned of his death I reached out to Howard and he kindly sent me this:

I passed on your email to Jane Thynne, Philip’s widow.  She has just written back – 
‘Thank you for sending it. I know he was extremely chuffed that Eric Idle liked his books. Actually, beyond chuffed.’
So there’s the title for your critical study of his novels – Beyond Chuffed.

I also wrote to Tom Hanks who I’m know was also a big fan of his, and he responded: I was crazy shocked.  I had a dinner with him at his home in Wimbledon a few years ago – and have read every single one of the Bernie Gunther stories. 

It is heart breaking we no longer have him, but at least we have his books.

Greeks Bearing Gifts                        Philip Kerr

My heart went out of the reading.   When death walks unbidden into a book it’s hard to simply continue.   I shall return to this some other time.  Bernie starts work in a morgue, gets a job with an Insurance Company and investigates a fraud in Greece…

Maigret and the Headless Corpse      Georges Simenon

I turned for relief to my old standby favourite the latest translation of the life-saving series of newly translate Maigret’s in paperback Penguin, which I hope never end.

Chicago                        David Mamet

Truly a master of dialogue, this makes his book brilliant.  Totally readable.  The characters are immediately alive.  Set in the twenties in the windy city, around the mob and newspaper men, this is a big, broad wonderful book. You can’t put it down.

Maigret is Afraid                    Georges Simenon

Often Maigret’s short novellas are simple tragedies, frequently in a large family linked together by silence.  Often the family are set are against the local town, either above them socially, or beneath them through poverty, drink and disgrace.  Maigret’s arrival, here to visit an old friend on his way home, finds him greeted as well with fame, and the cautious respect due to the famous Parisian detective.  He watches from the outside while others,  less competent, pursue wrong leads, rival theories, and petty jealousies.  He wanders around the bars, drinking, listening and watching.  Simenon, like Maigret, is a fantastic observer of the ordinary lives of others, their jealousies, their sexual weaknesses, their alcoholism, their drugs.  What makes his stories so particularly satisfying are the characters, especially the females, whom he draws accurately, precisely, and without sentiment.  Their clothes, their laundry, their homes.  That, the countryside and the weather, and the love of Paris in the springtime.  In fact weather is vital in his writing: take two examples from this perfect short novel.  This:

The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn’t mere rain or the wind freezing wind – this was a conspiracy of the elements….There was no point trying to protect himself.  Water wasn’t just pelting down from the sky but was also dripping from the guttering, in fat, cold drops, streaming down the doors of the houses and racing along the gutters with the gurgling of a torrent; you had water all over your face and neck, in your shoes and even in the pockets of your clothes…

And then this:

            By around 5 p.m., the sky had become apocalyptically dark and it had been necessary for all the town’s streetlamps to be lit.  There had been two brief, dramatic rolls of thunder, and finally the heavens had opened, sending down not rain but hail.  All the people in the street vanished, as if blown away by the wind, and white hailstones bounced off the cobbles like ping pong balls.

            Maigret, who at that moment had been in the Café de la Poste, had jumped to his feet like everyone else, and they all stood at the window watching the street the way people watch a fireworks display.

This is masterful work.

The Only Story                       Julian Barnes

I have to confess that while the new Julian Barnes is beautifully written, and while I picked up a signed edition at Vromans, I became strangely uninterested in the affair of the nineteen year old teenager for the tennis club siren in the home counties.  I couldn’t quite decide why I cared so little.  The fifties are elegantly described.  The dull lives of the parents are precisely placed.  We understand the local middle class disapproval, and the weird withdrawal of her older husband.   I think in the end it’s in the bedroom the story falters.  This is a sexual novel, and while it may be “true” to say, as the narrator does, I don’t remember how it started, the love story is all and in the end it didn’t come alive for me.  It was too polite.  I suppose in the end she doesn’t come to life.  I’m going to read on because he is Julian Barnes, and I have also been known to be wrong!

The Nothing                  Hanif Kureishi

I like this short novella.  He is a terrific writer as we know.  Zadie Smith describes his importance to her in her wonderful book of essays (q.v.)  Here an old filmmaker, stuck in a wheelchair, plots an elaborate revenge on his betraying love.  It’s a Hitchcock plot, and probably deliberately, because there are film references throughout.   His skill keeps both the pacing and the twists of the plot coming at you.  Short, sharp, sweet.

The Captain and the Enemy.   Graham Greene

I always get to the same point in this book.  About half way through.  I have about three first editions, I think for the reason I keep thinking I haven’t read it.   I either have to stop buying first editions or start half way through…   This is the story of a funny/wicked Uncle who pulls a neglected boy out of a dull boarding school, and then like his father, also disappears.

March

Feel Free                                      Zadie Smith

I came across this new book of Essays by this terrific novelist and fell in love.  Not with just the book, with the author.   It’s alright, it happens at my age, and she is a Cambridge alum and lived in Willesden, and now lives in New York, writing fabulous essays.   I bought all her books again to read in the summer.  I loved this one,.

Zero K                                            Don DeLillo

I had a strong feeling I had read this before, but if I did I failed to note it.  Perhaps in France.  I also had the strong feeling I abandoned it at the same point.  I only like some of his work.

I’ll be gone in the Dark                    Michelle McNamara

Of course I bought this because of Patten.  I was at her memorial and remember being impressed by the number of police who had turned up.  The book is truly well written and fascinating, but I have a weakness.  I confess to a horror of horror.  I decided when I had to shut the curtains, and couldn’t sleep that while I loved the book it was simply too terrifying for me to read.  I cannot watch horror movies:  the last I saw was Psycho!, so I’m sorry, I’m a supporter, a sympathiser, but a dweeb.   What was brilliant is the recent arrest of the serial killer and she helped to keep the case alive, and even describes what will happen to him one day with the knock on the door and the arrest.  How wonderful that it did. A bitter sweet triumph for Patten, who shepherded the publication of his late wife’s work.

As Time Goes By                             Derek Taylor

Talking to Ringo the other day, now Sir Ringo hooray, he told me once again the story of how Derek Taylor entered the lives of the Beatles, kicking in the door of their dressing room backstage at a concert.  So impressed with such hutzpah where the Fabs that Derek, a Manchester reporter, immediately got the job of Beatles Press Officer.  I was privileged to have him as a friend for many years, and even as an Executive on The Rutles, where Michael Palin played him (Eric Manchester) interviewed by George.  We exchanged lengthy and giggly correspondence until his untimely death.  His books are being re-released and Apple sent me this one, which I loved before and love now.   More are promised.

When The Light Goes                      Larry McMurtry

He is some kind of wonderful.   Always readable, always entertaining. Always honest.

The Birth of Britain.                Winston S. Churchill

I bought all four volumes of this classic of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in a nice first edition set at The Pasadena Book Fair.   I might quibble and say that in Volume One they speak mainly Anglo-Saxon and French, but his prose is so enjoyable that I settled in for an enjoyable trip through my peeps by the finest exponent of the English language.

The Adventures of Augie March        Saul Bellow

I finished this fabulous novel.   Perhaps one of the greatest novels I have ever read.  Simply the best.

Of course I prepare to binge…and have bought everything else.   Read this.

The Rub of Time                                           Martin Amis

Various essays.    Wonderful on Nabokov, and Hitchens and Travolta.  Made me buy and read the Saul Bellow at once.

The Adventures of Augie March                 Saul Bellow

An almost perfect novel.   I don’t know how he does this.  I can understand how Dickens writes, how Jane Austen achieves her effects, but this pours out like poetry.  Quite extraordinary.   I see now how Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens became such fans of his work.  I’m about halfway through, and dreading it coming to a close.   I think one of the finest books I have ever read.

The Angel Esmeralda                                   Don Delillo

Nine stories.   Exquisite.

Playback                                                        Raymond Chandler

Almost perfect.  A continuous pursuit of the mysterious lady who arrives on the train in LA.

The Monk of Mokha                                    Dave Eggers

A tale of coffee in the Yemen.

Maigret Goes to School                                 Georges Simenon

A school teacher from La Rochelle seeks help in a murder.

Great Contemporaries                                  Winston Churchill

Published in 1938 Churchill is the best prose writer of the twentieth century.  Fascinating people here from Hitler to H.G.Wells.

Righteous                                                       Joe Ide

An IQ Novel.   Having been bowled over by his debut I had to immediately send off for this his second novel.   Obviously he spent ten years on the first, and this can’t quite follow it, but he is the real thing.

Maigret’s Mistake                                         Georges Simenon

A charismatic brain surgeon and the death of a mysterious young woman.

January

IQ                                                                               Joe Ide

A brilliant new writer.   Please enjoy this almost perfect First Novel.  I found it at Vromans in Pasadena.  A local LA thriller with a brilliant protagonist and perfect foil.  Such mature writing and such accomplished story telling is very rare.  It’s delightful.

A Man’s Head                                                           Georges Simenon

Another brilliant read for the plane.

The Old Man                                                             Thomas Perry

Thank heaven I threw this into my packing at the last minute.   I read it last year but it had me gripped again.  That is the great advantage of age.  You can immediately re-read books!  It’s really fine and wonderful.  He writes so well and is so consistent.  Thrilling.

Munich                                                                       Robert Harris

This is the second time I bought this book and took it away with me and the second time I abandoned it after a few chapters.  Are there two Robert Harris’s?  Some of his books I just adore and others I just cannot get into.   As Al Read said “Is it me, or can you smell gas?”    Must be me.

Striking Back                                                            Aaron J. Klein

I brought two books away with me about Munich, this one about the horrendous 1972 Olympic Massacre “and Israel’s Deadly Response.”   I love books about the Mossad.  This foul attack led to reprisals and I should bloody hope so.   What stunned me was that the Germans did not immediately halt the Olympic Games when the hostages were taken.   I could not believe that.  Also they made a terrible mess of the security arrangements for the athletes even after concerns were broached, and the rescue attempt, well the keystone cops could have done better.  Sadly the Israelis totally misunderstood just how incompetent the Bavarian authorities were and how in their system West Germany was not allowed to intrude.   So a deadly farce was played out on television with deadly results and the resulting Bavarian incompetence completely hushed up.  The resulting revenge was slow but deadly.

Power House                                                              Aaron J. Klein

The story of CAA, the little Californian Talent Agent that could.  I enjoyed ten per cent of it.   Kidding.   It’s a fascinating story, if not always fascinating, of how five agents broke away from William Morris to create their own Agency, poaching clients and luring others, mainly by working their butts off.  Of course Success leads to its own problems.   All Power corrupts is not just a tendency.   It is a rule.  Here we see what happens when Ovitz becomes the biggest and most powerful man in Hollywood.  I loved reading about the adorable and wonderful and hilarious Bill Haber, who would go on to such great things as producing Spamalot!  Also Stan Meyer is a wonderful chap.

The Man Who Invented Christmas                        Les Standiford

The story of Dickens writing, editing and creating (in effect Self Publishing) A Christmas Carol, his short but brilliant novella, which sold out immediately before Christmas 1843, saving his bacon and his turkey.  The recent film itself was fairly clumsy but then worked magnificently, almost like the book of a musical, because it is so wonderfully sentimental and moral and based on a genius book.  And it had Christopher Plummer as Scrooge.

The Old Man Dies                                                     Georges Simenon

A non Maigret about the death of a Parisian restaurant owner and the three sons.  The usual chaos and greed and infighting in the family that death seems to foster.   Beautifully written.  But no crime…

Fire and Fury                                                            Michael Wollf

Inside the Trump White House.  Such chaos, such court rivalries, such incompetence, laziness, arrogance and greed has not been seen since the Borgias.  A Kakocracy, a Cleptocracy, a Nepocracy… Michael Wollf sat on a chair in the West Wing and recorded it all.  You couldn’t have made it up.  Seems that Bannon made his move based on this book coming out. His own run for power.  A miscalculated play.  One thing this bald money laundering mobster knows is how to fight back.  “Where is my Roy Cohn?” he shouted recently like a Shakespearian villain.  (Enter from Hell a Ghost in chains.)

Great stories of infighting between the Javanka’s as he calls them, Bannon and Rince Previus.  But this is truly a Shite House, where they are all live in fear of the next Tweet, the next firing, even lining up to escape.  Where will it all end?   Will America ever become Great again?   Fingers crossed.  Read on.

The Man Who Owns The News                              Michael Wollf.

I so enjoyed the style of Michael Wollf I went back and downloaded a previous book on Rupert Murdoch.  Again he is fair.  No one could say this was a hatchet job, however the growth of the Ailes/Murdoch/ Fox News World is intensely depressing.  His newspaper world and attempts to own the Wall Street Journal, do paint him as a man vitally involved and in love with newspapers.  Also the growth of his love for power.  Which as we know corrupts and which led in his case to a monstrous control over politics.   He is not altogether dislikeable, but his dynasty is held together by his will alone.  It will crumble.

It’s Even Worse Than You Think                          David Cay Johnston

What the Trump Administration is doing to America.  Took the download.  Not as focused or as timely as Wolff’s book but in many ways interesting, slash, depressing.  Hashtag Follow The Money.  If this money lending mobster gets away with this America will be over.