A classic.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The switch from picturesque into sinister is done so effortlessly you realise you are in the hands of the very talented Ms. Highsmith.<\/p>\n
I found this also to be genius.\u00a0 A beautiful book, of an unspoken lifelong romance.\u00a0 She\u2019s only 28 for heaven sake, but what a gift.\u00a0\u00a0 Just delightful.\u00a0 Romantic and yet very modern.<\/p>\n
A quite brilliant opening to a promised quartet of novels, my how this lady can write.\u00a0 Buy more, soon.<\/p>\n
A strange, uptight wealthy family close ranks when the scion is suddenly murdered.<\/p>\n
The second in a quite brilliant quartet of books by this masterful novelist, author and dramatist.<\/p>\n
As gripping and as good as his Under Fire<\/em> which exposed the chaos in the Trump Shite House.\u00a0 This shows the crumbling of the man\u2019s mind.\u00a0 Everyone who meets him and works for him thinks he\u2019s a moron.\u00a0 A really must-read look inside the President\u2019s mind.\u00a0 Once again Bannon contributes largely to the understanding of what is going on.,<\/p>\n Finely written from a new writer.\u00a0\u00a0 The Native American experience in Oakland and beyond.\u00a0\u00a0 Good characters.\u00a0\u00a0 Short stories melded into a novel.<\/p>\n A corrupt Judge in Florida aids an Indian Gambling Casino Crime Mob.\u00a0 Efficient.\u00a0 Readable.<\/p>\n Strangely interesting people live opposite the scene of a crime.\u00a0 Wealthy, corrupt and maybe guilty of something.<\/p>\n 1949 noir detective thriller reprinted recently.\u00a0 A good example of the genre and quite readable if not the best.<\/p>\n I tried twice to read this novel and though both times I got more than two thirds through I never finished it, so I\u2019d have to say it\u2019s two thirds good.<\/p>\n A wonderful thriller.\u00a0 Beautifully constructed and written, like a cinema noir.\u00a0 Impossible to put down.<\/p>\n Impeccable.\u00a0\u00a0 For once Maigret finds out what it is like to be investigated.\u00a0\u00a0 I love the way he occasionally plays with form and the expectations of his readers.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Book Six in this very long sequence of novels A Dance to The Music of Time<\/em>, and this time I really sat this one out\u2026<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n One of his best.\u00a0 Again another one where he plays with form and expectation.\u00a0 In this one Maigret begins to investigate before there is any crime.<\/p>\n One of Monty\u2019s most inglorious moments and a lesson in the arrogance of power.\u00a0\u00a0 Strange how the English seem to treasure their defeats the most.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This amazingly detailed retelling of the disastrous plan to drop paratroopers to destroy the bridges (as portrayed in the movie A Bridge Too Far<\/em>) is a lesson in the jealousy of commanders.\u00a0\u00a0 Monty wanted to be the first to attack Germany.\u00a0 He manipulated Eisenhower and the Americans, keeping them in the dark.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Everything you ever needed to know about the deranged liar in the White House: he\u2019s a man who cheats all the time at golf.\u00a0\u00a0 All the time. Hilarious.\u00a0\u00a0 Revealing.\u00a0 Nicely written by someone who cares deeply about the Sport and who has played with him.\u00a0 The best description of how to understand the weird person who has taken over the country.\u00a0\u00a0 Hilarious and then when you think of it, very scary.\u00a0 But a must read. Please somebody call a Doctor, he shouldn\u2019t be in charge of anything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The most fun I have is browsing book shops.\u00a0 Sometimes I pick well and sometimes not. This particular weekend I came back from Vromans with four books:<\/em><\/p>\n ..which I knew within two pages I wouldn\u2019t complete.\u00a0 I\u2019m not mad on sci fi but the opening scene seemed to be one I\u2019ve seen in at least two movies:\u00a0 plugging the humanoid android in.\u00a0 I like him very much as a writer and the only ones of his books I don\u2019t like are always hugely popular so this should be huge for him.<\/p>\n \u2026which I knew nothing about.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even know it wasn\u2019t a novel, but I instantly adored it.\u00a0 A wonderful book of memoirs and thoughts and essays and above all honesty.\u00a0 Great writing.\u00a0 Very readable and enjoyable.\u00a0 Taking to task political correction, and despite his unfortunate love for the Trump monster which goes back to his character\u2019s obsession with him in the novel American Psycho<\/em> he has interesting observations on whether the violence in that book is real or imagined.\u00a0\u00a0 So of course I had to read..<\/p>\n I found this novel very original and startling.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Of course the violence is sickening, but I much preferred this to Crime and Punishment.<\/em>\u00a0 And it makes sense they all adore Trump.\u00a0 This is the Reagan eighties of Wall Street and champagne, cocaine and money-making.\u00a0\u00a0 In a sense you can read it as a satire, though I think he is deadly serious.\u00a0 Some things are very funny, like no one quite knowing anyone\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Published in 1991 it seems to be very relevant again.<\/p>\n One of the finest of his novellas.\u00a0\u00a0 Impeccable.<\/p>\n I had heard of her but never read her.\u00a0 I found this 1958 original edition in my shelves, along with a contemporary Quantas menu (!) and found it to be utterly delightful.\u00a0 It could be called Five go-a-feral in France but actually it is far more serious, though set in a child\u2019s world, when a family go on holiday in Les Oillets on the Marne.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Beautifully narrated by the second oldest girl (13) it is exquisitely written and pretty much covers everything.\u00a0 Delicious as the greengages.\u00a0\u00a0 And still in print.<\/p>\n A young new Zambian writer spans the history between Livingstone\u2019s falls and modern day Zambia and pretty much everything in between:\u00a0 Independence, Kaunda, Communism, Revolution.\u00a0\u00a0 Very finely written and excellent story-telling, she teaches at Berkeley.<\/p>\n A brilliant, beautiful book that I devoured at one sitting. About the difficulties of being a step mother.\u00a0 Each single character plays a part in the totally unexpected outcome.\u00a0\u00a0 Marvellously crafted and magnificently written.<\/p>\n Unexpectedly well written and delightfully informative I would never have expected to so have enjoyed this book and learned so much from it.\u00a0 It was a gift I loved.<\/p>\n To come across a masterpiece is rare enough, but one written by an old friend is truly a delight.\u00a0 He wrote this in 1990 and I have remained quite ignorant of it until now.\u00a0 As I wrote to him: \u201cI find your prose so readable.\u00a0 \u00a0Strong, virile, sensitive, descriptive, subjective, passive-historical and at times so fucking funny.\u201d\u00a0 It is a fabulous novel. \u00a0Marvellously it is a Quartet and I have the other three still to savour.<\/p>\n It made me so sad to receive this his last book in the mail.\u00a0 But it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Another great read which I couldn\u2019t put down.\u00a0\u00a0 In 1970 M. F. K. Fisher met Julia Child and James Beard in Provence, almost by chance.\u00a0\u00a0 This lovely book, so well written by her nephew, tells the tale of how these great American tastemakers, got on, or didn\u2019t, how they cooked for one another, what they thought of it, and how their experiences in France revolutionised American taste.\u00a0 Quite by chance, and unnoticed in the book, a young Englishman arrived in Provence only a year later\u2026<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Impossible not to want to re-read.\u00a0 This was my second go.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Also just how big an influence Elvis was.<\/p>\n Re-reading this novel several things became clear:\u00a0 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<\/em>\u00a0 and then how similar JLC and Graham Greene\u2019s fathers were.\u00a0 Both men, semi-criminal dubious fantasists, who would pluck them out of school and even steal them from school\u00a0 (Single and Single<\/em>)\u00a0 and then I remembered Dickens shameless cozener of a dad and wondered if this wasn\u2019t the very making of a novelist.\u00a0 In the former two, spying adds another level of deceit to the original sense of betrayal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" June The Talented Mr. Ripley \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Patricia Highsmith A classic.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The switch from picturesque into sinister is done so effortlessly you realise you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}There There\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tommy Orange<\/h2>\n
The Whistler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Grisham<\/h2>\n
Maigret and the Ghost\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
May. <\/u><\/h1>\n
The Moving Target\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ross MacDonald<\/h2>\n
A Separate Peace\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Knowles<\/h2>\n
The Woman in the Window\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A. J. Finn<\/h2>\n
Maigret Defends Himself\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
Maigret\u2019s Patience\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
The Kindly Ones \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anthony Powell<\/h2>\n
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs\u00a0\u00a0 Steve Brusatte<\/h2>\n
Maigret\u2019s Doubts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
The Battle of Arnhem\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anthony Beevor<\/h2>\n
Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.\u00a0\u00a0 Rick Reilly<\/h2>\n
Machines Like Me\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ian McEwan<\/h2>\n
White \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Brett Easton Ellis<\/h2>\n
American Psycho\u00a0 Brett Easton Ellis<\/h2>\n
Maigret\u2019s Patience\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
April<\/u><\/h1>\n
The Greengage Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rumer Godden<\/h2>\n
The Old Drift\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Namwali Serpell<\/h2>\n
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits\u00a0 Ayelet Waldman<\/h2>\n
Doing Justice\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preet Bharara<\/h2>\n
Richard\u2019s Feet\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Carey Harrison<\/h2>\n
Metropolis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Philip Kerr<\/h2>\n
Provence 1970\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Luke Barr<\/h2>\n
A Time of Gifts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Patrick Leigh Fermor<\/h2>\n
Elvis in Vegas\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Zoglin<\/h2>\n
The Tailor of Panama. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Le Carr\u00e9<\/h2>\n