Found a first UK edition in London. An early Leonard. And highly readable as usual.

The first half I thought was one of the best books I have ever read. Need to re-read it actually. It didn’t quite maintain the vigour and strength of its opening, but still brilliant. A prolonged consideration of the nature of consciousness from a physical, philosophical and scientific perspective. The Oxford dilemma: Stuck on a train in Didcot. Witty, thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent. Superb stuff.

Aspects of Provence. I re-read it, mainly because I enjoy the story of Marius saving Rome, by refusing to battle the vast Teutonic barbarian horde as it heads south to threaten Rome, before he accustoms his army to seeing them as just an enemy and destroys them completely in Pourrieres… A military genius even Caesar thought was the cat’s pyjamas.

My addiction grows. I’m trying to ration myself to one Philip Kerr book a month but I don’t know whether I can. Found a nice autographed copy at Vromans, the excellent bookstore in Pasadena. Between Berlin and Smolensk, Bernie is the same back chatting non Nazi cop. Here he is invited by Joey the Crip to exhume and examine the bodies of the thousands of Polish officers killed by the Red Army, on Stalin’s orders at Katyn. The irony of the Nazis investigating a Communist War Crime is not lost on him or his protagonist. Great stuff.

The trouble with discovering a new author whom you adore, is if you binge on their writing you eventually come across something that you don’t like. This for me was it. The send up of the Esalen, New Age, touchy feely folk is funny for a while, but then reading about them is just as irritating as meeting them. So I chucked it I’m afraid.

He is an ace thriller writer. This one moves between Berlin in 1934 and ends up in Havana in 1954 before the crime is revealed. And you never see it coming. Bernie Gunther is the perfect hero, flawed, smoking, drinking, womanising, hilarious. I defy you not to have a good time with him.

Nice change at the Shangri-La Hotel in Paris to find this thirties yarn by James Hilton instead of some religious bullshit book. It’s very much a Ripping Yan, with the stiff upper lip narrative by Conrad the laconic hero of this improbable adventure, but he keeps the excitement coming in the Buchan style. Characters are sketches, caricatures, but hey, it’s an innocent enough read.

A James Bond novel. I never thought Fleming was any good. I only read him recently and was surprised to find him almost as bad as I suspected, but I do rate William Boyd, so it’s a pity to find him slogging through a Bond novel. It seems his heart isn’t in it. Anyway I left it behind in Paris, for somebody else....

A beautiful, very French, novella about marriage and a pair of ear rings. Written in a slightly antique style as befits the subject, by the exotic Louise, a novelist, poet, journalist and “grand horizontale” and translated by her quondam lover Duff Cooper, the quondam British Ambassador to France. Forgive the repetition, it’s quondam thing after another.