A marvellous book. I had actually already read it when I met the author at a Book Fair in LA but he presented me with a copy and autographed it for me so it is entirely appropriate that the book is about books and their owners and collecting and first editions. It is very eloquently written.

‘ Two screenplays for TV. I was reading about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and this is the same sort of story – the incredible inhumanity of boys in a group. Something I know a little about, and how it soon becomes bullying and then out-right fascism. William Boyd discusses this in a nice long intro about his own schooling at a public school in Scotland. He is about seven years behind me and the difference seems to be that we were still allowed to flog junior boys. (Some privilege eh?) Still the same senseless cruelty. Not dissimilar from the extreme example in the Hitler Bunker, which I am also reading about. Here the bullied boy comes back for revenge, and the upper class twit is saved by the middle class boy who has partially betrayed him. It is the full working out of the British class system. One wonders how this evolved, out of society or out of the desire to create a certain kind of society. Perhaps both. A school mirrors both society and the sort of society that educators, like Dr Arnold at Rugby, wished to create. Boyd’s best thought is that growing up in public school allows no growth of the private person, and there is an inability to get in touch with this private self. That and responding to the opposite sex…

The new collection of vaguely linked short stories is a return to form for him, and an example of what he does best, conveying character through dialogue. These short stories are almost play-like in their lack of descriptive prose, but his characters talk, bicker and despair and come to life immediately. Happy to see he’s back.

The story of success. Which I loved. And recommend. He makes a very good point about the 10,000 hours theory, and there seems to be plenty of evidence for its truth. His thesis in a nutshell, is that nobody got good by accident, nobody got good without some help from fate; Bill Gates had access to a computer paid for by wealthy neighbours, the Beatles prospered by learning their trade in Hamburg. He says the story of one man making it from impossible odds is simply untrue. He also makes the case that there are good times in which to be born and there are bad. You are better off being born on January 1st if you are to be a pro ice hockey player, than any other time, and if you are born after August forget it, you have no chance, because your peers have already six months physical development ahead of you. (Being born just after World War Two seems to be a good time too. At least to be British. We didn’t have to avoid the army or Vietnam.) He writes well and intelligently about all sorts of seemingly unrelated things like the accident patterns on Korean Air, and he says quite simply that the things we try and deny for political correctness say – like where we come from – are absolutely what define us and very much condition our response to various triggers, for example fighting, if we are from a particular line of Scottish descent, or revenge, say, if from Sicily. This early societal pre-patterning, he argues, persists long afterwards. So yay to him for opening that door once more. And a big thank you from comedians everywhere. Turns out that stereotyping is often accurate… Gladwell’s genius is he goes on to ask why it should be so, and evidences good examples of how things come to be. I loved his simple explanation of why Asians are good at Math – their numbering system makes it simple, whereas our convoluted, partially language-based counting systems, lead the brain into endless confusion. If you can grasp early that math can be a friend then it does not become a self-fulfilling torment. At eight I was beaten on the back of the legs with a wooden ruler by a sadistic Irishwoman for being unable to understand some problem, so now I freeze up whenever faced with even the simplest math. This is a most unusual and interesting book which I strongly recommend.

Inside the Doomsday Machine. Michael Lewis leads one gently through the crash, and the evil bastards, and the ignorant gits, who profited from and sold the poor into worthless loans, which would lead, almost inevitably, to the collapse of Wall Street. He writes of the brave few who saw what was to them inevitable and bet against it. What a system! Would they could have denounced it and had people arrested, but you mustn’t try and tame the Bear. It is sacrosanct to America that Wall Street must remain out of control. Since Reagan took the restraints off, paid for by the restrained, there have been at least three ugly meltdowns, Savings and Loans, Enron, and the Collapse of the Bond market. Finely told and I finally understood what the Bond market thing was. As I never tire of telling Americans , the American Revolution was not a revolution but a rebellion and they had better watch out for a real revolution if they continue to pick the pockets of the poor. In no other country in the world is health care considered an attack on liberty.

Essays and Reviews 1971 – 2000 I have been enjoying my resurgent interest in Amis since last summer’s eye-opening fabulous read of Koba the Geek, his demolition of the man monster Stalin. Here I see I have again bookmarked an essay on Philip Roth, so I’ll pick up from there; seems like there’ll be quite a delay before I start the new package of books I sent in from Mill Valley.

Here’s one I have no memory of, except I remember the hand free watch face which is a striking image of frozen timelessness. I see I am about two thirds through, somewhere through Apparition and I’ll give it another go and see.

Narratives about a conservationist and three of his natural enemies. So says the sub text. I’m not sure what the three natural enemies are apart from time, and the falling off of memory. I like McPhee but he is on occasion prolix. Oh that’s right, they are stumbling around the High Sierras, and I was geek enough to track their trail on an I Pad Map App. Conversations as they go, about primal land, and rights to open it for the people, and preserving it and so on.

This looks to be something I picked up in Washington probably attracted by his essay on Philip Roth. They look nice, and I was clearly dipping as there is no bookmark but a jacket flap turned back around an essay on Nabokov. I think I’ll leave it out for double dipping.

Selected stories. Short, dark, penetrating. He gets to character very quickly, through details and observation of small but revealing characteristics. I like them very much and shall continue dipping.

Usually when I leave for a long trip there are lots of unfinished orphans, odds and sods, incomplete things I have picked up, partially discarded, set aside for better times with the intention of finishing, and sometimes with the intention of abandoning, in order that they may quietly die while I’m away. My habit of reading two or three books at a time can also lead to a trail of books settling into the sand, often through no fault of their authors. Here is a partial list of the ‘found abandoned’, some of which I may pick up and continue with, in my own weird way.

(not so good)

This pulled me out of my reading ennui with the fabulous tale of Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’s first cruise to Tahiti. A wonderful story, which continues into Banks’ relationship with Herschel and his sister, a pair of most devoted cosmologists, who discover a new planet, which might have been called George (after their patron George 111rd) but which in fact became Uranus. Later we encounter Humphrey Davy and his amazing experiments with laughing gas. He had parties where they all went out of their minds. Very Sixties. But at least he perfected the Miners lamp, a lamp with a live flame that would not cause explosions from coal gas.

I read this because I did a staged reading for charity with the Hankses in the Spring, with the insanely brilliant Marty Short, the extraordinary Kenneth Branagh and the hilarious Tracey Ulman, not to mention Reba MacIntyre singing country songs and so on…oh it was a great evening of delightful Shakespearean insanity, all in a good cause, for the LA kids Shakespeare thing. That being said it’s not so much a play as a Panto, being the response to a direct request to Shakespeare for a Christmas entertainment from the Queen. (Elizabeth 1) She wanted to see more of Falstaff.

I enjoyed this tale of a man who buys a gold mine. The title is the definition of a gold mine, often (apparently wrongly) attributed to Mark Twain, It’s actually a story of two pairs of brothers. The hero who has great affection for his brother, although he betrays him with women, buys an old, and possibly ex, gold mine for fun and gets some local friends to help him. They are approached to sell by two rather less real Asian brothers in the mining business, who eventually attack them, and blow them up and burn down their house and do everything in their power to take the mine. In many ways it is of course a movie and like a movie it must and does have a satisfactory resolution. My problem was how to write something useful for Dan, knowing how publishers work. I came up with two quotes: “ Like Jane Austen, without the violence “ which Dan liked, and a slightly longer one… “Smart, sexy, funny and a brilliant story teller. And that’s just me. Wait till you read Dan…”

A rather enjoyable thriller novel which I also downloaded, and I am reading a PDF download of his latest novel as he has kindly asked me for a quote, which is a daunting task for a comic.

A long essay and a fabulous expose of the exaggerated charity of the somewhat smug writer Greg Mortensen’s Munchausen-like claims in Afghanistan. Very good.

I vaguely wondered if this play might make a musical, but it seems to have lost its charm. I used to love the old movie with Rex Harrison.

Tales from the joke face. Stand up memoirs of a British comedian very well told.

Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time.

How the French Play The Game of Life Which I read on my I Fad. Her book which basically suggests that French men are different, got a huge lift from coming out the instant DSK was arrested in NY under suspicion of raping a hotel chambermaid. Since he features in her book as a serial abuser it was somewhat unfortunate for him and very fortunate for her, for essentially this is a very short argument run very long.

Didn’t grab me at all. This netsuke book I guess prepared me a little for Tokyo. I don’t say I won’t finish it sometime in France. Some books I read on the iPad, including the one about the French, which was okay but spread a bit thin.

Collected stories by Evgenia’s mother, though I prefer her own stories. See Evgenia Citkowitz Ether, a magnificent must read debut story collection published last May. Her mum Caroline Blackwood was for a while married to the recently deceased painter Lucian Freud and I did enjoy her Great Granny Webster novella.