In engaging with crime and thrillers, I have for the first time been meeting some classics of this world. Before this year, my run-ins had off the top of my head only been with Holmes and Bond. Dashing through some classics, with probable future engagements with the likes of Smiley, Marple and Morse, I've had my first encounter with Poirot and now Georges Simenon's Maigret, in Maigret and the Idle Burglar.
Maigret is actually not a character I'd heard of before, but as the star of 75 novels, clearly he's a staple of the genre. Maybe because he's French my ignorance of European writing is being exposed, which is quite a lot of ignorance when I add up all the things that I know little or nothing about despite spending half my life with my nose in a book – really there just are so many books and so little time.
Anyway, my first experience was largely a positive one. What I liked about it was actually that it didn't feel like a self-contained story, but part of a larger world. It was a very simple premise (man gets murdered), but it felt like more than just a whodunnit, as it explored aspects of people's characters, particularly Maigret's. This made it seem a bit more real, and the exploration of how things were investigated by the police was also interesting, with it not simply being a case of the hero going against the grain, or being, well, all heroic. He also felt refreshingly normal, rather than having six divorces, Asperger's syndrome and a crack habit, like some detectives seem to be portrayed as, lest they be deemed dull. Short and to the point, I can see how Simenon made a career out of it.
Book number: 71
Title: Maigret and the Idle Burglar
Authors: Georges Simenon
Category: Crime
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Beetles about
Somehow (I say somehow, though in reality it was quite easy to do), in my quest for pre-20th century literature, I'd overlooked what appears to have been a much bigger category than I'd first imagined. Having previously only really thought about the classics (and there are any number of these which I've never strayed anywhere near, and then expanded my horizons when I remembered that what I mostly like in this category is more adventuresome stuff, I was pleasantly surprised when the library served me up classic Victorian horror.
Handidly packaged with distinctive yellow covers, a couple of years back Penguin published a series of ten such titles. Ever willing to dabble, I plumped for The Beetle by Richard Marsh. Published in the same year as Dracula, it was apparently even more popular with contemporaries than today's rather better known title. It certainly didn't disappoint with the supernatural element, throwing you straight in at the deep end as early as the second chapter. I don't think I'm giving much away to say that the insect of the title is a scarab and that the antagonist is of Egyptian origin. I really liked the use of the beetle throughout and enjoyed the ending.
The four perspectives in the narrative were interesting, telling events from different points of view. However, with the overlap between some of them, it didn't drive the book along at a particularly fast pace, as it was recapping previous events through the course of several chapters. Whilst this was quite interesting, it was also not really necessary and possibly inhibited the story in this sense. However, I think that the different narrators worked well to showcase how the beetle had managed to infiltrate the lives of numerous persons. An enjoyable thriller, with a strong sense of the otherworldly throughout, I'd happily give another in the series a spin.
Book number: 70
Title: The Beetle
Author: Richard Marsh
Category: Pre-20th century literature
Handidly packaged with distinctive yellow covers, a couple of years back Penguin published a series of ten such titles. Ever willing to dabble, I plumped for The Beetle by Richard Marsh. Published in the same year as Dracula, it was apparently even more popular with contemporaries than today's rather better known title. It certainly didn't disappoint with the supernatural element, throwing you straight in at the deep end as early as the second chapter. I don't think I'm giving much away to say that the insect of the title is a scarab and that the antagonist is of Egyptian origin. I really liked the use of the beetle throughout and enjoyed the ending.
The four perspectives in the narrative were interesting, telling events from different points of view. However, with the overlap between some of them, it didn't drive the book along at a particularly fast pace, as it was recapping previous events through the course of several chapters. Whilst this was quite interesting, it was also not really necessary and possibly inhibited the story in this sense. However, I think that the different narrators worked well to showcase how the beetle had managed to infiltrate the lives of numerous persons. An enjoyable thriller, with a strong sense of the otherworldly throughout, I'd happily give another in the series a spin.
Book number: 70
Title: The Beetle
Author: Richard Marsh
Category: Pre-20th century literature
Monday, 5 September 2011
You don't know what love is
An unforeseen set of circumstances, roughly along the lines of a lot of people, myself included, being unable to make it, meant that my book club meeting this month was postponed by a week. This was fortunate, as it gave me chance to finish reading the book, Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. That said, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it anyway, so was under no great pressure to do so, nor to force myself to pick it up and get on with.
Which was one of things about it – it wasn't something I had to force myself to pick up and read, but neither was it something I was desperate to get back to. Indeed, I'm struggling to find anything to say about it really – like last night's footprints covered by this morning's snow, it's hard to tell that it was ever really there. It just didn't have an impact on me or leave much of a trace, which I suppose is damning with faint praise.
It was well written, wich a nice flowing style, but it generally took me a while to get into each time I picked it up, possibly due to a lack of real narrative drive. This isn't necessarily a problem, I'm usualyy quite happy for rambling anecdotes and observations, I don't need hardcore action and plot twists every page, but thinking about it, here it was perhaps made the book feel so strangely lightweight. Yet, it wasn't difficult or a chore to read once I did get into it and I did read decent chunks at a time. Similarly, I have largely no feelings for the characters – they kind of left me cold and I wasn't interested in them. I thought Juvenal was quite a nice chap, Florentino was an idiot and Fermina was utterly nondescript. Indeed, so little impression did they have on me, I found it hard to remember at times who was who. And that's about it. It wasn't a bad book by any means, but neither did I really think it was much good.
I'm struggling to find anything much to say here now, never mind for an hour-long discussion. I had pretty high hopes and had heard pretty good things, I guess I was expecting something like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is superb. I didn't get that. Love is wonderful and painful and confusing and right and wrong and deep and mysterious and passionate and platonic and all kinds of other things, at least so I thought. But if this is love in all it's forms – a bit flat, oddly devoid of passion, lacking in feeling – I'll pass, thanks.
Book number: 69
Title: Love in the Time of Cholera
Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Category: Book club/recommendations
Which was one of things about it – it wasn't something I had to force myself to pick up and read, but neither was it something I was desperate to get back to. Indeed, I'm struggling to find anything to say about it really – like last night's footprints covered by this morning's snow, it's hard to tell that it was ever really there. It just didn't have an impact on me or leave much of a trace, which I suppose is damning with faint praise.
It was well written, wich a nice flowing style, but it generally took me a while to get into each time I picked it up, possibly due to a lack of real narrative drive. This isn't necessarily a problem, I'm usualyy quite happy for rambling anecdotes and observations, I don't need hardcore action and plot twists every page, but thinking about it, here it was perhaps made the book feel so strangely lightweight. Yet, it wasn't difficult or a chore to read once I did get into it and I did read decent chunks at a time. Similarly, I have largely no feelings for the characters – they kind of left me cold and I wasn't interested in them. I thought Juvenal was quite a nice chap, Florentino was an idiot and Fermina was utterly nondescript. Indeed, so little impression did they have on me, I found it hard to remember at times who was who. And that's about it. It wasn't a bad book by any means, but neither did I really think it was much good.
I'm struggling to find anything much to say here now, never mind for an hour-long discussion. I had pretty high hopes and had heard pretty good things, I guess I was expecting something like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is superb. I didn't get that. Love is wonderful and painful and confusing and right and wrong and deep and mysterious and passionate and platonic and all kinds of other things, at least so I thought. But if this is love in all it's forms – a bit flat, oddly devoid of passion, lacking in feeling – I'll pass, thanks.
Book number: 69
Title: Love in the Time of Cholera
Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Category: Book club/recommendations
Safe as houses
Sometimes it's nice to know what you're going to get. And it's even better when that things is something that you desire. Nick Hornby definitely falls into that category – you know it's going to be funny, true to life, laced with wisdom and experience, and, above all, interesting. Hornby is an author who for me could write about anything and find something interesting to say about it.
And in this case, that something is books. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt is the literary, witty, interesting, professionally written version of this blog, written by somebody who is all of the aforementioned. It's his second collection of articles written for The Believer, an American arts magazine about what he reads each month. I'd like to claim it was an inspiration for this, but it wasn't. At least not consciously, and frankly I'm happier not knowing what my subconscious is doing a lot of the time.
Anyway, having read the first collection and enjoyed it as much as expected, I really did know what I was getting into with this. Numerous months of lists of books bought and books read, often bearing no relation to one another (sounds familiar), plus insights into what he has actually read, accompanied by observations on all kinds of things, often revolving around literary life. I will no doubt flick through again at some point and pick out some choice recommendations. And there are even excerpts from some of his favourites. What's not to like? More please.
Book number: 68
Title: Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
Author: Nick Hornby
Category: Non-fiction
And in this case, that something is books. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt is the literary, witty, interesting, professionally written version of this blog, written by somebody who is all of the aforementioned. It's his second collection of articles written for The Believer, an American arts magazine about what he reads each month. I'd like to claim it was an inspiration for this, but it wasn't. At least not consciously, and frankly I'm happier not knowing what my subconscious is doing a lot of the time.
Anyway, having read the first collection and enjoyed it as much as expected, I really did know what I was getting into with this. Numerous months of lists of books bought and books read, often bearing no relation to one another (sounds familiar), plus insights into what he has actually read, accompanied by observations on all kinds of things, often revolving around literary life. I will no doubt flick through again at some point and pick out some choice recommendations. And there are even excerpts from some of his favourites. What's not to like? More please.
Book number: 68
Title: Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
Author: Nick Hornby
Category: Non-fiction
Life and times
And for my next trick: another prize winner. Wait, did I just do that? Apparently so. Well, this time we're hopping across the Pond for the Big American One. Or in this instance at least, a Canadian one. What's that all aboot, eh? Probably (definitely) a cheap shot, but let's not pretend that I'm above that.
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, then. This choice was more of an accident than anything else – it was sat at the top of a stack of books on the bedside table of the Tiny Cave (the Tiny Cave being the dumping ground/room in which I now sleep when I'm back in Suffolk). So I figured it must be fate as it fitted into one of my categories and sounded good. It was good too.
A celebration of life told in the form of ten chapters covering the life of our protagonist from birth to death. Told in different styles, from multiple perspectives, it has everything you would expect – life, death, love, marriage, divorce, children, work, travel, moving – but what I liked most about it was its celebration of the ordinary. There weren't necessarily any big This is a Book About questions, nor any Meaning of Life answers, but there didn't need to be. Well told, through a variety of different narrative styles which only jarred a little, its strength lay in its simplicity and the fact that really we don't always know that much, much is outside of our control, and that life happens to all of us whether we want it to or not. All we can do is try and live it to the best of our abilities within the constraints placed upon us.
Book number: 67
Title: The Stone Diaries
Author: Carol Shields
Category: Pulitzer Prize winners
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, then. This choice was more of an accident than anything else – it was sat at the top of a stack of books on the bedside table of the Tiny Cave (the Tiny Cave being the dumping ground/room in which I now sleep when I'm back in Suffolk). So I figured it must be fate as it fitted into one of my categories and sounded good. It was good too.
A celebration of life told in the form of ten chapters covering the life of our protagonist from birth to death. Told in different styles, from multiple perspectives, it has everything you would expect – life, death, love, marriage, divorce, children, work, travel, moving – but what I liked most about it was its celebration of the ordinary. There weren't necessarily any big This is a Book About questions, nor any Meaning of Life answers, but there didn't need to be. Well told, through a variety of different narrative styles which only jarred a little, its strength lay in its simplicity and the fact that really we don't always know that much, much is outside of our control, and that life happens to all of us whether we want it to or not. All we can do is try and live it to the best of our abilities within the constraints placed upon us.
Book number: 67
Title: The Stone Diaries
Author: Carol Shields
Category: Pulitzer Prize winners
Spoilers
And for my next trick: another Booker winner. Sometimes when you're on a roll (or in this case, a hot streak of one), you just crave something similar. Which isn't always easy within the confines of the categories and isn't necessarily the point (there was a point?!), but to hell with it, that's what I did.
Indeed, 'to hell with him' might not be a bad subtitle for Amsterdam, Ian McEwan's *checks cover* 1998 winner. It certainly covers the gist of it between the three or four main characters as their relationship changes through dramatic events with unforeseen consequences, as they are all tied together by a woman who played a crucial part in all of their lives and has just passed away.
In my experience, McEwan seems to be a divisive author – plenty of people I know love him and plenty dislike him strongly. My sole experience till this point was On Chesil Beach, which I thought was pretentious and I didn't find much to enjoy in it. However, I'm all about second chances (and third – I can be pretty easy to get onboard and hard to kick off) and put all previous thoughts and prejudice to bed.
And I'm glad I did, because it was excellent. It was superbly written, consistently gripping, the characters were interesting and well-realised, the plotting carefully done, full of twists and bascially pretty much everything one could hope for. It's not a long book, but I did actually read it in the mythical single sitting. Which is largely a ringing endorsement for it.
Except for the end. Which I thought was ridiculous and thoroughly unbelievable. Sure, the characters were rather self-absorbed, self-obsessed and at times showed themselves to be not particularly nice individuals. And which is a good case in point for strong characters not having to be likeable or relatable to in order to interesting. But bearing in mind their relationship, even if it did unravel somewhat through the course of the book as events spiralled out of their control, the ending just seemed totally far-fetched to me. While sometimes closure is nice and human nature inevitably wants to know what happens, in this case I think some ambiguity (did it happen or not?) would have been far stronger. As I've said before, probably somewhere else in this blog, an ending can really make or break a book, especially as that's the last thing that you take away from it. It's testament to the strength of this one that it didn't break it for me, it was otherwise extremely good, but it is disappointing to have it spolit in such a way.
Book number: 66
Title: Amsterdam
Author: Ian McEwan
Category: Charlotte's choice
Indeed, 'to hell with him' might not be a bad subtitle for Amsterdam, Ian McEwan's *checks cover* 1998 winner. It certainly covers the gist of it between the three or four main characters as their relationship changes through dramatic events with unforeseen consequences, as they are all tied together by a woman who played a crucial part in all of their lives and has just passed away.
In my experience, McEwan seems to be a divisive author – plenty of people I know love him and plenty dislike him strongly. My sole experience till this point was On Chesil Beach, which I thought was pretentious and I didn't find much to enjoy in it. However, I'm all about second chances (and third – I can be pretty easy to get onboard and hard to kick off) and put all previous thoughts and prejudice to bed.
And I'm glad I did, because it was excellent. It was superbly written, consistently gripping, the characters were interesting and well-realised, the plotting carefully done, full of twists and bascially pretty much everything one could hope for. It's not a long book, but I did actually read it in the mythical single sitting. Which is largely a ringing endorsement for it.
Except for the end. Which I thought was ridiculous and thoroughly unbelievable. Sure, the characters were rather self-absorbed, self-obsessed and at times showed themselves to be not particularly nice individuals. And which is a good case in point for strong characters not having to be likeable or relatable to in order to interesting. But bearing in mind their relationship, even if it did unravel somewhat through the course of the book as events spiralled out of their control, the ending just seemed totally far-fetched to me. While sometimes closure is nice and human nature inevitably wants to know what happens, in this case I think some ambiguity (did it happen or not?) would have been far stronger. As I've said before, probably somewhere else in this blog, an ending can really make or break a book, especially as that's the last thing that you take away from it. It's testament to the strength of this one that it didn't break it for me, it was otherwise extremely good, but it is disappointing to have it spolit in such a way.
Book number: 66
Title: Amsterdam
Author: Ian McEwan
Category: Charlotte's choice
Picking up the pieces
And so once again there's been a brief interlude between entries – mostly due to not having internet access and partially due to failing to summon up the necessary energy to write something – but the books have still been slowly piling up on the 'to write' list, so I figured I ought to start tackling that log jam before I forget everything. Indeed, my memory is comparable to that of a goldfish at the moment anyway, so I'm not sure if I have anything useful or interesting to say. Which would imply I usually do and frankly I'm not sure that's true. But anyway, to the point...
In an entirely separate and longer running project, I've been trying to work my way through all of the Booker Prize winning novels. I'm not doing badly at it either – barring the first decade of the prize, of which I've read precisely no books, I'm probably about two-thirds of the way through those from 1980 onwards. Which isn't too bad, I don't think. So when I was rummaging through the shelves (or returning the books to their rightful places from the boxes of Moving House), I stumbled across half a dozen unread Booker winners, some of which have been gathering dust for some time. Perfect. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient was by my reckoning the longest serving of these, so that became my next read.
Interestingly, I felt it had lots of similarities between another Booker winner I read a few months ago, Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. The narration, the structure, the time period, the striking imagery that felt at once alien and familiar, intimate and looking in from outside. It worked well in both of them as the characters try to put their lives back together, or more, perhaps, to adjust to what has suddenly become normality, after the madness of what has gone before. I liked the fragmentary nature of the structure, encapsulating the way the characters were trying to piece things together. The slow unravelling of mysteries and the way the reader can piece things together for themselves is skilfully done and I can certainly see why it won. Obviously there's an element of subjectivity in awarding prizes, though I think people can usually recognise and appreciate quality, even if it's not their cup of tea or even if they actively disliked it. In this instance, I ticked pretty much all the boxes though. Job's a good 'un.
Book number: 65
Title: The English Patient
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Category: Books that have been sat on my bookshelf for too long
In an entirely separate and longer running project, I've been trying to work my way through all of the Booker Prize winning novels. I'm not doing badly at it either – barring the first decade of the prize, of which I've read precisely no books, I'm probably about two-thirds of the way through those from 1980 onwards. Which isn't too bad, I don't think. So when I was rummaging through the shelves (or returning the books to their rightful places from the boxes of Moving House), I stumbled across half a dozen unread Booker winners, some of which have been gathering dust for some time. Perfect. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient was by my reckoning the longest serving of these, so that became my next read.
Interestingly, I felt it had lots of similarities between another Booker winner I read a few months ago, Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. The narration, the structure, the time period, the striking imagery that felt at once alien and familiar, intimate and looking in from outside. It worked well in both of them as the characters try to put their lives back together, or more, perhaps, to adjust to what has suddenly become normality, after the madness of what has gone before. I liked the fragmentary nature of the structure, encapsulating the way the characters were trying to piece things together. The slow unravelling of mysteries and the way the reader can piece things together for themselves is skilfully done and I can certainly see why it won. Obviously there's an element of subjectivity in awarding prizes, though I think people can usually recognise and appreciate quality, even if it's not their cup of tea or even if they actively disliked it. In this instance, I ticked pretty much all the boxes though. Job's a good 'un.
Book number: 65
Title: The English Patient
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Category: Books that have been sat on my bookshelf for too long
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