December
Herodotus*
Smith, Scott, The Ruins
November
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Rushdie, Salman, Shame
Colette, The Vagabond
LeCarre, John, A Most Wanted Man
October
Conan Doyle, Arthur, A Study in Scarlet
Barnes, Julian, Arthur & George.
Waugh, Evelyn, A Handful of Dust and Vile Bodies. Got on Waugh trip from reading NYRB article by D.M. about recent Brideshead Revisited film. Garrison Keillor in yesterday's NY Times Book Review quotes Julian Barnes as saying he doesn't believe in God, but misses him. That explains my interest in Greene, and Greene explains my interest in Waugh. But Waugh doesn't measure up I'm afraid. Admit to getting caught up in melodrama of Dust. Poor Tony.
Connolly, Cyril, An Unquiet Grave.* Didn't get very far. Been putting it off since college. Too late now maybe. Same concerns about absent God as Waugh and Greene but, and I hate to say this about anything, seems dated.
September
DuMaurier, Daphne, Jamaica Inn.
Spark, Muriel, The Bachelors. Really liked Miss Jean Brodie and Memento Mori. Updike and Waugh seem to be fans of hers, judging from the blurbs. So far The Bachelors is fun. Like other two, an easy read but nothing simple about it. Finished. I'd forgotten about her Graham Greene connection, that he became her "patron" when she fell on hard times in the mid-fifties. As with Greene and Waugh, there is enough ambiguity here for someone such as myself, steeped in ignorance about Catholicism and the times, to not really quite get the Catholic part. Yes, these people are floating around in amoral bliss but I'm not sure that really accounts for their gullibility. More like they are just dumb. I guess, though, spiritualism was an easy way out, and still is, with all the new age crap. Easy intellectually and morally, since there is precious little of either. Just an easy peaceful feeling, which Patrick, who is sort of the devil in the novel, is so good at. His artful slipperiness is artfully done. So maybe I do get it.
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. It got interesting once the monster started telling his story. The critic who wrote the introduction says that's the most improbable part, or has the most convenient coincidences in it, which is true, but it's still the best. Victor Frankenstein and the guy going to the Arctic to find Shangri-La get tiresome pretty fast. I don't have much patience with Victor. How ineffectual he was may be the most improbable part of the story. Interested now, tho, in Mary Shelley and will try to remember to find out more about her. Learned she lost three children and her husband (Shelley) by the time she was 24. Also some discussion in introduction about Prometheus theme, in both Shelleys and Byron. That she turned it around, and applied it to nature, or science, not art. Emphasized dangers rather than heroic rebellion. True enough, I guess, but danger would always be implicit in rebellion. Maybe not tho in P.B. Shelley and Byron. Admit my ignorance there. And I kind of bridle at suggestion that science can be more dangerous than art.
Orum, Poul, Scapegoat. Interesting but dull. You know all along that the twist will not be that the scapegoat actually did it. You are also impatient with the main character for not being more aggressive. The solution, which is a long time in coming, is psychologically complex and believable. All of above could be considered literary devices. Nevertheless, still dull. Started Frankenstein. Lost interest first time around, a few months ago. Liking it better this time.
August
Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Queen of the South. His usual problem: too long. Also very over the top ending. Nevertheless, very good in re to suspense and I very much liked the protagonist, Teresa, a Sinaloan narca. Also learned how popular the narcocorridos are and got some names of performers. Teresa's favorite seemed to be Jose Alfredo. A bunch of his albums are on iTunes.
Simenon, Georges, The Madman of Bergerac. Another early Maigret. Has as a pretty complicated ho-hum resolution. Really liked first part though because it reminded me of early Eric Ambler and Greene's spy novels. Both rely on innocent amateur getting caught up in something sinister, and Maigret seemed kind of that way early on in narrative.
di Lampedusa, Giuseppe, The Leopard. I bought this after reading about a new 50th anniversary edition in The New York Times Book Review and The London Review of Books. I also fondly remember the film with Burt Lancaster as the prince. It’s a lot of things, as great books tend to be, but I guess it’s not wrong to say that it’s about the disintegration of a way of life. What makes it great, I think, is how Lampedusa can be hard on the prince and still make him likeable. Or at least it's clear that the author likes him.
Thayer, Lydia Prescott, Marianno. Got more than halfway through, a self-published account of an affluent New England family in the first part of the 20th Century. I picked it up because the family lived in New Bedford, not far from here, Melville country, and now has a reputation as being ugly, poor and dangerous. From nearly the first sentence she apologizes for being privileged, but that doesn’t stop her from adopting a condescending attitude toward the hired help. Nevertheless, she’s smart and a good writer, although she clearly whitewashes everything that needs it. Marianno is the name of the estate where the kids spent summers getting in the way of the farm hands who in any case were working on a gentleman’s farm (father was a lawyer), so maybe they didn't care. That's a lot of money I guess, when you not only own a "farm" just for the pleasure of it, but can also hire people to run it for you.
Simenon, Georges, The Bar on the Seine, an early Maigret, and a non-Maigret, The Widow. I enjoyed the Maigret but I don't think he peaked until later. The Widow was re-issued by the New York Review of Books, intro by Paul Theroux, and it and Tropic Moon are my favorite non-Simenons. In both a young man is dragged into a crime by an older woman, and in both cases, even though the woman isn't at all virtuous, it's clear that the man is weak and has only himself to blame. Maybe that's one reason I like Simenon. At any given point in the book you might like, identify with, feel sorry for, or be repulsed by the criminal.
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Harmless People and The Hidden Life of Dogs. The former is a very good book. Apparently though it's had its share of controversy, of a type similar to that of the the dog book. Her credibility. It may be less important, or less prevalent, in The Harmless People because overall her portrayal of the way of life of the hunter-gatherers is extremely believable and vivid. I was struck by how much they live day to day, and she makes the most of the irony that people look down on them for living nearly like animals and yet that may be not just how but why they've survived for thousands of years. It's also unsettling to think that we live in a time that is the first ever to have no room for such a society. There are news reports these days about the last untouched tribes in the Amazon. But if they've been seen and protected, they've been touched, especially since they know they've been seen. They see the airplanes and even make threatening motions at them.
Livesy, Margot, The House on Fortune Street. I liked this more than I thought I would. It didn't seem to me much like the review I read of it. It was reviewed as a novel about two very different women, the main point being how they dealt with men. The reviewer was a woman. I saw it more philosophically, and it all seemed to revolve around just one of the women, a pretty classic femme fatale. She and the two main men in the novel tested ethical boundaries and one question that arose was how responsible for the other woman, who was more passive and needy, those three were.
Before August
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre. Re-read. I might as well admit that I didn't read Jane Eyre until about 2 years ago. I will also go on record as saying it might be my favorite novel. Hate to give up The Brothers Karamozov, but its close. And I'll admit that I don't re-read many novels, certainly not so soon, so I found that experience in itself interesting. No suspense of course was the main difference, which is supposed to help you appreciate the art more. I know I enjoyed the conversations between Jane and Rochester more, or at least in a more relaxed way. I like Jane probably more than any fictional character. Can't decide tho if I think of her as a sister, a lover, a friend, or myself.
Saramago, Jose, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, All the Names.
Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Seville Communion. Fun but really nothing that special.
Blackmore, R.D., Lorna Doone.* I got about halfway through. It was fun up to a point but never really grabbed hold of me. Finally decided I was bored enough to stop reading.
Bryson, Bill, Shakespeare. Had never read much about the life. Moderately interesting for that reason.
Masterman, An Oxford Tragedy.* Didn't get very far with this. Pretty bad. Unreadable.
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