Since I am in England right now, it’s fitting, I suggest, that for my first TT for quite a while I should feature thirteen books that I own, and have read, that are set entirely in England, with brief snippets of opinion. Agreement and argument are both equally welcome.
I keep a list of the books I read (start to finish – any book abandoned before the last page doesn’t make it onto the list), and I tend to lose count after a few weeks, so I like to count them up on New Year’s Day and see what the total was. In 2008 I read 101 books. In 2009 I must have had more time, or maybe I read a bit faster in my old age, because I read 134 books. Here are thirteen of the best of them:
The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine (who is better known as Ruth Rendell). This is an excellent story about a man researching an ancestor of his, a doctor who specialized in treating haemophilia sufferers. It took a little while to see exactly where this story was going but it was so well written, and the background of the main character, who is caught up in later 20th century political reform, made it an irresistible read.
Lord Of The North by Bernard Cornwell. I had to include one by my favourite author! This is the third novel in his series about Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a nobleman in ninth century England – before there was such a country as England, in fact. This was the time of King Alfred, the Vikings, and feuding between the small kingdoms that made up the island. Beautifully told, in great, accurate detail.
The Unbreakable Child by Kim Michelle Richardson. This story sends you to the depths of gloom and despair, then it rescues you and ends on a note of optimism. And it’s not a novel – it’s a true story. The author recounts her experiences of living for nine years in an orphanage in Kentucky in the 1960s and of the violent abuse she and her fellow orphans suffered from the nuns who ran the place. I don’t mean the occasional slap on the wrist or even upside the head -- I mean unending, unprovoked violence. Two scenes that stick in my mind are of the nine-year-old author punched in the stomach by a nun until she vomits, and then forced to eat her own vomit. Another time, the child had to be hidden away from a visiting social worker because she bore so many marks of violence upon her. Later, Ms Richardson and several other former inmates launched a lawsuit against the Catholic Church, whose lawyers did their best to maintain that (a) there was no violence and (b) if there was, what did it matter? The subtitle on the cover of the book is “A story about forgiving the unforgivable” I think it is wonderful that Kimmi can forgive those nuns. I can’t, and I wasn’t even there! Buy this book, and read it!
The Doctor’s Signature by Hamilton Johnston. I found this novel, published in 1955 and as far as I know never reprinted, on a shelf in my father’s library. I had never heard of it, and I can find no reference to it anywhere, but I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a story about a GP in an unnamed town in England, and how he mixes with some of the more influential members of local society. I think this would make an excellent 6-part BBC drama for Sunday evenings.
The Associate by John Grisham. I’ve only read one book by Grisham that I didn’t like. All the rest have been absolute page turners. This one was no exception.
Imperium by Thomas Harris. An excellent novel of Ancient Rome, centred around the character of Marcus Cicero as told by Tiro, his secretary and slave. Period detail abounds. Wonderfully readable.
Moab Is My Washpot by Stephen Fry. There seems to be nothing that Stephen Fry can’t do! Author, playwright, actor, librettist, journalist, tweeter, quiz show host and all-round nice chap (actually, on his own admission, he can’t sing). This is his autobiography that takes him up to early adulthood – his schooling, his coming to terms with being gay, a compulsion to steal that lands him in prison. Fry doesn’t hold anything back, and I have to say that he doesn’t come across as a completely likable young man – but he is certainly an interesting one. The book ends when he gets out of prison and determines to turn his life around – with what result we all know.
World Without End by Ken Follett. This was announced as a sequel to Follett’s wonderful The Pillars of the Earth, though in fact it was set two centuries later and, naturally, with none of its characters. This is no sequel – it is a stand alone novel, about a town in 14th century England, the people who live there and how the Church, in the form of the local monastery, tries to control their lives. A long, absorbing tale, excellently written.
Too Much by Donald E. Westlake. One of Westlake’s comic thrillers. A man pretends to be identical twins so that he can date a woman and her sister – on separate occasions of course. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Actually, it doesn’t sound easy at all! How long does he manage to keep up the deception? You’ll have to read it to find out.
The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy. The main character is an affluent, professional, middle class American with the usual wife, home, family, car and the other trappings of apparent success. With one hasty act he loses it all, and finds himself forced to hide out west in small town Montana. The narrative races along. An excellent thriller.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. An unapologetic examination of the pestilence of religion, as Dawkins sees it. I tend to agree with him. This book wont make atheists out of believers, but it will probably make atheists out of doubters and fence-sitters.
A Prisoner Of Birth by Jeffrey Archer. Many people have looked down on Jeffrey Archer, and not always without justification. This novel is a million miles from his earlier clumsy, naïve style of writing. This is a gripping story of a crime, an innocent man framed, an escape. A lot of it takes place in prison. Since Archer spent two years as a guest of Her Majesty’s prison system, we can be sure that those parts are completely accurate.
The Manhattan Beach Project by Peter Lefcourt. I read this because I had enjoyed Lefcourt’s The Deal. This is also about thee entertainment industry: a satire on the way TV networks operate. It’s about a reality show centred on a warlord in Uzbekistan and his family, his henchmen and other associates. It becomes a cult success in the USA, with complications for all involved.
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My lovely friend Julie at Thinking About… posed an interesting question. If you had to choose four books published before 1970 (an arbitrary but harmless date), what four would you choose? This was actually easier than I thought. Sadly rejecting
Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace
Diary Of A Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
and even My Early Life by Winston Churchill,
I decided on the following:
Agreement or arguments, anyone?
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There was a second label, and I tore that off too. I was going to use it as a bookmark but then I read what it said and the implications shook me to the core! Look what it says. In effect, the government of the state of California is warning that this chair is not non-flammable enough for them to feel easy that its citizens are sitting in it, and it warns them against doing things in the chair that might cause them to burst into flame. Well, a pat on the back for Arnie and his state’s government. But I live in Florida. Where is the warning from Governor Crist or one of his minions in Tallahassee? Don’t they care? Are they so unworried at the possibility of my sudden immolation that they can’t even be bothered to warn me? They need to model their technique on that of Sacramento and be a bit more Californian about it. I don’t actually smoke, or wave naked flames about anywhere near this chair, so the prospect of my seated combustion is remote, but even so, this callous indifference has left me shaken. I’m not angry, but I’m rather disappointed.
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The Misadventures of Oliver Booth
by DAVID DESMOND
Greenleaf Book Group Press, 205 pages, $14.95
David Desmond writes about the rich, and the wannabe rich, in Palm Springs. Since he is Donald Trump’s nephew, and lives in Palm Springs, we can assume he is not unfamiliar with that milieu, and in this novel he manages to navigate this world of the rich and self-indulgent with ease.
We explore Palm Beach with the Oliver Booth of the title. As his main protagonist, David Desmond gives us the unpleasant, arrogant, incompetent – throw in obese too – proprietor of a store situated near, but not in, a top class shopping street, where he tries to unload his fake antiques at outrageous prices upon the rich and super-rich. You will look in vain for redeeming qualities.
As we follow him from Palm Springs to Paris on an antiques buying trip on behalf of a client, and back again, bad things happen to Oliver Booth, but he is so unremittingly unpleasant to everyone he encounters in this story – he is either fawning over them or trying to take advantage of them, and very often both – that we feel no sympathy for him when fate slaps him upside the head. Add a French waiter who is both intelligent and possessed of an easy manner, a very rich old lady and her grandson, and you have the main characters in this comic novel.
At the start of the novel, David Desmond describes for us the nature of Palm Beach society, with its own code of behaviour, hierarchy and rules, and we are left wondering if all this can be true, but of course since Desmond is describing the place where he lives, we believe every word. Then he takes up the story of Oliver Booth’s attempt to join that society and make his fortune as antique dealer to the wealthy. This is a very entertaining and undemanding read. Don’t look for deeper meanings than those you find on the page – just enjoy what happens to the sweaty little toad of the title and those with whom he comes into contact. It takes a lot for a book to make the reader laugh out loud, but this one succeeded in several places. The Misadventures of Oliver Booth comes under the category of fun! Read and enjoy. And if you’re like me you’ll be though it all too quickly, and wanting more; so you’ll be delighted to see that Desmond is writing a sequel.
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Every year I keep a list of the books I have read. I don’t number them, so as I enter the titles in a small notebook I manage to lose count sometime around the end of February. That means that come New Year’s day each year, I can tot up the number of books I have read the previous year and surprise, or disappoint, myself with the total. Obviously, I spent a lot of 2008 sitting comfortably in quiet surroundings reading, because my total of books read was 101. Those are only books I actually finished. Any book I abandon before I get to the end doesn't make it onto the list.
Out of those 101 books there were some very enjoyable ones, a number of indifferent ones which I shall probably not read again, and a few I had to struggle through to finish just for the sake of it. I have picked a dozen that I particularly did enjoy – seven fiction and five non-fiction – and for what it’s worth they all carry my recommendation.
1 – Smoke by Donald E. Westlake. I was actually giggling out loud at this book in Starbucks, much to my wife’s embarrassment. Westlake is a very amusing writer, and this is one of the best I have read of his so far.
2 – Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. An extremely readable, and concise, book on the Bard himself , his writings and his legacy.
3 – Soho by Keith Waterhouse. I didn’t really know what to expect when I ordered this but this gently amusing tale of a young man from the north of England who comes down to London, specifically the red light area of Soho, to look for his girlfriend, was riveting.
4 – The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi. Probably best known as the Assistant D.A. who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson and several members of his “family”, Bugliosi sets out a credible set of reasons why President Bush, in initiating the Iraq war, can and should be prosecuted for murder.
5 – The Deal by Peter Lefcourt. The deal in question is the one required to greenlight a movie. This is the story of a washed-up producer who stumbles upon a story, and after a number of “conceptual changes” manages to get it made in an overseas location, by a mad director. This is a send up of the whole Hollywood circus.
6 – Boomsday by Christopher Buckley. Another of my favourite writers. This is about an attempt to legalize voluntary euthanasia for senior citizens in the USA. It’s a lot funnier than that one-sentence summary would suggest.
7 – Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. An entertaining though brief (204 pages of not particularly small print) autobiography by Martin, who is described on the dust jacket as a writer, artist, actor and performer; I should imagine that most people think of him with those categories in reverse order.
8 – Pompeii by Robert Harris. A brilliant novel about the seaside town of Pompeii on Italy’s west coast, and several characters in particular,, in late August, 79AD, just as Mount Vesuvius was about to erupt and wipe out the town and almost everyone in it..
9 – Kitchener’s Last Volunteer by Henry Allingham with Dennis Goodwin. Obviously Goodwin did most of the writing because Henry Allingham is 112 years old, born in June, 1896. He is the only man still alive who volunteered to join the British Army at the outbreak of World War One in 1914 and one of only three WW1 British soldiers still living at this writing (the other two were drafted in 1917). He served throughout the war and this is his story, taken down from his recollections. A vital historical document, secured for posterity before WW1 passes from living memory.
10 – The Appeal by John Grisham. All Grisham’s books are good, and this is no exception. It’s about an appeal against the decision in a lawsuit between a corporation and the people it apparently has wronged, and the lawyers and judges who are involved in the case.
11 – Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay. The chef’s own story, told in his own words, expletives included, about his life in a dysfunctional family, his abusive father, how he started a career in football (soccer, if you really insist), was injured, and went to catering school instead. And 21 years later he is the most successful, and richest, chef in the world. Some of his frank descriptions of his childhood experiences got him into trouble with some of his family members, but that is bound to happen when you don’t sugar coat things.
12 – That’s Me in The Middle by Donald Jack. Until fairly recently the nine novels about Bartholomew Bandy were out of print but I’m glad to say that several have been reissued by a Canadian publisher and I have managed to get hold of them all. This is the second volume, about a WW1 pilot from Ottawa who manages against all expectation to become a war hero. War isn’t normally an amusing subject but this book manages to make it so without indulging in poor taste.
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| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
