Perhaps the best known of the Bachman books due to the movie, but not the best (I think "Thinner" wins there). Harsh and stark. There are similarities to another Bachman contribution, "The Long Walk", which I plan to reread one day unlike this one.
The movie version is not bad, though I found the ending illogical. Let me rephrase that- I found the ending more illogical than the rest of it.
I've not read The Long Walk yet but have heard good things about it except for the ending which is supposedly vague and has proven divisive to his readers. Definitely plan to check it out at some point.
I started Insomnia last night and have pre-ordered You Like It Darker as it has a nearly 40% discount on Amazon. That and a few more that I have on the shelf means there's still plenty of stories ahead of me.
Finished reading that Argyll book - it's okay, the McGuffin is the so-called Amber Room, a Russian room of marvellous treasures seized by the Nazis and seemingly lost - possibly hidden in a secret railway tunnel or on one of the Nazi Gold trains.... The thing reads like what might have been the missing Indiana Jones movie, though rather than having magical powers to empower the Nazis, the Amber Room is sought by a cruel right-wing Russian populist to ensure election... Putin isn't mentioned, it's a parallel universe book I guess. Not quite clear why said populist would put this one out to the Russian public when at that point it's clear he isn't close to getting his hands on it, relying on the spy work of the CIA - so a bit like the last Indy, in fact, as to a large extent they just follow the heroes' lead.
The lead character Argyll isn't too plausible, in his early 20s and we keep learning he's fluent in French, then German, oh and Russian too.
The finale is somewhat ambivalent for historian buffs too, without giving it away. I don't know what the deal is when you quite enjoy reading a book and getting to the end despite one's nitpicking, but I did enjoy this despite all that, I don't apply that attitude to watching recent Bond films. It makes me hesitate to review any of @Loeffelholz books because often I can be quite critical - but most of these I review are bona fide best-sellers, so why should my opinion count.
Oh - and just started reading Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood - the non-Bond Bond book. First chapter, reads quite well, should be interesting. The follow-up is out this week.
Late to the party but I'm currently finishing up THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir. Loved the movie and I'm loving the book. I wanted to tackle this before diving into his latest one, PROJECT HAIL MARY. That got optioned as the next project for Ryan Gosling and, per some friends, is an even better novel.
a collection of bits and pieces Doyle wrote that are somehow related to Sherlock Holmes, including two or three very short stories (basically one page gags), two well known stories where someone very like Holmes writes a letter to the editor (I've read these before), two very early short stories not at all about Holmes but considered prototypical, two plays (one of which probably not by Doyle), one poem, three very useful essays about how Doyle came to write Holmes and why he killed him off, and another about how people write to him asking him to solve real life mysteries or think Holmes is a real person, an outline for a story Doyle never completed, and a story once published in Cosmopolitan attributed to Doyle but probably written by someone else.
I won't summarise each one, as the wikipedia page already does this as well as I could
looking at the online reviews, a lot of people seem to think the books a ripoff. I guess the title is deliberately misleading, but I was glad to read every word, to learn more about Doyles career as an author, his thoughts about his character and what he thought he should really be remembered for, and to learn more about these William Gillette plays I've seen mentioned a few times before. In one essay, Doyle lists his 12 favourite Holmes stories, which is sort of the equivalent to a Best Of album (one where the artist decides, not the clueless record company)
The book he thinks he should be remembered for is The White Company. anybody ever read that one? whats it like? and he also lists four short stories I never heard of as being more important than Sherlock Holmes
I'm now wondering if Fleming was influenced by The Lost Special: in Diamonds are Forever, Bond diverts a train full of villains onto a spur track and the train crashes down a closed mineshaft. Exact same thing happens in The Lost Special!
Didn't Conan Doyle go a bit spacey towards the end, into the paranormal and fairies and so on? If so, his recommendations may revolve around that latter-day obsession, I think some Holmes stories delved into this - mad, because Holmes was preoccupied with the rational & evidence-based matter.
I appreciate that. But if you hiked your leg on...say, Wiley, for instance...it would give a sense of diversity to the ratings. People assume that when a book is rated over 4.7 stars but only has 23 reviews, the shifty author has deployed all of his best friends, cousins, co-conspirators etc. to spread disinformation. Strangely, I have 31 ratings on 'Yank' Amazon, and a 4.8 🤷
But it mostly speaks to my larger thesis, which is: People can't be bothered. I think this simple four-word statement explains a great deal about our situation, writ large.
Anyway, thanks for the mention 🍻
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I always offer reviews. Believe it or not I can be quite kind as well. Although I have also had feedback on my feedback by authors who say " Why did you only give 3 / 4 stars when everyone else gave 5?" My reply is always "Did you read my review?" It is worth noting that 4 stars is a very good rating.
This was recommended by Mumsnet as someone wanted a book with laughs and I can do with that. It was also said to be sexually filthy and that didn't put me off. It's the third modern book by a female author in a row for me, I don't know it does seem they have a particular style - then again, so do male authors. It's of a kind, plenty of dialogue, sort of banter. It is funny in an observational sort of way, kind of Brigitte Jones for lesbians. And it is really lesbian propaganda, lesbian erotic fiction though one could argue so is all erotic fiction, they're selling it after all.
Here the idea is a Londoner in her mid-20s in a sex drought has some dingy sex with a bloke that puts her off - it's an unlovely one-night stand in a horrible flat share that smells of mildew and he seems horrible too etc. For some reason I can't remember, the lead - this is all first person - decides to try out the same sex, it's the usual novice hits the black run instantly type book, discovering wild and torrid things, the contrast between her innocence and upcoming depravity I guess.
Just to be clear, this is meant to be humorous writing and it does work on that level, it is personable and didn't Erica Jong do this kind of thing in the 1970s, albeit better.
The bits that don't convince accumulated to the point that the left-had part of my brain - the critical, negative side - intervened and I began drafting my ajb review in my head. I wasn't quite sure that an attractive woman - it seems later she can have any woman she wants - would have a three-year sex drought without a better backstory to explain that, or that her male co-worker would make a similar confession over their work stations, then again I've been out of the game a bit lately myself and - ahem - what I mean is, maybe office workers do talk like that nowadays. Nor do there seem to be any snags outing herself to her flatmates or friends, it's all received as if she'd decided to become a Swiftie, or taking up yoga (I should immediately say that similar kind of jokes to this are in the book and done far, far better than me). Nor does she really get much reactton from her parents, though the timeline seems a bit off - they seem like Brigitte Jones' parents but one then admits to having had threesomes in the 1970s - do parents ever talk like that - and if that's so, I don't know this was published in 2017, wouldn't that make them too old to be the parents of a woman in their mid-20s? Maybe, plus another straight character says it's a 'waste' that Ian McKellan is gay and while it says he has grey hair, surely he's not been on anyone's shag list for a while?
Some of the insights into working for the Civil Service ring true, you get the feeling it's jobs for jobs sake.
Initially I felt this was like the gag off Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in that you think something bad is about to happen but in fact everything turns out well, but it doesn't make for great drama. It's all onwards and upwards for our heroine but while you can sense bad things happening with her cool adventures lesbian lover it has that generic feel of erotic fiction after a while and I think I'll bail on it, really, though I'm half way through. Back to the library, with this one.
I'll crack on with Kim Sherwood's Bond book though unfairly I'm starting to tire of female writers - or maybe it's just modern writing, I don't know. Perhaps it's time for George Elliott's Middlemarch.
This is a historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg: The novel got a Pulizer, it's filmed under the title "Gettysburg" (where George Lazenby plays i Norge e of the generals) and incredibly it inspired the excellent sci-fi TV series "Firefly". The villain of the last episode is even named after the Confederate general Jubal Early. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one person, almost always a general on one of the two sides. Trying to get inside the heads of people who died long ago is risky. But I the author did a lot of research reading diaries, autobiographies and so on and I find their voices convincing. The novel does a wonderful job of making this terrible battle come alive in our minds. I especially liked how some scenes are calm and reflective, but the battle scenes are written in a hectic and flashes of sensations style. I imagine many of of the soldiers experienced the worst fighting that way. The authors doesn't make anyone the villain and there were horoic characters on both sides. But one of the Union generals say: "Without slavery there wouldn't be a war" and that's my impression too. The constitutions of the Confederate states certainly are straight forward in saying it was about slavery.
I'm a history buff, but i haven't really done a deep dive into the American civil war. Now I'd like to do that. I know Sharaa's son has written a prequel and a sequel. i also plan to read a book that's an overview of the whole conflict written by an historian. This novel was a fine way to start.
I read the first of these many years ago, loved it, and re-read it at least twice since. Only recently did I find out that there was a sequel, which I instantly ordered. I read the first again to refresh my memory (okay, also because I knew I would enjoy it) before reading the second.
Our main character is Joe Rate, who commands a US Navy yacht called the Alice which accidentally becomes capable of time travel and bounces around various periods (Vikings, Romans, etc) while struggling to get back to her own time. Joe is an engaging lead and his crew Gorson, Cook, etc, exist as well-drawn characters rather than mere stereotypes. The same is true of the people they meet on their journeys.
To say the first ends on a cliffhanger would be putting matters too strongly- let’s just say that some matters are unresolved. Are they resolved in the second story? You’ll have to read it and see. One weakness I felt was the tendency for the crew to get into some sort of major trouble and then simply time-jump their way out of it … only to end up in bigger trouble. If you can enjoy Star Trek, though, that won’t bother you.
There is a barrage of nautical terms throughout both, most of which went right over my distinctly non-nautical head and were ignored with little or no effect on reading enjoyment. Similarly, I am sadly ignorant of exactly how much real history is included (eg The Council of Nicaea, which I know only the barest details about, figures strongly in the plot of the second book) and how much the author has made up to suit his tale but again this doesn’t affect reading enjoyment.
I’m not sure if they can be read online, but an earlier book by the same author can so it isn’t impossible.
A political melodrama disguised as science fiction.
Ursula Le Guin was lauded for this intellectual piece of fantasy set in the far distant future on two colony planets so long developed they’ve virtually forgotten their ancestors originated from Mother Earth – or Terra as they name it. A race of aliens, called the Hainish, hover in the background and do very little, while the overarching ‘democracy’ of the nine-planet Council of World Governments represents something like Star Trek’s fictional Federation or the contemporary real life United Nations. The CWG is as ineffectual as both of those organisations, real or imaginary.
The story proper involves the mathematician Shevek. He lives on the dust blown moon of Anarres, fulfilling his roles as scientist, life partner and anarchist. Anarres is a government-free community-organised society without religion, authority figures, justice system, marriage, currency, etc; even individuality, such as one might see in art, is frowned upon. The first colonists of this communist style world escaped and cut themselves off from the rampant capitalism of the parent planet Urras, where riches and luxury go hand in glove with destitution, sickness and slavery. Shevek has proposed The Principle of Simultaneity, a theory that will revolutionise interstellar travel. The Odonians [as Anarres’ inhabitants call themselves] are suspicious of his theory, so Shevek becomes an Egoist – read ‘anarchist’ but Le Guin disguises it beneath intellectual fluff about individualism and personal suffering – and challenges the civilisation’s ‘discussion syndicates’ to allow him to visit Urras, where he can better test his scientific theories. But is life in the capitalist world better or worse for Shevek and who can he trust among the scientists and rich profiters he encounters?
An unnecessarily long novel does itself no favours by describing at length a lot of historical, social and scientific guff about the worlds and the futures Le Guin has created. It is superfluous to the narrative and slows the robust, dangerously subversive plot to a crawl. While her descriptions are vivid and strong, Le Guin’s characters are weak, aside from Shevek himself, who inhabits every page. The most notable supporting character is the married whore Vae, whose attitude to life, possessions and men is as casual as Undine Spragg’s in The Custom of the Country. The dramatic difference between Vae’s lifestyle and assumptions and Shevek’s is brilliantly visualised. Contrasts such as this don’t arise often enough. Too often all the characters sound alike, especially when Shevek and his partner Takver talk to each other; their dialogue is simply insipid; it is a love affair of no excitement.
When matters come to a head on both Urras and Anarres – the book’s structure tells Shevek’s 40-year life story alongside his four years on Urras – the pace quickens and the urgency of the actions and debates takes on a less grand and specific tone. As Le Guin deals more with generalisations, her prose improves. But she prefers to bog herself down with complicated ideological machinations. It takes a long, laborious time to reach the cold anti-climax of the final chapter. Instead of injecting pace and power into her story, Le Guin’s major concern – one unnamed by any character, is how corruption of the flesh and the mind permeates through every civilised culture, so even the messianic, inscrutable Shevek becomes vulnerable as he challenges the social orders of both his home and his exile world.
I don’t read much sci-fi, so I honestly can’t judge if this is good sci-fi or not. I didn’t like it to be honest.
Recently widowed, Ralph Roberts has developed a bad case of insomnia. Waking up earlier and earlier every morning is bad enough but when he starts seeing auras around people and little bald men in white lab coats around town he starts to fear for his sanity. But we're in the town of Derry, Maine, a town with a long history of secrets and strange goings on. Ralph isn't going mad and the strange power that his insomnia is awakening within him may actually be the key to stopping an evil plan that could destroy not just his world but countless others as well.
Insomnia is something of a divisive book among King's readers. The pacing is slow, even by King's standards, and the book takes a really long time to reveal the actual threat Ralph must face. For much of the novel he feels like a puppet on a string, moved forward by forces he cannot see or control and frustrated that information is being held from him. While reading the story I could empathize. There is also a subplot regarding an abortion rights rally that is going to be held which has divided the town even as dark forces plot to use it to their advantage.
Some of the characters are also not as well defined as in most of his other works. One dies suddenly and pretty meaninglessly. Another clearly knows a lot about Ralph's condition and his task but we never really find out how or why he has this knowledge. Other than Ralph and his friend Lois, just about everybody else felt like a placeholder who was there just to help move the story along and then largely discarded.
The book ties in to King's Dark Tower saga in a pretty big way and that's probably its biggest attraction.
Overall, I liked the story even though it was a bit of a slog at times and was moved by what happened to Ralph and Lois at the end, but it's not one that I think I'll be revisiting.
I enjoyed it at the time, and have always thought I'd get round to reading it again someday. Still, we can't all like the same thing.
At the moment working my way through an endless series of Solar Pons short stories (I've discussed these earlier) while awaiting the new King. Less than a week!
"The spy who came in from the cold" By John le Carré.
This is the novel that kicked off le Carré's writing career and it's an espionage classic. The plot takes place at the start of the 1960's. The MI6 is losing too many agents in Germany and the East German secret service "Abteilung" is real problem. I'm not going to say more about the plot, but I found it engaging and tense. Sometimes le Carré over-complicates the plot and goes to far in the nihilistic "we're all crooks, really" world view, at least in my experience. But here it all works. In fact the only thing I didn't like is that the author seems to have believed (at the time) Finland is a Scandinavian country. If you can live with this major flaw (😉) and you want to read an excellent spy novel, "The spy who came in from the cold" is for you!
I liked it, just not as much as some of his other stuff that I've read recently. I'd been reading more of his earlier stuff recently and I think that's been resonating with me more.
You Like It Darker will be my next one; I managed to get a 40% pre-order discount from Amazon on that one and I should get it next week.
"On her majesty's secret service" by Ian ..... something.
This isn't my first time reading OHMSS. My conclusion this time is that this is a good spy novel, but like GF (but to a lesser degree) the movie improved on the novel in some ways. For example the book spends far too much time on the expert from the Ministry of Agriculture. But I really did enjoy reading it. A lot.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
It was the first Fleming I read, and it changed my life. My favorite of his, possibly because of the overall gravitas of the piece.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
A collection of short stories, many never before published, that cross multiple genres including horror, crime drama and science fiction. For me there were four standouts:
Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream: a man has a psychic vision of a dead woman buried behind an abandoned gas station. When he tries to do the right thing and report it to the police, he learns firsthand that no good deed goes unpunished.
Rattlesnakes: Vic Trenton, who we last saw in the novel Cujo, retreats to a mansion in Florida in the middle of the COVID epidemic. Strange happenings ensue.
The Dreamers: A Vietnam vet and a scientist explore the dark corners of reality in a tale with a strong HP Lovecraft vibe.
The Answer Man: Budding lawyer Phil Parker encounters a man who can answer any question asked of him, but the answers he gets aren't always the ones he wants to hear.
Like many anthologies, some stories are better than others but all were interesting reads that held my attention and stayed with after I finished them. Also like other Stephen King stories, there are many references to his other works which aren't necessary to be familiar with, but can yield welcome little Easter eggs if you are.
@TonyDP - finished it now, and agree with your thoughts. "Danny" is very gripping, and probably my favourite here. Some excellent stories I'm glad to have read. Have you noticed that his protagonists have been getting older? Not all of them, but it's a definite trend.
(I'm not that slow a reader, I've been on holiday)
Last year, I read Desmond Bagley’s The Spoilers and found it to be distinctly unimpressive. The novel promised much, but failed to deliver on almost every level that a thriller should: tension, excitement and peril. Picking Running Blind off the shelf of ‘free’ books at my local train station was something of a risk then. I am happy to report that Running Blind is a slam bang of an old-fashioned chase thriller with a strong first person narrative, plenty of twists and turns, cute dialogue, and best of all a series of well described and imagined set pieces that in turn make the reader, edgy, appalled and downright enthralled.
Alan Stewart is an ex-SIS double agent who infiltrated the Swedish branch of the KGB. Four years after a bungled operation that cost the life of a British agent and led to Stewart’s imposed early retirement, the SIS planner Slade re-recruits him for a one-off job of such extreme simplicity Stewart is immediately suspicious. And well he might be. Hours after landing in Iceland and receiving a mysterious ‘package’ his car is hijacked and he kills the assailant in a vicious knife fight. A mysterious German follows him around Reykjavik. He is assaulted by a quartet of Russians. His girlfriend’s house is being watched. Most peculiar of all, the man who set him on the mission, Slade, turns up to berate Stewart’s foolishness. If it was so easy, he wonders, why didn’t Slade do the drop-off himself; after all he's flown from London to tell Stewart how out of practice he is. Clearly the ‘package’ is much more important than he’s been told. Good thing then that Stewart hid the real package. Trouble is, now he and his girlfriend are on the run from the KGB, the SIS and the US Navy, interested parties one-and-all.
Bagley moves the action on swiftly from place to place and piece to piece. Pre-mobiles, GPS tracking, sat nav maps and all-modern-coms, the story jollies along with a good thrusting narrative and plenty of moments of PERIL. The cross-country car pursuit, even though it takes days to unfold, has a crawling TENSION. When called to, Stewart possess all the necessary skills to shoot, stab or chop his opponents into submission, companions to general EXCITEMENT. As with the best thrillers, plans go awry and as his predicament gets more and more twisted and dangerous, the avenues of escape become blocked and the suspense gets ratcheted up notch after notch. Occasionally the novel slows down for an explanatory few pages, but these feel necessary and are kept to a minimum of length. It wouldn’t do to disturb the rising tensions. Perhaps the only truly odd happenings are the posh nosh Stewart and his girlfriend take with them – stopping to cook up scrambled eggs, quails and caviar was the most bizarre turn – as well as the inability of any character to drink any liquid unless it is alcoholic, maybe coffee once or twice. Like many novels of the era, the drink quota is monumentally high.
I really enjoyed Running Blind, it hooked me with a brilliant opening gambit and almost never surrendered its hold. Bagley has picked a sure winner here. I am tempted to investigate his output a little more. This was certainly a step up from the tired, talky thrillers the literary establishment seemed to enjoy at the time [Gavin Lyall, I am looking at you…]
I've noticed the same thing. King's protagonists often seem to age with him and I notice themes of mortality more and more, especially since his near fatal accident. It's not surprising given that he is now 76 years old. After all, you write about what you know. Hopefully he still has a lot more stories to tell.
Rattlesnakes and The Answer Man were my favorites. Both had a poignancy to them (probably due to that aging thing) that really got to me. I also enjoyed the references to Duma Key in the former story.
I never thought you were a slow reader, I just figured you were savoring each story.
PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir, author of THE MARTIAN
Ryland Grace wakes up on a spacecraft hurtling towards Tau Ceti. He has amnesia and doesn't understand why he's there or why the other two members on his spacecraft are dead. With that starting premise, the book tells its story interchanging between two timelines:
The time before the mission where you find out who Ryland Grace is and what's going on on Earth. In short, there's a space borne cellular lifeform that is reducing our sun's luminosity and promising the extinction of all life on the planet.
The mission itself, post wakeup, where Grace slowly starts to remember things and must figure out what his actual mission is.
I'm being deliberately vague about the plot as a lot of really interesting things happen in both timelines, especially in the mission timeline. Ryland Grace is a funny and engaging character, much like the Mark Watney character in THE MARTIAN. It's easy to root for him and buy into his internal struggles as he works to solve countless problems and generally figure things out. The science described in the film feels real and is described in such a way as to be understandable to the lay reader. The plot, as it gradually reveals itself, is thoroughly engaging and really works beautifully. There's an element to the mission itself...a really wonderful element...that I'm deliberately not revealing but absolutely sends the novel into a very warm and heartfelt direction. The ending is fantastic.
The movie adaptation of this is currently in production with Ryan Gosling as the lead. I can't wait.
Highly recommended if you liked THE MARTIAN, book and/or movie.
Four childhood friends encounter a being from another world while on their annual hunting trip. The very fate of the world hangs in the balance and if the alien Mr. Gray is to be stopped they must tap into a power they share with a mentally challenged friend they've known since they were children. Complicating matters are the clueless military; led by the crazed Kurtz (no, the name is not a coincidence) who are focused on eradicating the threat by blowing everything up and killing innocent bystanders who may or may not have been exposed to the alien instead of seeing the bigger picture.
Dreamcatcher was a bit of a slog to get thru as I found myself repeatedly losing interest and having to take a break from the story every 40-50 pages. It was written in the months following King's near fatal accident and by his own admission in the afterword he was in a lot of discomfort while writing it. I'm sure that had a lot to do with the dip in the quality of his writing; the book often felt like a retread of numerous Stephen King tropes strung together such as the childhood friends reuniting as adults to confront evil, the strange bond between then that gives them unnatural abilities, a character who has what King would refer to in other works as "the shine" ending up being the key to the story's resolution, and so on. The basic plot is a bit reminiscent of The Tommyknockers with body horror passages that harken to Ridley Scott's Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing thrown in for good measure. King also needlessly complicates the narrative by revealing an unexpected twist about Mr. Gray near the end that only complicates the story and even appears to contradict (or at least make much harder to explain) some of the things that happened earlier.
Stephen King sometimes has a hard time integrating science fiction concepts into his horror stories and I think he fell into that trap to a degree with this book. It's not necessarily a bad effort (I've read far worse) but it doesn't reach the levels of many of his other works in my opinion.
Comments
Perhaps the best known of the Bachman books due to the movie, but not the best (I think "Thinner" wins there). Harsh and stark. There are similarities to another Bachman contribution, "The Long Walk", which I plan to reread one day unlike this one.
The movie version is not bad, though I found the ending illogical. Let me rephrase that- I found the ending more illogical than the rest of it.
I've not read The Long Walk yet but have heard good things about it except for the ending which is supposedly vague and has proven divisive to his readers. Definitely plan to check it out at some point.
I started Insomnia last night and have pre-ordered You Like It Darker as it has a nearly 40% discount on Amazon. That and a few more that I have on the shelf means there's still plenty of stories ahead of me.
THE LONG WALK is absolutely amazing. It's actually my favorite Stephen King novel (even if it is a 'Bachman' book).
Finished reading that Argyll book - it's okay, the McGuffin is the so-called Amber Room, a Russian room of marvellous treasures seized by the Nazis and seemingly lost - possibly hidden in a secret railway tunnel or on one of the Nazi Gold trains.... The thing reads like what might have been the missing Indiana Jones movie, though rather than having magical powers to empower the Nazis, the Amber Room is sought by a cruel right-wing Russian populist to ensure election... Putin isn't mentioned, it's a parallel universe book I guess. Not quite clear why said populist would put this one out to the Russian public when at that point it's clear he isn't close to getting his hands on it, relying on the spy work of the CIA - so a bit like the last Indy, in fact, as to a large extent they just follow the heroes' lead.
The lead character Argyll isn't too plausible, in his early 20s and we keep learning he's fluent in French, then German, oh and Russian too.
The finale is somewhat ambivalent for historian buffs too, without giving it away. I don't know what the deal is when you quite enjoy reading a book and getting to the end despite one's nitpicking, but I did enjoy this despite all that, I don't apply that attitude to watching recent Bond films. It makes me hesitate to review any of @Loeffelholz books because often I can be quite critical - but most of these I review are bona fide best-sellers, so why should my opinion count.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Oh - and just started reading Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood - the non-Bond Bond book. First chapter, reads quite well, should be interesting. The follow-up is out this week.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Late to the party but I'm currently finishing up THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir. Loved the movie and I'm loving the book. I wanted to tackle this before diving into his latest one, PROJECT HAIL MARY. That got optioned as the next project for Ryan Gosling and, per some friends, is an even better novel.
the Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
(mostly by) A Conan Doyle
edited by Peter Haining
a collection of bits and pieces Doyle wrote that are somehow related to Sherlock Holmes, including two or three very short stories (basically one page gags), two well known stories where someone very like Holmes writes a letter to the editor (I've read these before), two very early short stories not at all about Holmes but considered prototypical, two plays (one of which probably not by Doyle), one poem, three very useful essays about how Doyle came to write Holmes and why he killed him off, and another about how people write to him asking him to solve real life mysteries or think Holmes is a real person, an outline for a story Doyle never completed, and a story once published in Cosmopolitan attributed to Doyle but probably written by someone else.
I won't summarise each one, as the wikipedia page already does this as well as I could
looking at the online reviews, a lot of people seem to think the books a ripoff. I guess the title is deliberately misleading, but I was glad to read every word, to learn more about Doyles career as an author, his thoughts about his character and what he thought he should really be remembered for, and to learn more about these William Gillette plays I've seen mentioned a few times before. In one essay, Doyle lists his 12 favourite Holmes stories, which is sort of the equivalent to a Best Of album (one where the artist decides, not the clueless record company)
The book he thinks he should be remembered for is The White Company. anybody ever read that one? whats it like? and he also lists four short stories I never heard of as being more important than Sherlock Holmes
I'm now wondering if Fleming was influenced by The Lost Special: in Diamonds are Forever, Bond diverts a train full of villains onto a spur track and the train crashes down a closed mineshaft. Exact same thing happens in The Lost Special!
Didn't Conan Doyle go a bit spacey towards the end, into the paranormal and fairies and so on? If so, his recommendations may revolve around that latter-day obsession, I think some Holmes stories delved into this - mad, because Holmes was preoccupied with the rational & evidence-based matter.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Maybe he'd been partial to the white stuff like his hero...?
I appreciate that. But if you hiked your leg on...say, Wiley, for instance...it would give a sense of diversity to the ratings. People assume that when a book is rated over 4.7 stars but only has 23 reviews, the shifty author has deployed all of his best friends, cousins, co-conspirators etc. to spread disinformation. Strangely, I have 31 ratings on 'Yank' Amazon, and a 4.8 🤷
But it mostly speaks to my larger thesis, which is: People can't be bothered. I think this simple four-word statement explains a great deal about our situation, writ large.
Anyway, thanks for the mention 🍻
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
You have 30 good friends? I'm so happy for you! 😁
I always offer reviews. Believe it or not I can be quite kind as well. Although I have also had feedback on my feedback by authors who say " Why did you only give 3 / 4 stars when everyone else gave 5?" My reply is always "Did you read my review?" It is worth noting that 4 stars is a very good rating.
In at the Deep End by Kate Davies
This was recommended by Mumsnet as someone wanted a book with laughs and I can do with that. It was also said to be sexually filthy and that didn't put me off. It's the third modern book by a female author in a row for me, I don't know it does seem they have a particular style - then again, so do male authors. It's of a kind, plenty of dialogue, sort of banter. It is funny in an observational sort of way, kind of Brigitte Jones for lesbians. And it is really lesbian propaganda, lesbian erotic fiction though one could argue so is all erotic fiction, they're selling it after all.
Here the idea is a Londoner in her mid-20s in a sex drought has some dingy sex with a bloke that puts her off - it's an unlovely one-night stand in a horrible flat share that smells of mildew and he seems horrible too etc. For some reason I can't remember, the lead - this is all first person - decides to try out the same sex, it's the usual novice hits the black run instantly type book, discovering wild and torrid things, the contrast between her innocence and upcoming depravity I guess.
Just to be clear, this is meant to be humorous writing and it does work on that level, it is personable and didn't Erica Jong do this kind of thing in the 1970s, albeit better.
The bits that don't convince accumulated to the point that the left-had part of my brain - the critical, negative side - intervened and I began drafting my ajb review in my head. I wasn't quite sure that an attractive woman - it seems later she can have any woman she wants - would have a three-year sex drought without a better backstory to explain that, or that her male co-worker would make a similar confession over their work stations, then again I've been out of the game a bit lately myself and - ahem - what I mean is, maybe office workers do talk like that nowadays. Nor do there seem to be any snags outing herself to her flatmates or friends, it's all received as if she'd decided to become a Swiftie, or taking up yoga (I should immediately say that similar kind of jokes to this are in the book and done far, far better than me). Nor does she really get much reactton from her parents, though the timeline seems a bit off - they seem like Brigitte Jones' parents but one then admits to having had threesomes in the 1970s - do parents ever talk like that - and if that's so, I don't know this was published in 2017, wouldn't that make them too old to be the parents of a woman in their mid-20s? Maybe, plus another straight character says it's a 'waste' that Ian McKellan is gay and while it says he has grey hair, surely he's not been on anyone's shag list for a while?
Some of the insights into working for the Civil Service ring true, you get the feeling it's jobs for jobs sake.
Initially I felt this was like the gag off Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in that you think something bad is about to happen but in fact everything turns out well, but it doesn't make for great drama. It's all onwards and upwards for our heroine but while you can sense bad things happening with her cool adventures lesbian lover it has that generic feel of erotic fiction after a while and I think I'll bail on it, really, though I'm half way through. Back to the library, with this one.
I'll crack on with Kim Sherwood's Bond book though unfairly I'm starting to tire of female writers - or maybe it's just modern writing, I don't know. Perhaps it's time for George Elliott's Middlemarch.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
"The killer angels" by Michael Sharaa
This is a historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg: The novel got a Pulizer, it's filmed under the title "Gettysburg" (where George Lazenby plays i Norge e of the generals) and incredibly it inspired the excellent sci-fi TV series "Firefly". The villain of the last episode is even named after the Confederate general Jubal Early. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one person, almost always a general on one of the two sides. Trying to get inside the heads of people who died long ago is risky. But I the author did a lot of research reading diaries, autobiographies and so on and I find their voices convincing. The novel does a wonderful job of making this terrible battle come alive in our minds. I especially liked how some scenes are calm and reflective, but the battle scenes are written in a hectic and flashes of sensations style. I imagine many of of the soldiers experienced the worst fighting that way. The authors doesn't make anyone the villain and there were horoic characters on both sides. But one of the Union generals say: "Without slavery there wouldn't be a war" and that's my impression too. The constitutions of the Confederate states certainly are straight forward in saying it was about slavery.
I'm a history buff, but i haven't really done a deep dive into the American civil war. Now I'd like to do that. I know Sharaa's son has written a prequel and a sequel. i also plan to read a book that's an overview of the whole conflict written by an historian. This novel was a fine way to start.
THE SHIP THAT SAILED THE TIME STREAM (1965)
TO SAIL THE CENTURY SEA (1981)
Both by G.C. Edmondson
I read the first of these many years ago, loved it, and re-read it at least twice since. Only recently did I find out that there was a sequel, which I instantly ordered. I read the first again to refresh my memory (okay, also because I knew I would enjoy it) before reading the second.
Our main character is Joe Rate, who commands a US Navy yacht called the Alice which accidentally becomes capable of time travel and bounces around various periods (Vikings, Romans, etc) while struggling to get back to her own time. Joe is an engaging lead and his crew Gorson, Cook, etc, exist as well-drawn characters rather than mere stereotypes. The same is true of the people they meet on their journeys.
To say the first ends on a cliffhanger would be putting matters too strongly- let’s just say that some matters are unresolved. Are they resolved in the second story? You’ll have to read it and see. One weakness I felt was the tendency for the crew to get into some sort of major trouble and then simply time-jump their way out of it … only to end up in bigger trouble. If you can enjoy Star Trek, though, that won’t bother you.
There is a barrage of nautical terms throughout both, most of which went right over my distinctly non-nautical head and were ignored with little or no effect on reading enjoyment. Similarly, I am sadly ignorant of exactly how much real history is included (eg The Council of Nicaea, which I know only the barest details about, figures strongly in the plot of the second book) and how much the author has made up to suit his tale but again this doesn’t affect reading enjoyment.
I’m not sure if they can be read online, but an earlier book by the same author can so it isn’t impossible.
THE DISPOSSESSED – Ursula Le Guin (1974)
A political melodrama disguised as science fiction.
Ursula Le Guin was lauded for this intellectual piece of fantasy set in the far distant future on two colony planets so long developed they’ve virtually forgotten their ancestors originated from Mother Earth – or Terra as they name it. A race of aliens, called the Hainish, hover in the background and do very little, while the overarching ‘democracy’ of the nine-planet Council of World Governments represents something like Star Trek’s fictional Federation or the contemporary real life United Nations. The CWG is as ineffectual as both of those organisations, real or imaginary.
The story proper involves the mathematician Shevek. He lives on the dust blown moon of Anarres, fulfilling his roles as scientist, life partner and anarchist. Anarres is a government-free community-organised society without religion, authority figures, justice system, marriage, currency, etc; even individuality, such as one might see in art, is frowned upon. The first colonists of this communist style world escaped and cut themselves off from the rampant capitalism of the parent planet Urras, where riches and luxury go hand in glove with destitution, sickness and slavery. Shevek has proposed The Principle of Simultaneity, a theory that will revolutionise interstellar travel. The Odonians [as Anarres’ inhabitants call themselves] are suspicious of his theory, so Shevek becomes an Egoist – read ‘anarchist’ but Le Guin disguises it beneath intellectual fluff about individualism and personal suffering – and challenges the civilisation’s ‘discussion syndicates’ to allow him to visit Urras, where he can better test his scientific theories. But is life in the capitalist world better or worse for Shevek and who can he trust among the scientists and rich profiters he encounters?
An unnecessarily long novel does itself no favours by describing at length a lot of historical, social and scientific guff about the worlds and the futures Le Guin has created. It is superfluous to the narrative and slows the robust, dangerously subversive plot to a crawl. While her descriptions are vivid and strong, Le Guin’s characters are weak, aside from Shevek himself, who inhabits every page. The most notable supporting character is the married whore Vae, whose attitude to life, possessions and men is as casual as Undine Spragg’s in The Custom of the Country. The dramatic difference between Vae’s lifestyle and assumptions and Shevek’s is brilliantly visualised. Contrasts such as this don’t arise often enough. Too often all the characters sound alike, especially when Shevek and his partner Takver talk to each other; their dialogue is simply insipid; it is a love affair of no excitement.
When matters come to a head on both Urras and Anarres – the book’s structure tells Shevek’s 40-year life story alongside his four years on Urras – the pace quickens and the urgency of the actions and debates takes on a less grand and specific tone. As Le Guin deals more with generalisations, her prose improves. But she prefers to bog herself down with complicated ideological machinations. It takes a long, laborious time to reach the cold anti-climax of the final chapter. Instead of injecting pace and power into her story, Le Guin’s major concern – one unnamed by any character, is how corruption of the flesh and the mind permeates through every civilised culture, so even the messianic, inscrutable Shevek becomes vulnerable as he challenges the social orders of both his home and his exile world.
I don’t read much sci-fi, so I honestly can’t judge if this is good sci-fi or not. I didn’t like it to be honest.
Insomnia by Stephen King
Recently widowed, Ralph Roberts has developed a bad case of insomnia. Waking up earlier and earlier every morning is bad enough but when he starts seeing auras around people and little bald men in white lab coats around town he starts to fear for his sanity. But we're in the town of Derry, Maine, a town with a long history of secrets and strange goings on. Ralph isn't going mad and the strange power that his insomnia is awakening within him may actually be the key to stopping an evil plan that could destroy not just his world but countless others as well.
Insomnia is something of a divisive book among King's readers. The pacing is slow, even by King's standards, and the book takes a really long time to reveal the actual threat Ralph must face. For much of the novel he feels like a puppet on a string, moved forward by forces he cannot see or control and frustrated that information is being held from him. While reading the story I could empathize. There is also a subplot regarding an abortion rights rally that is going to be held which has divided the town even as dark forces plot to use it to their advantage.
Some of the characters are also not as well defined as in most of his other works. One dies suddenly and pretty meaninglessly. Another clearly knows a lot about Ralph's condition and his task but we never really find out how or why he has this knowledge. Other than Ralph and his friend Lois, just about everybody else felt like a placeholder who was there just to help move the story along and then largely discarded.
The book ties in to King's Dark Tower saga in a pretty big way and that's probably its biggest attraction.
Overall, I liked the story even though it was a bit of a slog at times and was moved by what happened to Ralph and Lois at the end, but it's not one that I think I'll be revisiting.
I enjoyed it at the time, and have always thought I'd get round to reading it again someday. Still, we can't all like the same thing.
At the moment working my way through an endless series of Solar Pons short stories (I've discussed these earlier) while awaiting the new King. Less than a week!
"The spy who came in from the cold" By John le Carré.
This is the novel that kicked off le Carré's writing career and it's an espionage classic. The plot takes place at the start of the 1960's. The MI6 is losing too many agents in Germany and the East German secret service "Abteilung" is real problem. I'm not going to say more about the plot, but I found it engaging and tense. Sometimes le Carré over-complicates the plot and goes to far in the nihilistic "we're all crooks, really" world view, at least in my experience. But here it all works. In fact the only thing I didn't like is that the author seems to have believed (at the time) Finland is a Scandinavian country. If you can live with this major flaw (😉) and you want to read an excellent spy novel, "The spy who came in from the cold" is for you!
I liked it, just not as much as some of his other stuff that I've read recently. I'd been reading more of his earlier stuff recently and I think that's been resonating with me more.
You Like It Darker will be my next one; I managed to get a 40% pre-order discount from Amazon on that one and I should get it next week.
"On her majesty's secret service" by Ian ..... something.
This isn't my first time reading OHMSS. My conclusion this time is that this is a good spy novel, but like GF (but to a lesser degree) the movie improved on the novel in some ways. For example the book spends far too much time on the expert from the Ministry of Agriculture. But I really did enjoy reading it. A lot.
It was the first Fleming I read, and it changed my life. My favorite of his, possibly because of the overall gravitas of the piece.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
You Like It Darker by Stephen King
A collection of short stories, many never before published, that cross multiple genres including horror, crime drama and science fiction. For me there were four standouts:
Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream: a man has a psychic vision of a dead woman buried behind an abandoned gas station. When he tries to do the right thing and report it to the police, he learns firsthand that no good deed goes unpunished.
Rattlesnakes: Vic Trenton, who we last saw in the novel Cujo, retreats to a mansion in Florida in the middle of the COVID epidemic. Strange happenings ensue.
The Dreamers: A Vietnam vet and a scientist explore the dark corners of reality in a tale with a strong HP Lovecraft vibe.
The Answer Man: Budding lawyer Phil Parker encounters a man who can answer any question asked of him, but the answers he gets aren't always the ones he wants to hear.
Like many anthologies, some stories are better than others but all were interesting reads that held my attention and stayed with after I finished them. Also like other Stephen King stories, there are many references to his other works which aren't necessary to be familiar with, but can yield welcome little Easter eggs if you are.
@TonyDP I'm reading it right now, will read the above when I'm finished!
Don't worry @Barbel, I anticipated this and my summary is spoiler free. 😉
@TonyDP - finished it now, and agree with your thoughts. "Danny" is very gripping, and probably my favourite here. Some excellent stories I'm glad to have read. Have you noticed that his protagonists have been getting older? Not all of them, but it's a definite trend.
(I'm not that slow a reader, I've been on holiday)
RUNNING BLIND – Desmond Bagley (1970)
Last year, I read Desmond Bagley’s The Spoilers and found it to be distinctly unimpressive. The novel promised much, but failed to deliver on almost every level that a thriller should: tension, excitement and peril. Picking Running Blind off the shelf of ‘free’ books at my local train station was something of a risk then. I am happy to report that Running Blind is a slam bang of an old-fashioned chase thriller with a strong first person narrative, plenty of twists and turns, cute dialogue, and best of all a series of well described and imagined set pieces that in turn make the reader, edgy, appalled and downright enthralled.
Alan Stewart is an ex-SIS double agent who infiltrated the Swedish branch of the KGB. Four years after a bungled operation that cost the life of a British agent and led to Stewart’s imposed early retirement, the SIS planner Slade re-recruits him for a one-off job of such extreme simplicity Stewart is immediately suspicious. And well he might be. Hours after landing in Iceland and receiving a mysterious ‘package’ his car is hijacked and he kills the assailant in a vicious knife fight. A mysterious German follows him around Reykjavik. He is assaulted by a quartet of Russians. His girlfriend’s house is being watched. Most peculiar of all, the man who set him on the mission, Slade, turns up to berate Stewart’s foolishness. If it was so easy, he wonders, why didn’t Slade do the drop-off himself; after all he's flown from London to tell Stewart how out of practice he is. Clearly the ‘package’ is much more important than he’s been told. Good thing then that Stewart hid the real package. Trouble is, now he and his girlfriend are on the run from the KGB, the SIS and the US Navy, interested parties one-and-all.
Bagley moves the action on swiftly from place to place and piece to piece. Pre-mobiles, GPS tracking, sat nav maps and all-modern-coms, the story jollies along with a good thrusting narrative and plenty of moments of PERIL. The cross-country car pursuit, even though it takes days to unfold, has a crawling TENSION. When called to, Stewart possess all the necessary skills to shoot, stab or chop his opponents into submission, companions to general EXCITEMENT. As with the best thrillers, plans go awry and as his predicament gets more and more twisted and dangerous, the avenues of escape become blocked and the suspense gets ratcheted up notch after notch. Occasionally the novel slows down for an explanatory few pages, but these feel necessary and are kept to a minimum of length. It wouldn’t do to disturb the rising tensions. Perhaps the only truly odd happenings are the posh nosh Stewart and his girlfriend take with them – stopping to cook up scrambled eggs, quails and caviar was the most bizarre turn – as well as the inability of any character to drink any liquid unless it is alcoholic, maybe coffee once or twice. Like many novels of the era, the drink quota is monumentally high.
I really enjoyed Running Blind, it hooked me with a brilliant opening gambit and almost never surrendered its hold. Bagley has picked a sure winner here. I am tempted to investigate his output a little more. This was certainly a step up from the tired, talky thrillers the literary establishment seemed to enjoy at the time [Gavin Lyall, I am looking at you…]
I've noticed the same thing. King's protagonists often seem to age with him and I notice themes of mortality more and more, especially since his near fatal accident. It's not surprising given that he is now 76 years old. After all, you write about what you know. Hopefully he still has a lot more stories to tell.
Rattlesnakes and The Answer Man were my favorites. Both had a poignancy to them (probably due to that aging thing) that really got to me. I also enjoyed the references to Duma Key in the former story.
I never thought you were a slow reader, I just figured you were savoring each story.
PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir, author of THE MARTIAN
Ryland Grace wakes up on a spacecraft hurtling towards Tau Ceti. He has amnesia and doesn't understand why he's there or why the other two members on his spacecraft are dead. With that starting premise, the book tells its story interchanging between two timelines:
I'm being deliberately vague about the plot as a lot of really interesting things happen in both timelines, especially in the mission timeline. Ryland Grace is a funny and engaging character, much like the Mark Watney character in THE MARTIAN. It's easy to root for him and buy into his internal struggles as he works to solve countless problems and generally figure things out. The science described in the film feels real and is described in such a way as to be understandable to the lay reader. The plot, as it gradually reveals itself, is thoroughly engaging and really works beautifully. There's an element to the mission itself...a really wonderful element...that I'm deliberately not revealing but absolutely sends the novel into a very warm and heartfelt direction. The ending is fantastic.
The movie adaptation of this is currently in production with Ryan Gosling as the lead. I can't wait.
Highly recommended if you liked THE MARTIAN, book and/or movie.
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
Four childhood friends encounter a being from another world while on their annual hunting trip. The very fate of the world hangs in the balance and if the alien Mr. Gray is to be stopped they must tap into a power they share with a mentally challenged friend they've known since they were children. Complicating matters are the clueless military; led by the crazed Kurtz (no, the name is not a coincidence) who are focused on eradicating the threat by blowing everything up and killing innocent bystanders who may or may not have been exposed to the alien instead of seeing the bigger picture.
Dreamcatcher was a bit of a slog to get thru as I found myself repeatedly losing interest and having to take a break from the story every 40-50 pages. It was written in the months following King's near fatal accident and by his own admission in the afterword he was in a lot of discomfort while writing it. I'm sure that had a lot to do with the dip in the quality of his writing; the book often felt like a retread of numerous Stephen King tropes strung together such as the childhood friends reuniting as adults to confront evil, the strange bond between then that gives them unnatural abilities, a character who has what King would refer to in other works as "the shine" ending up being the key to the story's resolution, and so on. The basic plot is a bit reminiscent of The Tommyknockers with body horror passages that harken to Ridley Scott's Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing thrown in for good measure. King also needlessly complicates the narrative by revealing an unexpected twist about Mr. Gray near the end that only complicates the story and even appears to contradict (or at least make much harder to explain) some of the things that happened earlier.
Stephen King sometimes has a hard time integrating science fiction concepts into his horror stories and I think he fell into that trap to a degree with this book. It's not necessarily a bad effort (I've read far worse) but it doesn't reach the levels of many of his other works in my opinion.