I liked this one a lot. Hilarious set piece at the beginning when Bond gets sent to a health spa called Shrubland. The plot revolves around a criminalI liked this one a lot. Hilarious set piece at the beginning when Bond gets sent to a health spa called Shrubland. The plot revolves around a criminal organization called SPECTRE, I think this is the first book in which that organization is featured. They have stolen two atomic bonds and are asking for a huge ransom. Bond teams up with his CIA buddy Felix Leiter in Jamaica.
I was thinking about the way Daniel Silva often has Gabriel Allon teamed up with the CIA. Hadn't realized before how it was Ian Fleming who introduced that trope. The stealing of atomic weapons is also quite contemporary for 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Fleming's writing is more literary than in previous books. His descriptions of underwater scenes especially. One more to go: The Spy Who Loved Me, and I will have read the entire series. ...more
I have been sad and worried about a beloved relative who is very sick. For a few hours Roald Dahl made me forget all that and feel delighted, even hapI have been sad and worried about a beloved relative who is very sick. For a few hours Roald Dahl made me forget all that and feel delighted, even happy.
It is a familiar story. James is a sad, abused orphan who is gifted some magic and sails away on a giant peach. He has only insects for companions and rallies to protect them from danger with bright ideas. Then comes the completely fantastical and unrealistic happy ending.
Now I have a secret weapon against sadness and worry! ...more
[Translation note: Solaris was written in Polish and published in Poland in 1961. The Harvest edition of 1970 was translated from the French by Joanna[Translation note: Solaris was written in Polish and published in Poland in 1961. The Harvest edition of 1970 was translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Stanislaw Lem pronounced the French translation "poor." In 2011, Bill Johnston published the first and only translation direct from the Polish to English.]
Solaris is the third of three books I read in February that have a Polish connection. The first was the historical novel Poland by James Michener. The second was Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, set in a 21st century Polish village. Solaris is by a Polish author but is set in space. This little challenge left me giddy.
I read Solaris because it is an iconic sci fi novel published in 1961 just as the space race was taking off. I read the "poor" Kilmartin/Cox translation mentioned above, not knowing until the other day that there was a better one. That may explain some oddities I noticed.
Even so, it is an amazing tale about a station on Polaris, a planet orbiting two suns and covered mainly by an ocean, possibly a sentient body of something similar to water. This ocean functions as a sort of massive brain with the power to create psychological changes in the Earth scientists who come to study it.
The novel opens with the arrival of Kris Kelvin, a trained psychologist and astronaut, who finds the station in disarray with two of the remaining astronauts acting quite deranged and a third dead. Kris is a strong, no nonsense character, brave and deliberate. Soon enough he too begins to suffer from what may be hallucinations but may be something else.
I did enjoy and admire the story. It dawns on any reader who has read much science fiction that Lem did not write a standard sci fi tale compared to American works. His book is also allegorical, humanistic instead of militaristic, and satirical about the whole space project as it is playing out on Earth. He seems to be making an examination of what may lie beneath man's quest to find life on other planets.
Each character has brought his personal psychological baggage to space. The ocean on Solaris appears to have the purpose of revealing the suppressed emotional darkness of that baggage to the spacemen, causing what appear to be hallucinations of people from each one's past.
So very creepy and disconcerting but also exciting. You wonder who will succumb and who will survive. Kris Kelvin tells this story of how he came to penetrate the purposes of the ocean. Did he? Or did he go insane? The end of the story is a somewhat murky yet somehow satisfying conclusion.
Two movies have been made from this translation. One in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and one in 2002 by Stephen Soderberg, starring George Clooney. I saw one of them, not sure which, several years ago and came away not understanding what I had just watched. I have requested the 1972 movie from Netflix.
Now tell me of your Solaris encounters, if you have any....more
Set in a Southern town in the United States in the late 1950s. In her final novel, Carson McCullers directly addresses racism, white supremacy and theSet in a Southern town in the United States in the late 1950s. In her final novel, Carson McCullers directly addresses racism, white supremacy and the whole anti-federal govt and states rights thing. In truth, she had been addressing all of this all along, but never so directly. A man learns he has leukemia and only 15 months to live. A clock without hands is his image for how that feels. McCullers was ill and near death herself when she wrote the book. She knew of what she wrote. I have now read all her novels. I have loved them all. ...more
This was the most challenging book I read in October. Normally I read about 30 pages an hour. It took me three days to read 119 pages and six more da This was the most challenging book I read in October. Normally I read about 30 pages an hour. It took me three days to read 119 pages and six more days to finish. In the end, it was also one of the most rewarding.
The barriers to my reading speed were the time period (1547 was not a known time to me), the humongous list of characters (though thankfully a character list is provided), the politics between Scotland and England in that time, and a fairly convoluted plot. With quite a bit of help from the internet, I conquered all!
A Game of Kings is the first in Dorothy Dunnett's six book series, The Lymond Chronicles. Francis Crawford of Lymond is a fantastic character whom I now intend to follow to the end of the series. He reminded me of one of my favorite Neal Stephenson characters, Jack Shaftoe from his Baroque Cycle trilogy.
Francis is a wily, outrageous, determined patriot of Scotland, carrying deep personal burdens, who comes within inches of being hanged by his own people. It is as though he embodies all the evil of those he fights against. He understands the craven qualities of his enemies so completely that he defeats them by aping them.
I learned a lot more than Scottish history by reading and figuring out The Game of Kings. It was an education in how to read. If I want to read such deep and twisty historical books (and I do), I have to put in some work of my own. 16th century Scotland had many differences from present day America.
A big theme in the book is chess and I have never mastered that game's intricacies, but I was forced to understand it a bit better as Dunnett uses it as a metaphor for the times when kings and queens ruled the world.
So, thank you to Dorothy Dunnett (1923-2001) and to Helen at her blog: She Reads Novels. Dorothy must have been someone close to genius. Helen is one of the most knowledgeable bloggers I know when it comes to historical fiction and she introduced me to Dorothy....more
A freak wind eventually whips around the earth at over 500 miles an hour. This is his first novel and has numerous flaws and weaknesses but still he cA freak wind eventually whips around the earth at over 500 miles an hour. This is his first novel and has numerous flaws and weaknesses but still he creates an apocalyptic event beyond anything else I have read about except Hiroshima by John Hersey. Look out world!...more
Good but not great. Certainly not as good as The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It is a Jesus story but interesting because the main character is a young ZeGood but not great. Certainly not as good as The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It is a Jesus story but interesting because the main character is a young Zealot. I haven't seen a Zealot sympathetically portrayed very often, especially in a book for kids. In the end though, the plot was too predictable....more
Robert Penn Warren's seventh novel is set in Civil War times but though he draws on his studies of that conflict, it is really about something else.
A Robert Penn Warren's seventh novel is set in Civil War times but though he draws on his studies of that conflict, it is really about something else.
Adam Rosenzweig, born a club-footed Bavarian Jew, sets out on a quest to honor his recently deceased father. His intent is to fight for freedom, that having been the defining mission of his father's life. He gets himself a special boot to correct his deformed foot and takes a ship to America where he plans to join the Union Army and fight for the freedom of the slaves.
Of course nothing turns out as he planned. He spends time in army camps in an area called the Wilderness, working for a sutler. His only friend is a Negro fellow employee and he experiences all the grit and suffering and insanity of war without ever fighting as a soldier.
Thus the novel becomes a story about living according to one's passion, no matter how innocently conceived nor how badly carried out, because to live any other way is hardly to have lived.
I liked the book. At times it reminded me of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The voice and major themes of RPW's writings come through loud and clear.
On the night Adam's father was buried he thought, "This was the moment when the dead realize the truth: This is it, it will never be different. To be dead, he thought, that was to know that nothing would ever be different. He thought: I am alive."
An early MZB novel from 1961 or 1962, depending on where you look. I found it an accomplished and entertaining sci fi novel with Heinlein and Asimov i An early MZB novel from 1961 or 1962, depending on where you look. I found it an accomplished and entertaining sci fi novel with Heinlein and Asimov influences plus her signature feminist views.
Seven survivors of an intergalactic ship find themselves on Earth near a large Texas city. Each is a level of telepath or telempath also programmed to adapt to wherever they are and assimilate so well that the locals don't recognize them as extra-terrestrials. Earth is considered a Closed Planet meaning they will not be rescued.
As time passes a baby is born, there are conflicts amongst the survivors, and they become involved with a Texas rancher and his family. MZB gets in some semi-political commentary on Mexicans and immigration and treatment of illegals as employees.
Most of all I liked her nicely worked out neuroscience of telepaths (who can receive and transmit worded thoughts in any language they know) versus telempaths (who can probe the thoughts and emotions of all humans as well as translate these into the languages and concepts of any other race.)
Due to these excellent skills as well as intelligent assimilation most of the seven survive and are able to bring a boon to Earth. Great story!...more
I don't recall how I first heard about Castle Dor. I think it was reviewed by one of my Goodreads friends. Since I am doing a completist reading of du
I don't recall how I first heard about Castle Dor. I think it was reviewed by one of my Goodreads friends. Since I am doing a completist reading of du Maurier's novels, I added it to my list.
Castle Dor was an incomplete novel by the very literary and august (according to my research) Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He died before finishing it. The du Mauriers were friends of Quiller-Couch so his daughter asked Daphne du Maurier to take over and write the rest of the book.
The story is based on the Celtic myth of Tristan and Iseult. Even I, who have only dabbled in mythology, know that tragic story of star-crossed lovers. In this version, which is set in the early 1840s near the Fowey River in the Cornish countryside, certain individuals unknowingly play the parts of the main characters in the legend.
The setting and the slipstream notion of people reliving a story from centuries earlier was the idea of Quiller-Couch. In the prologue he imparts the imaginations of a local doctor who spends the night waiting on a birth by standing on the ancient earthwork of a ruined Castle Dor and begins to fancy that he can perceive the sorrowful tale of those who lived there far in the past.
I loved the concept: "All England is a palimsest of such (quarrel, ancient feud, litigation), scored over with writ of hate and love, begettings of children beneath the hazels, appeals, curses, concealed travails." I was however challenged by the original author's rather florid and wordy style.
In several reviews readers have claimed that the continuation of the writing by du Maurier is seamless. I could tell right away when she took over, partly I suppose because I am familiar with her voice. Suddenly about a third of the way through I could read smoothly and easily without having to reread almost every sentence several times.
Then the book became a pageturner though it never lost that time travel essence. I ended up loving it and feeling as sad as if I hadn't know the lovers were doomed. I admired the skill with which she and Quiller-Couch placed the elements of the legend into the realities of life in the 1840s.
Martin is happily married to Antonia but also has a mistress names Georgie. Antonia is older than Martin and undergoing analysis. Suddenly she leaves Martin is happily married to Antonia but also has a mistress names Georgie. Antonia is older than Martin and undergoing analysis. Suddenly she leaves Martin and moves in with Anderson, her analyst. Anderson's sister Honor tells Antonia about Georgie. Honor is such a truly cracked character that she makes the rest of them look only mildly weird in comparison.
Again a 1961 novel about infidelity. In contrast to Wallace Stegner's A Shooting Star, this one is a breath of fresh air with that almost slapstick feeling Murdoch does so well. Every time I felt I had a grip on the plot, she went in exactly the opposite direction I would predict.
I can just hear some of my reading group ladies getting riled up because not one character is likable or admirable. I certainly did not imagine that the tortured, non-self-aware Martin would end up with ...ah, I can't say. But as she tells Martin, "This has nothing to do with happiness, nothing whatever."
And that is the joke percolating through the whole tale. Many of us tried open marriage in the 70s. What a Pandora's Box! We should have read A Severed Head first....more
Wallace Stegner has been an uneven novelist for this reader. I first read his 1943 historical The Big Rock Candy Mountain, a book I could not put dow Wallace Stegner has been an uneven novelist for this reader. I first read his 1943 historical The Big Rock Candy Mountain, a book I could not put down. The Preacher and the Slave, about Joe Hill and the Wobblies was also riveting. A couple others left me either bored or less than enraptured.
He was a great writer both in craft and the conveying of emotion, but sometimes I feel he tried too hard, even to the point of preaching his message too obviously. In A Shooting Star he went overboard on wordiness, his story arc took too long to arc, and while he tried hard to understand his female protagonist, a judgmental flavor spoiled the result.
I've had a time reading my 1961 list, as it has featured many long books and some weaker books by authors I have previously admired. However, as harbingers of cultural change to come, especially the sexual revolution of the late 60s and the second wave of feminism in the 70s, many of these novels are examples of how writers had their fingers on the pulse of change before it became apparent in mainstream culture.
Sabrina Castro, raised in a deeply screwed up but fabulously wealthy family, married a physician. As her husband became successful with rich matrons in Los Angeles, he began to neglect Sabrina. Because she was not able to conceive a child, she was restless, unfulfilled, and lonely. What does a woman in such straights do? She takes a lover. Thus the drama begins.
And goes on and on. Stegner creates tension with Sabrina's indecision about her marriage, her husband (a sanctimonious jerk), and her future. I am fully aware that female dithering is commonplace. I have been guilty of it myself. Reading about it drives me to distraction.
So OK, he gets that aspect of female life and it is in the 1950s when a woman could not easily go outside of accepted societal norms, no matter how rich she was, but it still went on too long. I also detected whiffs of Freudian concepts about females suffering from infantile behavior. Yuck! A woman working through issues with a messed up mother is not infantile, she is working through issues.
Bottom line: worth reading as a sign of the times; maddening that it took me six days to do so....more
I have a fascination with Hunter S Thompson. To me, he is the quintessential bad boy of the late 60s and onward. In your face, always high, and gettin I have a fascination with Hunter S Thompson. To me, he is the quintessential bad boy of the late 60s and onward. In your face, always high, and getting away with it. I used to fall for guys like that. I even married one but it didn't last. Still, I have a romantic remnant that attracts me to such rebels.
But I haven't read his books, just his Rolling Stone pieces as they appeared during the years I was reading that mag, before it lost its edge. So, in my usual way, I am starting at the beginning.
The Rum Diary is a book dripping with legend and lore: that Thompson wrote it in 1960 when he was a Hemingway worshipper but couldn't get it published, that Johnny Depp found the manuscript among Thompson's papers and got it published in 1998, that Depp finally got it made as a movie in 2011, six years after Thompson's death. When it comes to Hunter S Thompson, the truth is deeply buried in his outrageous persona.
I put the book on the 1961 list for My Big Fat Reading Project. I saw the movie last year and it was good. Depp spiffed it up for the 21st century but the book is better; less flashy, more sunk in youthful despair, and the female character is unrecognizable. She is not the one in the movie, she is more pathetic, but most of all she fits right in with the way bad girls were portrayed by male novelists in the early 60s. Hemingway would have approved.
The Rum Diary is a quick read. Since it is about newspaper people working at a failing daily paper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it reminded me a little of The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, though this is the better book in my opinion. As a piece of Hunter Thompson history, the novel contains numerous harbingers of the man's later writing. Next up: Hell's Angels, 1966!...more
As has become routine for me with Amado's novels, it seemed to take forever to get my reading up to speed in Home Is the Sailor. As in every earlier n As has become routine for me with Amado's novels, it seemed to take forever to get my reading up to speed in Home Is the Sailor. As in every earlier novel of his though, I came to the end feeling I had been told an informative and entertaining tale.
The eponymous sailor, Vasco Moscosco de Aragao, had never sailed a ship in all of his 60 years. He was the son of a Brazilian businessman and raised by his grandfather in the city, caring nothing for business or hard work. Wealthy and gregarious, he made friends in high places. His only sorrow in life was that he had no title, no rank, no degree. He was only Mr de Aragao.
Or so the story goes. The book's narrator calls himself a historian, while he is in fact a lowly journalist in a town of retirees, whose lover is the whore of a rich man. When Captain Vasco Moscosco de Aragao arrives in town, calling himself a Master Mariner, he instantly becomes the most popular man around due to his exciting tales of adventure on the oceans of the world. The former most popular townsperson becomes jealous and challenges the truth of the Captain's claims.
Our narrator/historian takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of the conflict and the reader is the beneficiary as his findings are related. Twists and turns, cliffhangers, and Amado's signature humor all come together in the second half of the novel which I read at four times the speed as I did the first half.
It could have been that I am not Brazilian, that Portuguese is difficult to translate, that Amado's sentences are eerily similar to William Faulkner's, or that I have been reading so much contemporary fiction. I don't care what caused my trouble. It was worth reading and the theme is oddly contemporary. Captain de Aragao, Master Mariner, was a certain kind of self-made man, composed of his past, his connections, his dreams, and his gift for enjoying life. As Amado says to us on the final page:
"Does truth lie in the everyday events, the daily incidents, in the pettiness and vulgarity most people's lives are composed of, or does the truth have its abode in the dream it is given us to dream to free our sad human condition?"...more
I haven't read Mahfouz since I was working on my 1959 reading list a couple years ago and read Children of the Alley, an allegorical fable about man' I haven't read Mahfouz since I was working on my 1959 reading list a couple years ago and read Children of the Alley, an allegorical fable about man's inability to solve the problems of life. That book was a change from the realism of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy.
The Thief and the Dogs represents another transition for the author: an impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness style and an economy of language.
A man is released from prison after four years. His trial and sentence also lost him his wife and child. A former friend had betrayed the man, testified against him, and stole away the wife and child.
In attempting to reintegrate into society and recover his family, the man only falls upon bad luck and rejection, until finally he descends into despair and madness.
I sensed echos of Camus and Dostoevsky as I read. The translation is excellent but also I think Mahfouz's wide reading of literature from around the world had a large influence on these changes in his novels. Reading nerd that I am, I get excited about things like that....more
This was Mary Stewart's sixth novel, but the fourth I have read. I skipped her first two. I had some problems reading it.
I started the book soon after This was Mary Stewart's sixth novel, but the fourth I have read. I skipped her first two. I had some problems reading it.
I started the book soon after I got home from the hospital in May. (And I promise, this is the last book connected with my illness, so I shall say no more about that after this.) My concentration was very poor and I could not figure out what was going on in the story. My attention would wander after a few paragraphs so I gave up.
Then by chance I discovered Mary Stewart had died on May 9, at the age of 97, peacefully in her bed, at home in Scotland. I'm sure there is no connection but it was a bit creepy because May 9 was the day I got sick. In reading her obituaries in the British papers, I learned all kinds of interesting facts about her life. I also read a rare interview she gave in 1989 and gained more insight into her writing.
So I decided to begin again with The Ivy Tree in July and made it to the end in just a few days but still did not like it much. As was usual for her at that point in her career, it is a romance though you don't learn about the love story connected with the main character until the latter part of the book. At first it seems to be almost crime fiction as a man, his sister and the main character collude in a plot to inherit a dying man's property. For sure there is a mystery surrounding the female main character.
What I think is that Mary Stewart decided to up her game and write a more literary book than her previous mystery/romances. She about doubled the amount of words describing the surroundings compared to those earlier books. While it is consummate descriptive writing, it kept interrupting the flow of the plot. Her efforts did not all work together smoothly and she lost the page-turning knack she'd had. Her signature final plot twist was still there however!
After reading the above mentioned interview, I knew that she was not a person to rest on her laurels and she never followed the advice of her publisher as to what she ought to write. I have to admire that. I wonder what she will do next....more