Tag: Books

Autumn reading roundup

On By Laura MorganIn Books, Buildings

Interspersed with P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, I have managed to bend my eyes around a few proper books in the last month or two…

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is great fun, my fondness for locally-set stories notwithstanding.   It reminded me a bit of The Wimbledon Poisoner, which is still the only book to have reduced me to helpless, sobbing fits of laughter.  On a crowded train.  I have also bought myself a copy of The Wimbledon Poisoner, which I intend to treat myself to a re-reading of over Christmas.

Jack Maggs is a clever, sideways re-telling of Great Expectations, but I don’t think you’d need to have read the latter book to enjoy it.  Worth it for the atmosphere and the dialogue; Peter Carey catches the Dickensian tone almost perfectly, which makes it all the more jarring on the couple of occasions where he misses it.

The Choking Doberman is all of the things I like best: a meandering, thoughtful discourse on the nature and history of some of the most famous urban legends of our times.  It was published over twenty years ago so there’s been plenty of development since, but the most interesting aspect of it is how many stories which I heard in the 1980s and 1990s were old news even then.  It’s also funny, creepy and disturbing in equal measure, and some of the stories are fantastically gruesome.

Mommie Dearest is Joan Crawford’s daughter Christina’s account of a life lived in the shadow of one of Hollywood’s more genuine fuck-ups.  The stories she tells about her childhood are harrowing, but I came out of it feeling more sorry for Joan, who never overcame her deep unhappiness, than for Christina, who at least managed to find her way out of it and make some sort of normal life for herself.  Worth reading, but steel yourself.

I had been slightly put off The Yiddish Policemen’s Union because for a while it seemed to be one of those books which everyone was reading, and I have a slight and perverse desire not to read those books, or at least not at the same time as everybody else reads them.  I remember mentioning a few years ago to two friends that I was reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, and having them both tell me that they were reading it too.  I felt sullied, and was slightly put off the book.  Anyway, I eventually got around to TYPU and I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed it very much indeed.  I don’t know if it’s because the characters are speaking and thinking in Yiddish (though everything is in English), or if that’s just the way Michael Chabon writes, but the language is so crunchy and substantial that the pleasure one takes in reading it is almost palpable.  It’s exactly as satisfying as making the first footprint in a sheet of deep snow.  It’s also a murder mystery, and I like them lots.

I’m now halfway through a book of short stories by Ethan Coen, which so far I’m also enjoying, and for similar reasons.  But that’s a post for another day.

Books I have recently read

On By Laura MorganIn Books

I got out of the habit of keeping track of the books I was reading here.  Let me see how many of them I can remember.

The Periodic Table, which I can’t believe I hadn’t got around to before.  Lovely; everyone should read it.

The Mezzanine, which marked a pause in my relationship with Nicholson Baker, as the ratio of style to content seemed to tip too far in favour of the former.  That’s not really a criticism I can justify in any detail, but this is my blog and I don’t have to.  I have since read some of his New York Times articles and my Baker-love is back.

The Uncommon Reader: there’s nothing wrong with this, but I’m as big a fan of Alan Bennett’s prose as you’re likely to meet, and I didn’t love it.

The Rain Before It Falls – see above, but replace “Alan Bennett” with “Jonathan Coe”.

Bollocks to Alton Towers, which despite its title is a sweet and thoughtful guide to some lesser-known tourist spots around Britain.

Frantic – Scott Pack, whose judgement I trust, recommended this, but I’m afraid I found it a fairly run-of-the-mill thriller.  If you’re looking for a story about missing children (and who isn’t?) then I suggest Sophie Hannah’s Little Face as a more interesting example of the genre.

Wrong About Japan, which is nothing like anything I’d usually read, but which I enjoyed very much and finished in a couple of hours (it is very short).  It’s the closest I’ve come to an account of Tokyo that makes it sound as exciting, as bewildering and as alien as I found it.

I have also read four library books, all of which I have forgotten the names of.

Sherlock Holmes and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

On By Laura MorganIn Books

OK, it’s not really called that. I’m reading a “new” Sherlock Holmes story, written in 2001 by, supposedly, John H. Watson and Robert E. McClellan. I picked it up in a charity shop at the weekend and couldn’t resist the promise of a new mystery. It’s actually called Sherlock Holmes and the Skull of Death (how, already, very unHolmesian) and it’s apparently got something to do with Piltdown Man, a true story that’s genuinely interesting in its own right and doesn’t need dramatising.

Anyway, it’s rubbish. I heartily whatever-the-opposite-of-recommend-is it. It’s full of anachronisms and Americanisms that could easily have been edited out and just weren’t. The characters of Holmes and Watson have undergone a complete transformation and, most heinously of all, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appears as a character in it (Watson’s literary agent – it could have been a nice idea, had it been done better, but it wasn’t).

Even more oddly, the author uses CAPS to provide emphasis in his dialogue. These snippets are all from the same short passage:

“My mind is ever open to ALL sciences,” said Doyle.

“Some say they’ve found the fossils of EARLIEST man”

Holmes smiled, “What do YOU say, Sir Arthur?”

Doyle looked down his nose at Holmes. “Unline Dubois, I INVITE investigation of my belief.”

It’s barely English. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end.

Opening lines

On By Laura MorganIn Books

With flagrant disregard for my new year’s resolution to stop re-reading books, I’m currently re-reading The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.* I started reading it on holiday, when I thought the resolution probably didn’t count, and I don’t seem to have stopped yet.

But it’s not my fault! This morning I read the opening lines of The Three Garridebs:

It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.

Would you be able to stop reading there?

*I wanted to link to the classic orange, black and white Penguin edition, which is the one I’m reading, but Amazon don’t seem to stock it. The first version I read was a facsimile of the original Strand Magazine stories, complete with Sidney Paget’s illustrations, which I can still remember vividly and which are so firmly ensconced in the collective consciousness that every film and TV adaptation looks exactly like them. Unfortunately Strand Magazine was magazine-sized, and the book was book-sized, so the text was minuscule. But it was worth squinting over.

Books about trains

On By Laura MorganIn Books

I’ve been forgetting to mention the books I’m reading. This month I finished two which have nothing in common except being less about trains than their titles suggest…

Off the Rails by Lisa St Aubin de Teran is subtitled “Memoirs of a train addict”, but as it turns out trains are only a tangential part of the story. It seems to be out of print, which is why I haven’t linked to it, but in any case I would heartily recommend not reading it. What it loses in loving descriptions of trains and train journeys it gains in loving descriptions of Lisa St Aubin de Teran and how wonderful she is. I’ve no doubt it’s true, but it didn’t endear her to me, nor make for an enjoyable read. Plus, I wanted to read about trains, so I was doubly disappointed.

Closely Observed Trains, on the other hand, is a light, sweet, melancholy read that I forgive for not having very much to do with trains. I enjoyed it very much at the time, but – having moved on to very different things since – can’t remember all that much about it.

Neither of them is as much fun as my favourite book about trains, which now I come to think of it is also not about trains. But Murder on the Orient Express, which runs it a close second, is. That’s how you write a train book that stays in print, Lisa!

Books

On By Laura MorganIn Uncategorized
I’ve changed my mind about having a “Books” page and am going to make it a separate category with individual entries, which means I’m about to re-post everything I’ve already said about the books I’ve read so far this year. Sorry about that.

Transit maps of the world

On By Laura MorganIn Public transport

This has just arrived in the post, and it’s very beautiful. Maps and trains, all in one book! If I had a coffee table, or a house in which to put a coffee table, it would be taking pride of place. As it is, it’ll be going into a box along with all my other worldly goods.

And while we’re on maps, there’s no reason not to plug my favourite (fictional) version of the tube map, and this, which is even better but sadly isn’t available as a poster. Although, of course, I’d have nowhere to put the poster, due to the aforementioned lack of anywhere to live. <Sob>

Monday update: Apparently the map of the world’s transport systems is available as a poster. From, uh, the London Transport Museum. I shall have to pay them a visit.