Last Book That You Read- Fiction

mn

Since The Snowman, I've read: Antarktos Rising (Robinson, Jeremy), Death In The City of Light (Kings, David) and Inner Circle, The (Metzler, Brad)

Currently reading The Emperor of Ocean Park (Carter, Stephen A.) and Storm of Swords (Martin, George R.R.)

Nothing has really jumped out at me. All have been fair to good, but nothing excellent so far.

These are the books I've read in the past two years that I have rated as Excellent (Five Stars):

Four Voyages of Columbus (Bergree, Laurence)
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates (Kilmeade, Brian)
Vertical Run (Joseph Garber)
Lost City of Z (David Gann)
Africans In America (Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith)
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (Laurence Schiller)
Goerings List (JC Pollock)
Defending Jacob (William Landay)
Game of Thrones (George Martin)
Clash of Kings (George Martin)
American Lion (John Meacham)
Dust (Charles Pelligrino)

The Quiller Memorandum (originally The Berlin Memorandum), Adam Hall (actually Elleston Trevor)

for one, Trevor seemed to have written under at least six if not more aliases including his real name of Trevor Dudley-Smith. Quiller is no exception, the first of a score of books as Adam Hall and featuring the eponymous spy. I first read it in 2012, must be the only book I got out back then from the library that's still there. I've seen the film in the intervening years quite a few times and thus, the film did a good enough job from a book that is as complex as the film became.
The quote on the back says he's up there with Ambler and others, perhaps he is. Quiller is far removed from Bond, even the Fleming Bond and probably somewhere close to Len Deighton's Unnamed Spy.
He has his foibles, he has his strengths and is intelligent to the point of a tad big headed. Or he's just clever. Though I've seen the film, I couldn't picture Segal as Quiller -actually had Richard Todd in my mind reading it. Inga, played by the delectable Senta Berger, is here much more Nazified (apparently having been a child in the Fuhrerbunker as the end came, the daughter of a nurse on the bunker staff) -after she has deceived and taken in Quiller.

I might seek out other Hall/Trevor's one day. Only read his Flight of the Phoenix (though I have The Big Pickup somewhere in my pile -the basis of 1958's Dunkirk).

m

The Mask of Dimitrios

I am still somewhere in the middle of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is my Business and Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op respectively.

I think I am developing a book problem, meaning I have much more new books than time to read them...
I've just ordered Trigger Mortis two days ago. I hadn't known before that it's supposed to contain material of Fleming. And, let's face it, I would buy every shopping list Fleming ever wrote.

Kath wrote:

The Mask of Dimitrios

I'm just about finished with Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."

x

Last was Plague City, a Doctor Who novel set in Edinburgh during, yes, the time when the Plague was greatly affecting the city and 'starring' the Capaldi/Mackie/Lucas Tardis crew.

Am currently 'on' a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Controll wrote:

I'm just about finished with Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."

Do you recommend it?

Erica Ambler wrote:

Make sure you return it to her.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Charles Latimer returns in The Intercom Conspiracy, which is about an alcoholic editor who gets caught up in Something He Shouldn't. My favourite of Uncle Eric's books for some reason.

Thank you for the recommendation! I had decided to complete the Colonel Haki trilogy. So I have ordered Epitath for a Spy some weeks ago...I will definitely add that to my list.

Am I the only one who has a feeling that Grodek's Siamese cats may have been forerunners of Blofeld's Persian cat?
The only cat-owner in Fleming's novels is Goldfinger and that does not end well.  

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Last was Plague City, a Doctor Who novel set in Edinburgh during, yes, the time when the Plague was greatly affecting the city and 'starring' the Capaldi/Mackie/Lucas Tardis crew. Am currently 'on' a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Does it feature the Mary King's Close, a subterranean quarter right under the Royal Mile of Edinburgh? It was abandoned because of the Plague. And that wouldn't be the first book to attract tourists to the place (there's a novel of Ian Ranking which title has escaped me). Naturally, you can also buy those books at various gift shops. At least this was the case some years ago...

Which Holmes stories?

It does indeed feature Mary King's Close. The Rankin might be Fleshmarket Close?

The Holmes one is 'The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons And Other Stories'.

I meant Mortal Causes. The victim is found in the former flesh market of the close, as far as I recall, is that what you mean?


Arthur Conan Doyle is always a good read...How do you like the BBC series Sherlock? I quite like it, but I cannot understand this mad enthusiasm about it. Mary Watson a secret agent? Come on... I prefer Guy Ritchie's films anyway. Holmes is quite apt go give shiners...

I meant this one -



Sherlock I liked very much to begin with, but I'm not so keen now ... it's lost its way somewhat from the first 2 seasons. I thought the last episode of the most recent season was awful.

I must admit that I gave up on Rankin after three books or so...
Is this one any good?

SPOILER Sherlock

I have stopped watching Sherlock more or less after Mary died. I found this turn of events in consideration of the new born extremely gruesome. I think the last thing I actually saw was the revelation of the lost Holmes sister and then I was definitely out. That was too outlandish for my taste.

n

Prussian Blue, Philip Kerr

the penultimate Bernie Gunther. There's one more, Beware of Greeks, typical Bernie though by now I was marvelling at Kerr's ability by now to fit Gunther into the fabric of the Third Reich (such is the length of the series and how much was established in the first trio of books). I then google and to my surprise, great surprise, see that Philip Kerr died in March of this year. Great shame.

A Very British Coup- Chris Mullin

brought it a year ago February, the latest edition has a silhouette image of Corbyn and a new foreword that says the establishment would likely stop Corbyn from ever getting within range of No.10. However, it's a quirky book. Yes Minister with less jokes. Written in 1982 but set in 1989 where a Tory-Social Democrat coalition comes crashing down and swept aside by the raging left.

I've seen the TV version (available on All4) but the book has its moments. The TV Version has Shane Rimmer, yay.

Finished Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (for the third time) a while back. It's a rather bizarre tale--and a bit of a slog in the middle--and also very funny in spots, but ends on a rather bleak and depressing note. If you have any interest in the vernacular intellectual history of the middle ages and early modern period, I highly recommend it, although it isn't an easy read.

Currently reading Herbert Read's The Green Child. It's also rooted in certain medieval esoterica, with some improbable Latin-American offshoots. Read certainly writes well...

Currently about 50 pages into John Gardner's Win, Lose Or Die. Briskly entertaining so far, Bond going back into the Navy is a nice touch.

m

Finally got around to reading Nineteen Eighty-Four (for a book club to which I belong). I'm hardly the first to observe this, but it's quite clear to me that the AWR Left views the novel not as a cautionary tale but as a blueprint. When one combines the totalitarian bent of the Left with the neoconservative perpetual war machine, you get something very much like the government of Oceania. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the budding totalitarian states of the West ever actually come to fruition, and whether such a state would make sadism domestic policy No. 1, as does Big Brother, but the parallels and trends are undeniably unsettling.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is an unpleasant and nasty, nasty vision.

I always mean to read it but never got round to it. In fact I've only ever read Homage to Catalonia (of Orwell's works) what with studying the Spanish Civil War at university. 1984 seems increasingly relevant as the years go by.

If you read it, Hilly, just brace yourself. It's not a fun book by any stretch of the imagination.

I can imagine, I remember watching the John Hurt film version and was utterly depressed by the end. But it seems, as I say, a relevant read and I've read some depressing stuff of late. One to add to my huge pile of 'to read' books.

mk