This year I shall be mostly reading

[Deleted]

A few months ago I finished reading the last of the 14 Ian Fleming James Bond novels and now I'm onto reading the 15th Bond Novel. For anybody who is not familiar with Bond fiction after Ian Fleming died in 1964 his publishers got author Kingsley Amis to write a Bond novel under the name of Robert Markham. The book was titled Colonel Sun and so far I'm halfway through reading it. Unfortunately, the book doesn't seem to have the kind of excitement in both action scenes and also writing style that Ian Fleming put out so well in his books. So far nothing much has happened as it just seems to be Bond going around Greece to rescue M who has been kidnapped by a Chinese colonel who is aided by Russian generals.... and that's it!

[legios]

Currently reading my way through In Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5. A fascinating and surprisingly candid book. It is not afraid to highlight the less than glorious moments of the Service's history as well as its triumphs. Indeed, the early history of the Service seem almost ludicrous in context - in the years before the First World War Britain's Counter-Espionage service consisted of (Sir) Vernon Kell, sharing an office with the one man who comprised Britain's Secret Intelligence Service.

To go from there to the 1940's, when the Service was effectively running the entire German espionage effort in Britain as a disinformation campaign (and presumably laughing like a drain as th German's awarded Iron Crosses to some of the double agents for their "invaluable" efforts) is in some ways stranger than one
would attempt in fiction.

A very readable glimpse into an oft-closed world.

(It was surreal to see on the back cover of the paperback edition a glowing quote from a review by Oleg Gordievsky - a prominent Soviet Defector. It just feels odd).

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Just finished er-reading 'The Dumas Club' by Arturo Perez-Reverte and started reading for the first time 'The Flanders Panel' by the same author.

I bought 'The Dumas Club' a few years ago after enjoying the film adaptation, 'The Ninth Gate' starring Johnny Depp. It's about a rare book bounty-hunter commissioned to seek out and compare the only three surviving copies of a book written in 1666 supposedly with the Devil as a collaborator, and establish whether one or all of them are genuine or if they have been tampered with. (The collector doing the hiring believes his copy has something wrong with it.) We get to see different versions of the same wood-cut engravings that the protagonist comes across during his investigations and observe the differences between them. The novel intertwines this mystery with a second plot thread omitted from the film, to do with an original manuscript of one of the chapters of 'The Three Musketeers' that certain people are prepared to kill to get back in their possession.

'The Flanders Panel', which I've just started reading, is about a woman researching a centuries-old painting of two men playing chess, one of whom is a knight killed two years before it was painted, who has to find clues in the configuration of the chess board in the picture as to who killed him and why - but also finds that the investigation is causing dangers for herself in the present day.

I love this kind of stuff.

Martin

[Deleted]

I'm slowly nearing the end of the Bond novel Colonel Sun and yesterday I read a chapter which could be called predictable. The problem with the book is that it spends far too much time introducing new characters for one-shot chapters rather than getting on with the story and this chapter in particular featured a yacht captain who had been handed the yacht that Bond had spent much of the last few chapters sailing around on in exchange for this other captains ship. Right from the first page I said to myself 'this guy is going to be killed before the chapter is over' and lo and behold he was indeed killed in the final sentence of the chapter.

I have heard that Kingsley Amis wrote a few good novels in the 60's but this surely isn't one of them. Ian Fleming took the fascinating story telling of James Bond to the grave with him.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sixty pages in, 'The Flanders Panel' is taking things at a leisurely pace but is intriguing nonetheless. But I'm looking forward to the point at which the characters have learnt as much about what is going on as I learnt from the blurb on the back.

After this, I have lined up H. Rider Haggard's 'Allan Quatermain' and 'She'. (I read 'King Solomon's Mines' a few years back.)

Also slowly reading my way through the Bible, something I have had on my list of things to do for many a year. It's just so long... and has lots of really dull parts. But I'm going to manage it this time. I have the King James version , which apparently is the version with the most beautiful use of the English language, which helps. Just finished Exodus.

Martin

[Mark_Stevenson]

I'm currently reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, an utterly gripping tale of intrigue and powerplay in the court of Henry VIII. This book really is living up to the hype (I'm about 1/2way through) - I think I'm going to be recommending this one very highly indeed.

Mx

[Deleted]

I finished reading Colonel Sun and my opinions are somewhat disappointing. It wasn't a very good novel and at the end Amis introduced yet another one shot character because he had put Bond in a situation where he was looking certain death in the face and there was no way to escape from it. The new character jumped to the rescue and rescued Bond before Bond supposedly killed the main bad guy only to discover that he hadn't killed him. The end of the novel resulted in a movie-like confrontation between Colonel Sun (the main bad guy) and Bond with an explosive that could kill both of them in seconds. Naturally, Bond escaped just in time and Sun died at the hands of his own explosive. Needless to say I won't be reading that again.

Anyway, now I'm onto what could possibly be called the sixteenth Bond novel although this is open to discussion. It is called 'James Bond - The Authorised Biography' by John Pearson and the story is simple. Author Pearson believed that James Bond was nothing more than a literary character created by Ian Fleming. He even saw shades of Fleming in the character of Bond. He then received evidence that James Bond really existed and Ian Fleming was a close friend of the secret agent. Fleming then went on to write novels based on James Bond's life and adventures from the stories that Bond had told him. Pearson manages to track down the real James Bond and gets the secret agent (who is now in his fifties and semi-retired) to recount his life story for the author.

The book is interesting in that it happens outside of the Fleming novels continuity and tries to have us believe that the novels were exaggerated accounts of a real persons adventures and not a work of fiction. The problem however lies in the fact that Pearson discredits some of the back stories and traits of Bond that were revealed in the original novels. The Bond in this book claims that some of things mentioned in the novels were nothing more than Flemings imagination which irked Bond somewhat when he read about them. In short its a story that you will either love or totally despise depending on whether you are a casual Bond fan or a die-hard Bond fan.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Aug 28, 2010 13:18:14 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Sixty pages in, 'The Flanders Panel' is taking things at a leisurely pace but is intriguing nonetheless. But I'm looking forward to the point at which the characters have learnt as much about what is going on as I learnt from the blurb on the back.

After this, I have lined up H. Rider Haggard's 'Allan Quatermain' and 'She'. (I read 'King Solomon's Mines' a few years back.)

'The Flanders Panel' was OK, but I doubt I'll read it again. Both it and 'The Dumas Club' will now head for the Oxfam book bin at my local Sainsbury's.

But the Rider Haggard stuff is awesome. 'She' is an absolutely blistering fantasy adventure quest from the 19th Century with a bucket-load of deep philosophical musings thrown in. I thoroughly recommend everyone to read it. Probably my favourite book in the 'King Solomon's Mines'/'The Lost World'/'The Man Who Would Be King' genre.

I shall be following up with some Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling while I'm in the mood for this kind of stuff.

Martin

[Deleted]

I'm now nearing the end of the James Bond: The Authorised Biography book. Although its a good read I wouldn't say its as good as any of the Fleming novels. More parts of the Fleming novels were discredited in the chapter I read last night when it was announced that the novel Moonraker was a complete work of fiction and the real James Bond and Ian Fleming got together to concoct the fabricated story to try and fool the Russian SMERSH organisation. Talking about SMERSH according to this biography they now think that Bond was a fictional character and not a real life one even though they met him in person in the novel Casino Royale which, according to the biography, was based on a real mission that Bond did in the early 50's.

[Deleted]

Yesterday I finished reading the James Bond biography and was disappointed by the ending. When it came to mentioning the other novels in the book it gave one or two insights into the backstory of the book before moving onto what Bond did in between each novel. When it came to Colonel Sun however it just name-checked the book and mentioned about Bond returning to the Secret Service in the present day (the present day in the book being the early 70's) before finishing. It promised to bring Bond's life story to date from where it had left off just before the start of the Colonel Sun book up until the point where Bond is recounting his life to the biography's author. Unfortunately, it never did which left the book feeling like the author had got bored with it and left it unfinished.

Overall, the book is interesting in that it recounts what Bond did prior to the Fleming novels and also in between each novel but it goes a bit off the track on several occasions.

[The Doctor]

250 pages into TOO BIG TO FAIL by New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin which is about the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. If, like me, you find financial matters both similtaneously bewildering and dull, then this is the book like you. It's written in a very easy to read style. Terms are clearly explained and efforts are made to flesh out the biographies and personalities of key players rather than going going the 2-dimensional 'these are evil bad men' route.

It depicts an insane world. In one mind-blowing page we are told about a chap at an investment bank who did not have a clue what he was doing and needed to be removed but they couldn't let him go completely (another firm could use him for insider knowledge) so they gave him a consultant 'post' on salary which removed him from any decision making. For $1 million dollars pay. Per month.

Glad the library got this in!

-Ralph

[Deleted]

I'm now onto my latest James Bond book. This one is the fairly recent one Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulkes. The author claims to be writing as Ian Fleming but the opening chapters, although set almost directly after the last Ian Fleming novel, do not quite read like an Ian Fleming book. Chapter 2 also has the annoying distinction of being packed full of references from almost every other Fleming Bond novel as if the author wanted to persuade the reader that this was indeed a James Bond novel. Fleming had the tendency to throw in the odd reference to previous Bond books but he usually kept this to a bare minimum by very briefly mentioning something from the previous book only. Faulkes decides that about ten or so references in a single chapter is standard for a Bond novel.

[Deleted]

Chapter 3 of Devil May Care has three more references to Ian Fleming Bond novels (including two in the same sentence) and also a reference to the (then) news of the Rolling Stones taking drugs. It's as if Faulkes feels the need to persuade the reader many times over that this is a Bond novel set in the same timeline as Flemings Bond novels and it is set in the 1960's.

Aside from the annoying and constant references the novel isn't too bad a read so far but its still not to the same standard of Flemings work.

[Deleted]

If you have been keeping up with my posts recently you will know that the James Bond novel Devil May Care is currently annoying me up to a point where you're probably thinking 'why don't you stop reading the damn thing then?' Anyway, nothing has changed with chapter four. There are no direct references to previous Fleming Bond books but author Faulks does effectively copy almost word for word a scenario from some of Flemings books - namely that of booby-trapping his hotel room so that he will know if somebody has been in the room while he was out. The most famous of Bond's booby-traps that Faulks recycles here is the single strand of hair that he sticks over a door. In Devil May Care he sticks it over the bathroom door but laughably just one page later he breaks the trap himself intentionally leaving me wondering why he Faulks wrote the booby-trap method into the book in the first place.

A section of dialogue is also seemingly missed out of chapter four when Bond and the novels Bond girl are talking. At no point does she tell Bond that she is an agent yet Bond mentions a few lines later that he is surprised that she is such a person as if she told him! Amazingly, despite being an agent she claims she has called American agency Pinkerton's and also followed Bond halfway across the world in order to get them to help her retrieve her kidnapped sister. Why doesn't she do it herself if she's an agent?

Finally Faulks seems to have forgotton important facts from Flemings Bond novels. Devil May Care is clearly referenced as taking place sometime after the 13th Fleming book The Man with the Golden Gun yet Loelia Ponsonby is still Bond's secretary (she left his services after around the 11th novel and was replaced by Mary Goodnight who isn't mentioned as ever working for Bond in this one) while French agent Rene Mathis still seems to think that SMERSH is still in operation when it was clearly mentioned in one of Fleming's novels (probably about the 7th or 8th one) that the organisation had been disbanded.

I think I should stop ranting about the novel at this point because, with another sixteen chapters to go, this thread could become quite de-railed if I continue!

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Finished reading several books over the Christmas break:

'Oblomov' by Ivan Goncharov - a great masterpiece of Russian literature, focussing on an intelligent and kind-hearted individual who has a morbid aversion to any form of activity and spends much of his time lying down.

'The Spy' by Maxim Gorky - an early 20th Century Russian novel about the life of a weak-hearted police spy, set partly during the events of the Russian revolution.

'Martin's Mice' by Dick King-Smith - a delightful book for all ages about a kitten who keeps mice as pets in the bath until he learns first-hand what it's like to be a captive pet.

'Armadale' by Wilkie Collins - a long but engaging story of superstition and intrigue with a range of memorable characters, top of the list being the fascinatingly charming villainess Lydia Gwilt.

'Tao Te Ching' by Lao Tzu - a mind-expanding book of early Chinese philosophy, following on well from the 'Analects' of Confucius. It focuses on the art of ruling without being perceived as so doing. A precursor of the Zen tradition.

And I am half-way through 'The Imitation of Christ' by Thomas a Kempis.

For 2011 I have a few books still waiting to be read on my shelves - 'No Name' by Wilkie Collins, a few more books of Russian literature (in English), a few more by Jules Verne (in French) and most of the Bible remains unread. Plenty to keep me going for a while.

Martin

[legios]

Currently working my way through my Christmas presents from my sister. I have just finished Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah - a narrative journalism piece which gives an account of the events of the taking of the US Embassy in Iran, and the subsequent holding hostage of many of the staff for 444 days. Some of the ancillary material - such as the negotiations at high levels for the hostages release, and the aborted operation to break them out by force - I already knew a fair bit of, but it was very illuminating on other fronts. Primarily focused on the experiences of, and drawing from the testimony of, the hostages themselves it is fair to say that it is neither a comforting book nor necessarily an easy one to read. But like his earlier Black Hawk Down it is a very well-crafted and even-handed piece of writing which avoids editorialising for most of its length, saving opinion for a closing chapter and focusing on recounting events as perceived by those who where there (it is saddled with a rather histrionic subtitle of " The First Battle in the West's War with Militant Islam and a cover that has a Chinook helicopter emblasoned on it for reasons which quite escape me, but this is somewhat unrepresentative of the measured and thoughtful tone of the book). Interesting and absorbing, if not necessarily light reading.

Karl

[Andy Turnbull]

The reissue of Anno Dracula by Kim Newman came out and arrived in the post. Very much a precursor to things like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Postulates that Dracula was not overcome by Seward, Harker, Van Helsing et. al and ends up Prince Consort to Queen Victoria.

Victorian vampires and of course Jack The Ripper figures, in a very good way.

Well worth reading.

Andy

[legios]

I am currently about two-thirds of the way through Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile and thoroughly enjoying it. American Private Investigator fiction is common enough that it is a genre in itself but Lehane's style does make him stand out from amongst the crowd. He certainly breaks the mold in having his protagionist be not only a happily married man, with a four year old daughter. It is the first of his Patrick/Angie Kenzie novels that I have read but I get the impression that this is something that has developed over the course of previous novels. Somewhat refreshing to have a running gumshoe character who has been allowed to age properly and to experience major changes in their lives. (The only other one I can think of is Sara Paretsky's V.I Warshawski).

A very different writing style to someone like the late Robert B Parker but with the same sharply drawn characterisation. I think I might be tracking down more of his work in due course.

Karl
Karl

[The Doctor]

Excellent podcast with Rob Shearman with fascinating discussion on writing and he read one of his stories:

www.bigfinish.com/news/Podcast-Book-Launch-Robcast-10-August-2011

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

I've been sucked into the terrible maw of Star Trek novels again, as must happen once every year, but Vendetta was really good! And this Titan spin-off thingy is readable.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

I read Spock's World & Pandora Principle recently and both were great!

Must (re)buy Vendetta at some point. And Metamorphosis. And Imzadi.

[The Doctor]

The Titan book (#6 in a series!) made references to the Borg's final defeat and their origins. The internet tells me this tale was told in a 3-book story called Star Trek: Destiny. The internet made me press buttons.

-Ralph

[Rich]

Slight danger of spoilers:

Reading 'A Dance with Dragons' at the moment. God it's long! Enjoying it but I am finding it frustrating that Martin is still expanding the cast and the scope of the story at this point in the series. At times with the previous books I found the structure worked against the page-turning prose and took away some of the narrative drive, and this is very much the case again. I just got to Asha's first chapter in this book, and all I could think was 'I don't care about her or her story anymore' just stick to Daenerys, or, preferably, go back to Bran's, which was really interesting. Jon's story feels like padding too.

[Andy Turnbull]

Just finished the mighty Nightmare Movies by Kim Newman. For any fan of horror movies it's a must have. For the casual fan interested in the evolution of horror cinema it is still a very good read.

Andy

[The Doctor]

The world has tilted on its axis for Star Trek books are good again,
And none of them appear to be written by anyone called Ben.

-Ralph

[Bogatan]

Seem to have been on a history kick of late. 1000 Years of Annoying the French and History of the Home or something like that.

Now to decide if I return to reading Discworld till I reach the new books or books I haven't read or do I reread Game of Thrones and hope it takes long enough that the new one is out in paperback by then.

Or I start on 2000AD Weekly I think I have enough of them by now.

[legios]

I am currently working my way through "Too big to fail", the story of the period around the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and off the beginning of the so-called Credit Crunch. It is eye-opening reading, it has all the feel of a disaster movie, with people being destroyed by their own short-sightedness and unwillingness to see the danger signs and the slow, inevitable, unfolding of chaos and havoc. Quite mesmeric reading, and appalling - in the sense that the events involved make me somewhat appalled. It does illuminate how we found ourselves here quite well too.

Quite fascinating stuff.

Karl

[The Doctor]

I grabbed that out the local library before it closed for a year (grrrrr). It's very good stuff. Financial matters usually confuse me utterly but it's smoothly written enough to make it all understandable to the casual reader.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

I have just finished Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell a BBC Doctor Who book, posited as the last adventure of the 6th Doctor before Time and the Rani.

Now Gary Russell conjures terror for me, thanks to having written Divided Loyalties one of the worst and fanwankiest Doctor Who stories ever.

That being said I found Spiral Scratch decent enough - it didn't grab me in a way that some Who authors efforts do. But it was serviceable and passed the time. Thought the ending was a bit too contrived and the sort of deus ex machine that RTD would do.

Also points off for no Valeyard.

Andy

[legios]

Picked up a second-hand copy of The Lost Moon of Apollo 13 ( actually the rerelease under the title "Apollo 13" that was done to tie in with the film a few years back, but the original title is the authorial intent) from a second-hand bookshop at a National Trust place down in Surrey. I'm extremely familiar with the various details of the Apollo 13 mission and so I intended to sample the first chapter or so, see what it was like and then park it back in the to-read pile to get to in due course. There was something about the style though that grabbed me and made me stay with the book right the way through over the course of the next couple of days.

It is by far the most matter-of-fact and unsensationalist popular account of the mission I have read. Something that perhaps is understandable given that one of the two authors is James Lovell, the actual mission commander. It manages, however, to be absolutely gripping. Part of the reason for that is the structure of the way the story is told. Most popular accounts go to great pains to explain exactly what happened to the Service module and what the cause was even before you reach the point of the tank explosion. Not so here - the book tells you things when the astronauts and the ground controllers knew them, so at the fateful moment all the book gives you is that there has been what may be an explosion, and that the Service Module has started dying by inches. (In fact the book doesn't even address the causes at all until an epilogue, much like NASA themselves didn't know until months later). There is a definite sense of melancholy to the book - especially when it is talking about the pass around the moon where the crew had to deal with the knowledge that they had perhaps lost the last chance to walk on its surface, but also a real sense of the dedication of the crew and the folks on the ground who rewrote all the rules to bring them home safely. (If you think that finding a way to scavenge a few amps more from a battery can't be a heroic struggle then the book may just change your mind).

One of the least-sensational, but most accessible and absorbing of the popular accounts of the Apollo 13 mission that I have come across.

Karl