The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

Given that I had no real idea what to expect other than the title and half-heard review, this came as something of a surprise.  A tale of two journeys juxtaposed, one in the present-ish day in Northern Europe featuring titular centenarian and a motley crew of associates, the other telling the story of the preceding century through the travels of our protagonist.

The pace never dropped, and although after finishing the book I think that some of the contrivances involving the bodies are unlikely at best, it kept me going right to the conclusion.  Interesting to pick this up straight after Ken Follett's book featuring much of the same period and indeed some of the exact same historical events. Jonasson drops in this real events and real people and adds a touch of humour to the situation, something the somewhat portentous Follett does not.

On many occasions this is simply a comic novel, the prose sparkles on the page and there are laugh-out-load moments.  The way that our hero is meant to have shaped various key moments in world history is amusing in itself, but masterfully pulled off.     Woody Allen's film 'Zelig' covers some of the same ground, a misfit being there at crucial moments and this owes a little to that.

There can't be many books published (in English at least) in 2012 to feature both Chiang Kai-Shek and to an even greater extent his wife Soong May-Ling.  Those sections amused me greatly, Jonasson seems to have picked up on her supposedly haughty and aloof personality and sets about describing her with admirable gusto.

It would spoil large sections of the book to describe the other real people involved or indeed the strange group that envelopes our very old man.

Unexpected? Certainly.

Delightful? Quite possibly.

Recommended? Most definitely.

New Year reading

Lots of things to get through in the next month or so;

'Ban This Filth!' -  The highlights of the Mary Whitehouse archive at the University of Essex, sounds bizarre, fascinating and interesting all at the same time.

'Seasons in the Sun' - Dominic Sandbrook.  A bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character is Sandbrook. He's a genial talking head on BBC4, a competent enough social historian in book form and a bile-spewing right-wing Jeremiah in 'what if' pieces for the Daily Mail.  I liked the previous installment of the series and if he has managed to compartmentalise his personas, this could be great.

'Russia' - Martin Sixsmith.  I heard some of the Radio 4 version, so look forward to being informed and entertained while learning more about Russian history.

I've been rummaging through the virtual bargain bin on Amazon as well, so;

'Winter in Madrid' - CJ Samson.  Post Spanish Civil War intrigue from the man better known for his Tudor 'Shardlake' mysteries.

'The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared' - Jonas Jonasson.   This got very mixed reviews from raved about to reviled, so worth a punt.

Winter of the World - Ken Follett

I've read for more books by Ken Follett than I should really admit to.  The phrase 'guilty pleasure' is thrown around too much and it isn't quite the reason I read them.  The main reason is that sometimes you fancy reading something that will envelop and involve you without challenging you too much.  That, in essence, is what the 'bestseller' or 'blockbuster' novel is about.  Follett produces great doorsteps of novels encompassing a vast legion of characters.  He doesn't always pull it off, but it's a safe bet that he will provide a more satisfactory read than some American airport 'author' who write by the yard.

I read the first of this trilogy 'Fall of Giants' when it came out and thought it definitely fitted into the list of better-class Follett.  It zipped along for its size and although the research into the First World War felt a little shoehorned in, it was a decent read.

Here, we are on shakier ground.  The biggest problem is, of course, the setting. There are so many good,bad or indifferent works of fiction about the Second World War that any new one is almost setting itself up to fail.   Perhaps the sections of the book that work best are the sequences set during the Spanish Civil War and immediately prior to the Japanese attack.

And so, we have with typical Follett panache a palette of characters so vast that recourse to the handy dramatis personnae at the beginning is advised.  People are born, get married and separate, skullduggery is around the corner on every page. Death abounds (as it surely must given the times) and politics, race and religion should meld together with these real events to create a heady stew that excites and enthralls as it entertains.

It should, but somehow doesn't. The young son of the feisty protagonist of the previous book is nowhere near as interesting as his mother, despite being given some of the key experiences. A huge problem with a book like this set in times that we are over familiar with from a variety of media is that we all know that story.  When the action moves to Pearl Harbor, we know what is going to happen.  Once a sequence begins about creating a megabomb (curiously referred to as 'nuclear' rather than 'atomic' which would have been the current terminology?), we know what that is leading to. 

Therefore, the skill in this kind of work is to seamlessly mix the fictional characters into the real events to give them a more raw and emotional impact.  Ken Follett writes well and has managed this with more distant events, with 'Pillars of the Earth' for example.  I don't think this quite held my attention through my interest in the characters in the way it should, which was disappointing.

Back at the start of his career, Follett came up with a much shorter, nastier and better book about the Second World War, 'The Key to Rebecca',  I recommend reading that instead. I will be back for the third installment of this trilogy, but for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this review rather than any real expectation to be enthralled.

The Berlin Wall - Frederick Taylor

I've had my eye on this for a while, it looked just the thing to sketch in my knowledge of the post-Airlift period in Berlin and take me up to the events in 1989 that I remember so vividly.  It did everything I wanted, Taylor's steady hand and light touch rattled through events at an enthralling pace.

The book explained the workings of some things that I partly knew but didn't quite understand - how the West Berlin U-Bahn managed to go through East Berlin.  There were things that were completely new to me - particularly the gruesome-sounding (walled) leaders compound in the countryside.  

Overall here was a clear description of an 'ordinary terror' that happened within my own memory. A city walled in like an anchorite, with limited access to the means to survive. The idea was, one supposes, that Berlin would become too costly or too unimportant for the West to maintain, leading to the eventual victory of the East.  That didn't happen of course, so we were left with a cruel and fascinating stalemate for twenty eight long years.

The Berlin Wall will become a footnote in history, one of the oddities that teachers will regale the students of the future with.  If those students of the future have a desire to learn more about this bizarre and deadly construction, they could do far worse than reading this meticulously researched volume with useful maps and a set of photos that offer more than the usual stock images. 

The Casual Vacancy

I promised to write something about JK Rowling's adult effort, so here we go.  

Put simply, I just didn't get it. This book as the archetypal 'Curate's egg', some sections were beautifully while some (the excruciating sex scenes for example) were sub-sixth form twaddle.

The main thing I didn't get though was the actual setup, the machinery that (supposedly) drove the plot. The 'Parish Council' for example seemed to have more in common with a town or borough authority than the purely parochial parish setups in most villages. Even more confusingly the 'local councillor' would have fitted the role of patrician MP equally well, if not better.

Another thing that grated was the underlying suggestion that poor people live in grinding misery alongside their grinding poverty. In my experience, they have as much fun - possibly more - than the perpetually hassled middle class who are the real miseries. To be fair, Rowling doesn't let them have much fun either.

We'll gloss over large parts of the book being set in a secondary school with teenage protagonists. Some of the younger characters rang true and others really didn't.  Looking at the adults, having a grossly fat shopkeeper worked to an extent, but a deerstalker?  Perhaps how peculiar it would look was exactly what she was after?  I just wanted to know whether the flaps were left up or down, something which I believe the narrative didn't relate.

It's a long, long book and it dragged in many places.  The thin plot strands weren't enough to carry this relatively large coterie of characters really.  And what characters they were, the self-obsessed wife-beating criminal from the print works. The muesli-knitting sandal-wearing terrible single parent from That London.  The drug-addled prostitute from the estate who for some reason has a mother who didn't go 'bad' and is fairly saintly until she is killed by the Indian doctor.  They came across as mere ciphers or loose cliches rather than true 'characters'. Oh, and the daughter of the Indian doctor is an unhappy teenager who self-harms, what were the chances of that?

I have read many, many worse books than this and is a testament to there being something of interest there that I finished it.  On many occasions I have given up a short way into this sort of thing.  That's why it is interesting to look at why this is such a dud (which undoubtedly it is).  A first question is how to categorise the book.  It flits from genre to genre lightly, never really making its mark anywhere.  This is no cosy 'Aga saga', it certainly isn't 'chick-lit'.  The racier content shows that it is definitely aimed at an adult audience and it times it seems to flirt close to being polemic, prose flecked with rage with regard to rural drug treatment centres and poverty.

Parts of the plot held up surprisingly well, particularly the reemergence of the stolen computer at crucial point late on.  Conversely the sections on the various people 'hacking' the Parish Council messageboard felt like they were written by someone that could barely write an email, they clunked enormously.

There also seems to be an attempt to hark back to earlier periods of fiction.  The works of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell came to mind at moments and the myriad detail of council business give rise to thoughts of the ecclesiastical machinations of Trollope.  The overwritten chapters and overall bulk of the thing reminded me of why sometimes I can't bear some of the weightier tomes from Charles Dickens.

So, all things considered, how could that have been a better read?  A simple way would have been to realise that there is humour in even the bleakest of situations and that it doesn't half help a plot move along.  Alternatively, if you are going to create a cast of grotesques, then forget humour and go for all out scabrous comedy.  About half way through I found myself wishing Tom Sharpe had been let loose on this crowd.  That would have quite a read.

The casual vacancy? The missed opportunity more like.

The Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling

I've read it, am considering my response and will write something when all the hoo-hah has subsided.  As a starting point though, I must say that I think the cover is a splendid bit of work.

Jack Higgins - Confessional & Touch The Devil

I know that you are supposed to name-check someone like Proust or even Murukami when you are asked who your favourite author is, I have to admit I find all that a little pretentious.  One of the marvelous things about books is the variety on offer and that there is always something to fit any occasion.  So, I have to admit that some days when asked that question the answer might be, for example, Dick Francis. This leads me neatly to Jack Higgins, who I would say was far from fashionable these days.

Considering my favourite book, well, that chops and changes frequently too, but on many days my answer might be 'The Eagle Has Landed'.  I love the plotting, the pacing and the characterisation.  It has that 'Day of the Jackal' quality about it too; you know they aren't going to kill Churchill, we're not in 'Fatherland' territory, but the buildup is spectacular. I've read and appreciated (but wouldn't rave about) the sequel 'The Eagle Has Flown' and hadn't realised that Higgins had continued with Liam Devlin in a couple of novels set in the 80s.

I always believe in considering a book for what it is, rather than what it isn't.  These are a couple of page-turner thrillers, contemporary to the time they were published.  Compared to the vast tomes we are saddled with today, these are almost short stories and I whipped through them in a matter of days.

Liam Devlin has grown old and is an academic in Dublin.  So far, so unlikely, but that was Devlin's character for you.  'Touch The Devil' has shades of 'Papillon' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo', but begins during the Vietnam War, so lots of bases covered here.  'Confessional' hangs around two events that I had forgotten were so closely linked, the Falklands War and the Papal visit to the UK and Ireland.

In these very different times, it is easy to forget the shadow that the Cold War cast over popular fiction.  We are in completely different territory to Le Carre here though. While sometimes the pace in the Smiley trilogy is glacial (and that is no bad thing), here the action zings along at a cracking pace.  In 'Confession', there is even a brief trip to Jersey, almost like a forgotten episode of Bergerac.

One thing that Higgins does to add authenticity to his work is to bring real people in, so it is a shock to find Martin McGuinness (no 'Chuckle Brother' then) in a major supporting role.  There are some moments of genuine nastiness in both books, but they seem nowhere near as gratuitous as in some more recent examples of this genre.

A couple of easy reads then, but ones that remind us of a very different world that was not so long ago.  To identify a dangerous criminal on the run at one stage, various people are brandishing copies of a newspaper. Mobile phones are nowhere to be seen and the internet would have seemed like a far-fetched fantasy.

Jack Higgins is still going strong, he has a new book out this month.  I might buy it.  Now where did I put those Sid Halley books again . . ?

Patrick Hennessey - The Junior Officers' Reading Club

I remember reading about this when it was first published and being intrigued, but not quite intrigued enough to go out and buy it.  I subsequently happened upon a copy though and - not least I have to admit because there was a quote from William Boyd on the front cover - couldn't resist.

From the outset I have to say that 'war books' are not really a genre that does much for me.  I'm as likely to read 'Bravo Two Zero' at any time in the near future as I am 'Black Hawk Down'.  To clarify, that is never, even if I was locked in a cell with no possibility of release and they were the only reading matter available, that is how vehemently I despise gung-ho military potboilers.

I was surprised by how quickly I was gripped by this then, I was even more surprised at how well written it was, not least given the relative youth of the author.  It was much, much better than it had any right to be and is a testament to the importance that email has today in replacing the hastily penned missive, even at the heart of the battlefield.

What Hennessey has done so expertly is to distill some of the reasons that young men still want to join the armed forces by explaining the excitement, the camaraderie and the epic highs that can be achieved.  However, he juxtaposes this with a very knowing analysis of the futility, stupidity and banality of armed conflict.  

For me, what this book did was something that a thousand newspaper and television reports have not done. I felt that I had some understanding of the reality of life as a front line combatant in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I knew that the idea behind the western forces in Afghanistan was to 'support' the ANA and attempt to train them to their own exacting standards.  This book chronicles the huge difference between these two fighting forces.

Hennessey doesn't over analyse, he puts out the facts as they are, or as he believes them to be and allows us to come to our own conclusions.  You can feel that these experiences have made him a different person. Whether being placed in such extreme conditions makes you 'stronger' as traditional wisdom has it, or has a totally different effect on your psychology, it is difficult to tell.  

I felt that the light touch that the book has, along with the literary and gaming activities that connected grim conditions in Afghanistan, took you on a fascinating journey.  This was no heavy-handed Tolkienesque 'there and back again' saga though, it was about very real people in.

This is a great piece of work, and I hope that Hennessey doesn't give up on literary endeavours in whatever future path him on. Highly recommended.

Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

I've been caught out by Peter James and his protagonist Roy Grace not once, but twice before.  The first two books in the series intrigued me and I read them, then I realised I'd been had.  Police procedurals can be good fun, but only (and this is a vital point) if you believe in the central character.  

This was the problem I had, nothing in the character of 'Roy Grace' from his name to the way he behaved to the products he owned rang true with me, which was why I gave up on the series.  The books were extremely well written and decently plotted, but there was just something about the main man that really didn't gel.  So, that was that, millions of other books out there, no need to return to something that wasn't doing it for me.

So, why on earth have I returned to Brighton (and Hove) and the world of Roy Grace?  Anyone with an eye on the book business will have an inkling.  It's all to do with price points, Amazon are offering a very few new releases at the stunning price of twenty pence. I struggle to think what else you can actually buy for that amount - probably what I think of as a penny chew and then settle on a copy of the 'i' newspaper.

That's what the book is up against then, a read today, throw away tomorrow newspaper that is pitching itself slightly above 'Metro'.  How did it do?

The surprising answer is - actually reasonably well.  I still find Grace a cardboard cutout character carted unconvincingly into circumstances.  He appears to have got himself a 'stunnah' for a girlfriend, so far so irritating and the dangling sub-plot of a missing ex-wife is still being milked to tedious levels.

My cewdulity dropped even lower when we left Brighton for a load of sub-Sopranos Noo Joisey gangster nonsense, with more terrible characterisation. But there is a curious quality behind all this, if Grace (and a few of the other characters) could be kept away from the action, there is an excellent thriller here.  

The action kept coming, the violent scenes were nasty enough to keep you reading and the pace made you want to find out what happened at the end.  Fundamentally though, some frankly unlikely characters and a propensity to wear its research very heavily let it down.  That said, it has to be the best lock-based 'tec outing since Vic Warshawski tried to find out what happened to cousin Boom-Boom.

So much for the story, how about the marketing channel?  They got me to buy, and read, a  book I would have otherwise ignored and twenty of my hard earned pence for it.  So, that is success? Well, up to a point.  

Would I buy another of these?  That's an easy one to answer, at twenty or fewer pence, I'm probably there.  If it was a great deal more, probably not.  The cheap price simply confirmed my prejudices against the main character and my feeling that the author is a better writer than this series is allowing him to be.

Richard Saunders - Taipei Escapes 1&2

Finally I find time to write about a couple of books that actually feature Keelung and her environs. These two sizeable tomes are invaluable for the long-term Northern Taiwan resident keen to eschew the tourist traps and the department stores and to actually experience what can be a truly stunning place.

Taiwan is not particularly well-served by the travel literature available in English.  Official government publications are well meaning efforts that are usually a straight translation of their Chinese counterparts. This doesn't mean that they automatically become of use to foreigners seeking  good day out, Taiwanese and western concepts of what is worth seeing can be described as varying drastically.

The 'usual suspects' of the travel world are here of course. Lonely Planet have offered an English guide to Taiwan since 1987 with Rough Guides joining the fray a little under twenty years later.  For the less energetic sightseer Insight and broadcasting and publishing behemoth National Geographic offer a much glossier alternative.  Most recently Michelin have produced an edition of their iconic 'Green Guide' providing a slightly different take on tourism again.

These books are all fine in their own way and are aimed squarely at two markets, the intrepid western backpacker wanting to experience something culturally different and the richer, older western tourist wanting exotic oriental experiences without the discomfort of backpacking.  Both these activities have their merits and  these books have their place too.  What they don't cater for is those of us who may be here for more than a week or so and want to see more of the countryside than 99% of locals.

So, into this breech has stepped Richard Saunders with these two splendid volumes (actually fully updated versions of earlier similar books).  Both provide a selection of ten one-day trips to tourist spots followed by an excellent selection of routes which stretch the whole gamut of activity from 'walk' to 'hike'.  

What sets these works apart from anything else available (and there is very, very little) is the attention to detail.  Everything from pet-friendliness to location of bathrooms has been investigated in detail.  Saunders is also meticulous in providing the Chinese for anything of importance, something that locally translated materials always forget (they just exchange Chinese for English).  He also provides hand drawn sketch maps of the routes and some mouthwatering photos to whet your appetite.

It seems almost churlish to be in any way critical about such a wonderful project which is obviously done out of love for the environment of Northern Taiwan and a desire to share it with others.  Richard may possibly live in a fortified Tianmu condominium and spend his time counting the billions he has made from these books, but I think that is somewhat unlikely!  

So many thanks for the time and effort put in, but here are a couple of suggestions for future versions.  Once you have packed your rucksack with the recommended supplies, these books are actually relatively heavy.  A simple, but rather environmentally unfriendly, solution has been to simply photocopy the relevant pages.

How about, given the amount of hardware that people carry around these days, offering both in an e-book format? Being able to carry both books around in your phone or tablet would be incredibly convenient.

Finally, just because I want the world on a stick, I keep looking at these books and thinking how amazing it would be if the maps and text could meld together on the page in the way that Alfred Wainwright did.  The old curmudgeon produced fabulous hiking guides to the hills of Cumberland and Westmorland that look like this. 

Imagine that for walks around Jiufen and Jinguashi or Fulong, it would be quite spectacular and far nicer than anything available in Chinese.  The ultimate accolade I presume would be for a Chinese publisher to produce a translated version. I hope that happens one day.

To purchase these estimable books: In Taiwan, they are on the shelves at Eslite (various branches) and Page One (Taipei 101).  Also online from Eslite http://www.eslite.com/product.aspx?pgid=1002123202052489

If you can't find them there, contact the publisher http://www.communitycenter.org.tw/publications

Also highly recommended is Richard's guide to Yangmingshan, but that is, as they say, another story.

Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

I thought it was time to revisit this ahead of the imminent arrival of 'Boneland', a third 'Tale of Alderley' a mere 42 years after the first.

My first problem was nothing to do with Garner at all, it was the dreadful edition of the book that I have.  For me, the image above 'is' the cover to this book, not this monstrosity;



I have, it appears, a US young adult edition that commits a heinous sin in the blurb on the back cover. It describes the action as taking place in 'the mountains of Wales', because some good citizen of the States has picked up that it is riffing on Celtic myth, put two and two together and got it very wrong indeed.  Alderley Edge, Mobberley, Macclesfield and the like are all in Cheshire, a very great distance from the Welsh border.

On to the book itself, I raced through it and it was like meeting an old friend again.  When Cadellin exhorts the 'Maggot breed of Ymir' to scarper, I found myself wondering why this never made it on to the big (or even small) screen, it's gripping stuff.

The early sequences with Selina Place are unsettling and the general sense of foreboding is palpable.  I enjoyed the scenes in the mines with the Svarts but thought they went on a bit too long and lost the tension a little.

The second half of the book is essentially the 'quest', when they travel from A to B with X to give it to Y with many exciting events on the way.  So far, so Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, but the difference here is that the fantastical events are grounded in a very real bit of British countryside, not a weird otherworldly realm.

Another thing that always puzzled me was why Gowther went along with them.  The usual deal for children's fiction is that their 'appropriate adults' are in the dark about what is going on, whereas he literally goes for the journey.

The various episodes of peril are well done and who could fail to appreciate a character called 'Angharad Goldenhand'?  We go along for a bumpy ride and then, all of a sudden, it's all over.  The ending comes as bit of a jolt and we are reminded that this is a very slim volume for those brought up in the Harry Potter generation.

Overall, is it a classic of its genre? Yes.  Is it well-written? Up to a point.  Some of Garner's other work I would rate more highly - particularly 'The Owl Service', but this book is far better than the second volume 'The Moon of Gomrath'.

I look forward to reading 'Boneland', which much surely be the last Alderley Tale that he will write.  I'm still hoping for that film adaptation though; perhaps 'Weirdstone: Closer to The Edge' would appeal to the younger cinema-goer today?

Margery Allingham - Coroner's Pidgin

This was another Kindle read and was a reasonably satisfactory reading experience. It might take the next generation of Kindle to really get me hooked, but anyway, on to the review.

A great plus point of Allingham's work, and this sounds like I am being patronising, is that they are so short.  Let me explain; a typical Campion outing runs to around 200 pages, which is not a great investment in terms of time.  However, what she delivers in those relatively few pages is a lesson in characterisation, plotting and humour.

As is common with Campion 'mysteries', there is no big reveal, no startling change of pace, no Poirot style denouement.  What you get is a straightforward mystery with a spot of adventure thrown in to the mix.  Campion is back from the war as the book begins.  The war isn't over, but is drawing to a conclusion and appears to have left all concerned very weary of it.

We've not heard from Campion since 'Traitor's Purse', but he's been busy on war work.  The plan is to call in to the flat in Bottle Street before heading off to catch a train to an unspecified destination.  A cracking opening ensues, encapsulating the confusion that must have been everywhere on the 'Home Front'.  Campion  is back in London briefly, but hasn't been in touch with his chief acolyte and Bottle-street-washer Lugg.  He's somewhat surprised to hear Lugg's dulcet tones coming up the stairs to that flat and is even more concerned to find that he has a corpse with him.

That's pretty much the setup, and a great premise it is.  As in 'Traitor's Purse' (a personal favourite among the Campion books), there is something sinister going on in the background relating to the war, which moves things along nicely.

Allingham's characters are so well drawn that you start to believe in them, which makes reading books like this a joy.  There is a constant torrent of post-war fiction trying to tell 'how it really was' in wartime Britain. This is of course a contemporary account, suggesting that it was tedious, unhappy and as far from glamorous and exciting as it could possibly be.  That sounds as if it is a miserable and morose work.  I isn't, that terrible phrase 'human spirit' flows through it in rivulets.

I have a copy of 'This Oaken Heart', Allingham's non-fiction account of lfe in an Essex village in wartime.  That was written, I believe, between 'Traitor's Purse' and 'Coroner's Pidgin'.  I think it might be time to read that rather soon.

Campion in this book has mostly lost the flippancy of the earlier books and declares his weariness at several points.  He's well on his way to becoming the interesting character that emerges in 'The Tiger in the Smoke' and far from the shipboard mouse-magician of  'Mystery Mile'.

This was a satisfying and interesting read rather than a revelatory or exciting one.  I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for anyone new to Allingham or Campion. The honour for that would go to the aforementioned 'Mystery Mile'.  If anyone asked me to recommend one Campion book to them, I would say that they need to read two; 'Sweet Danger' and 'The Tiger in the Smoke'.  I would then point out to my inquisitor that those two slim volumes together amount to significantly fewer pages than Jo Nesbo or, heaven forfend, Dan Brown offering.

Highlight of the book for me - Lugg in the square, a touching moment!

Midnight Riot - Ben Aaronovitch

A slightly strange selection this.  I'm not really a big fan of fantasy, science fiction or magic and wizards.  I do like police procedurals with a twist though and this was both in the bargain bin and looked a decent size for a novel. No doorstop this.

Overall, my main problem was that it could have been several excellent books.  The basic nuts and bolts detective story was absolutely fine.  The characters and location worked well and the story zipped along nicely.  For me though, the fantastical elements didn't sit so well.  Our hero seems to take to magic and involve himself in the whole world rather quickly and easily.  The youth of today are supposed to be extremely cynical, yet our man just goes along with it all.

I liked the characters of  Mother and Father Thames and their relations based on the lost rivers.  I quite liked the Covent Garden locations too, good descriptions of the area rather than a lazy generic London setting. The pace was pretty dizzying, with something happening on every page.  Aaronovitch knows a thing or too about plotting and some of the pretty grim things happen to people are excitedly described.

After I finished reading, I did a little research and discovered that I have the US mass-market edition aimed fairly and squarely at the fantasy and sci-fi crowd.  The cover also sparked controversy apparently, mainly due to the hue of the figure pictured.  UK readers got a completely different title - Rivers of London - and a cover more firmly aimed at the Booker/Orange prize crowd.  The UK version would sit well alongside something like 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', whereas the edition I have would be better up against 'Zombie Slashers From Hell'.

Did I judge the book by its cover? Yes.  Was that fair? No.  I think if I had picked up the British edition, I might have taken it a bit more seriously as a piece of work.  I plan to pick up the second in the series soon and will approach it with that in mind.

My overall view was that there was too much in there.  Trying to do a classic police caper mixed with history, magic, social comment and humour in  a couple of hundred pages is a tough call.  In an ideal world I would love to see a writer as talented as Aaronovitch create two separate strands, one in the 'real' world and the other in the 'magical' alternative reality.  They would appeal to both the two competing markets and to those that can devour both.

I don't think this first book quite worked, but I will be persevering to see how the characters develop and where the stories go.

Just finished writing this and I came across this article; http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/19/crime-fiction-clash-of-genres . Interesting stuff.

Page One - Taipei 101

Not long ago the Page One bookshop in the Taipei 101 shopping centre was listed in their directory as an 'anchor tenant'.  It was one of the bulwarks that the place was built on and, even better for a native English speaker, roughly half the stock is in English.

Originally it was a vast place that you could perambulate at leisure going almost full circle before finding yourself at the cash desk.  For a while, all seemed well.  The shop even spawned a smaller, more crowded, offspring in a lavish new Sogo Department Store at Zhongxiao Fuxing.  

Since those days, however, there has been something of a decline in fortunes.  Maybe the rot started to set in when Eslite opened their vast store just a few blocks away. Maybe the market for book sales, particularly English ones, in Taiwan just isn't what it was.

The Sogo branch came and went, but then something more sinister occurred.  The 101 store lost half of its size, like a relative suddenly stricken with a wasting disease. That was bad enough, but it seems that another indignity has befallen her.

The fourth floor of the shopping mall, once a place of restaurants and coffee shops with access to the entrance to the 'Observatory' on the higher floors of the tower.  When first built, and the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101 was a curiosity mainly for Taiwanese and the relatively few Western tourists that go to Taiwan.

Everything has changed now and relaxations in the rules on Chinese tourists mean that it is now one of the 'must-see' stops on a whistle-stop tour of Taipei.  Tens of thousands a year now sandwich in a ride up the tower alongside a trip to the National Palace Museum and the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.  

To the owners of the 101 shopping mall, this is truly manna from the mainland.  The restaurants and coffee shops have gone and the fourth floor has been remodelled to add even more eyewateringly expensive designer outlets with extravagant goods and prices. The fifth floor, where a seemingly never-ending queue of Chinese are patiently waiting to herded into the lifts to the eighty-ninth, has been transformed into an electronics boutique that looks as if it has been bodily lifted from Hong Kong airport. Tellingly the prices are in RMB and JPY before TWD, they know their customers.

So what about that relatively veritable (by Taiwan standards anyway), Page One?  She is still there, but the already shrunken shop is accessed through what looks like a fire escape.  The few pictures on the wall of a slightly drab corridor do little to disguise that is what it is.  The shop itself is still spotless and carries an eclectic range of English books (probably the best in Taiwan), but is a shadow of what it used to be.

I wonder if it is time to bow to the inevitable and relocate?  The Chinese have won here, their spending power was always going to outbid the bibliophiles.  Where would be good though?  It needs to be somewhere that both expats and tourists can find easily and being an interesting enough location to attract the local customers who would still be their bread and butter.  Perhaps somewhere near Taipei Main Station which been gradually improving since the HSR arrived and will get even better when the airport MRT kicks in.  

Page One has a different 'feel' to it from the Taiwanese bookstores and it would be a shame if that was lost.  Many people have predicted the end of the high street bookseller in Europe and North America thanks to the power of the internet.  

Bookshops are incredibly popular in Taiwan, not least because it is culturally acceptable to pluck a tome from a shelf, drop down to the floor and sit there all day reading it.  That doesn't stack up financially of course, but bookstores don't seem to be closing down at the rate they are in, say, the UK.

Visiting today was like going to see an old friend who, despite going through hard times, was still making a great effort.  I hope the effort is worth it and that Page One don't disappear from Taiwan altogether.

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

Sometimes the very act of acquiring a book lowers your expectations.  This was a work that I had heard all about when it was first published, but not one that I had been particularly aiming (or not aiming) to read.

So, there I was, pushing my trolley through the throng in the newer of the two soulless sheds that Costco operate in Kaohsiung.  I came across their book section and decided a quick perusal was in order.  I'd struck lucky in the other branch some time ago when it offered up a hardback copy of one of the more readable Arkady Renko novels.

So, there it was, extremely cheap and very tempting.  It went into the grossly oversized trolley alongside some plastic cheese and a few other necessaries.  I mention all this as background, I very much did not read the book with any sort of anticipation.

The first worry comes on the cover. 'Author of 'The Corrections'' is emblazoned across it almost as big as the actual title.  This just in case you thought it was another Jonathan Franzen who had taken up his pen. I liked 'The Corrections' and it left me feeling considerably more charitable towards American fiction than I had been before I picked it up.  A friend of mine says it is the best book ever written. He's wrong, but not by that much.  It's a significant work and a challenging one to follow.  The cover simply draws attention to this.

I began reading and my trepidation-meter started to flicker.  You have a huge hit with a book about an outwardly normal yet internally dysfunctional American family and follow it up with, erm, pretty much the same.  Luckily the quality of the writing, the situations conjured up and the characters created soon had me deep into this as a work that stands on its own merits.  

Some of the details, particularly with regard to Walter's preoccupations and the environmental causes left me a little cold and waiting for that part of the story arc to develop.  Overall it felt like a film that the director had cut to two hours and couldn't bear to pare down further.  My personal opinion is that this was a ninety minute film with padding.  That said, I think that pretty much all fiction is too long these days.  Bring back the 180 page paperback!

One problem with knowing that you plan to review a book is that all the way through you keep checking in with yourself to see what you are thinking.  Until the final third, or even later, my thinking was this;  a good effort, characters that inspire interest, some locations and sequences brilliant, others just average.

Then something happens.  A something that takes you from being a mere observer of events and draws you in to the heart of the action. The whole sequence is expertly written in less than half of one of the 706 pages, yet it changed my view of the book completely.  I hadn't seen it coming or the consequences that it would have and it really made reading the preceding hundreds of pages worthwhile.

Often there is one tiny error that I notice in something that niggles with me. In this otherwise excellent book, I spotted a reference to 'Lena' Lovich. That may well be how it is pronounced, but the record sleeves always said 'Lene'.  If that's all I've got to complain about though, it can't be half bad!  The musical references, which could have felt hackneyed or levered in to the text by a less deft hand, were nicely done.  The names of the real bands and artists fitting snuggly with the narrative rather than jarring.

What was shaping up to be a decent read really upped the stakes in the final stages.  I would say that the moral is that if  you are as good at writing books about dysfunctional American families as this, it would be our loss where you not to produce more.  I can't see Franzen veering off into 'Game of Thrones' territory any time soon and that is no bad thing.

Trips to Costco are normally made with some trepidation. If they provide anything of this calibre in the future, I might even start looking forward to visiting that particular manifestation of hell on earth.

The Ambassador's Wife - Jake Needham

The Kindle is a device I am still trying to master.  I'm still not quite sure what it is 'for'. It hasn't replaced my music or audio CDs in the way that an iPod initially and smartphone more recently have.  It hasn't dampened my desire for the written word on paper or my love of browsing in real bookshops.  I do, however, quite like the idea of the thing and carry it around with me everywhere.

Then I had a thought, perhaps the 'big thing' was that the Kindle was going to introduce me to stuff that I wouldn't normally read.  With that in mind I headed to the 'bestsellers' section on the Amazon in search of something that was both free and aroused my interest.

I spotted this and was intrigued. A 'tec thriller about Singapore policeman Inspector Samuel Tay, it sounded promising and it was free, so met my criteria exactly.  While I was reading it, I has no idea whether Jake Needham was a paper-published writer or one of this new crop of authors who have circumvented the publishing business and gone straight onto the Kindle store.

What I got was a decently plotted, excellently paced story with some very, very clunky characters.  Our 'hero', the middle-aged, slightly tubby, overly cynical, heavy smoker is somehow irresistible to younger members of the opposite sex.  So far, so pulp novel and there are worse ones out there than this. Attempts to flesh out his character by listing the books he likes reading felt more like an attempt by the author to hoist a flag of literary pretension.  My feeling was he was trying to say 'yes, I know I'm knocking out this populist rubbish, but I read proper stuff too!'.

The ongoing riff about Marlboro Red got a little trying too, especially when the action suddenly jumped to Thailand.  The Singapore setting had seemed a little forced and the Thailand section came across much more smoothly, something that was explained when I looked up the author later.  There is often one thing in a book that grates with me and lives with me long after.  In this it was our 'hero' being relieved to find that the coffee shop/cafe that he was in at 10am or so sold cigarettes.  Two things - if he was such a nicotine addict, why on earth didn't he pick up a carton of 200 at the airport? And, even more importantly, the last time I went to Thailand the place was awash with 24-hour convenience stores, 7-11 and the like, getting a tobacco fix is not difficult in Asia!

I won't dwell on the plot too much, it was pretty generic 'thriller-by-numbers' stuff and yet I have read far, far worse examples of the genre.  One thing that I didn't get, and had hoped for from the blurb, was to learn much about Singapore.  As I mention, it seems that the author is much more familiar with Thailand and I think it would have been a bolder statement to set the whole book in Singapore.

It's difficult to criticise a book that was free and I have to admit that it fits that most heinous of literary descriptions, a 'page-turner'.  It's far from being a classic even in its own crowded genre, but it's also far from being a complete dud.

Would I read another Inspector Samuel Tay book? Possibly.  Would I buy a Samuel Tay book? Possibly not. This was, therefore, an interesting exercise in Kindle usage and book shopping thereon.

It turns out that Jake Needham is a 'real' author - more information here http://jakeneedham.com/books/ .

The nuts and bolts behind the writing should have taught me that, I might be tempted to try some of his other output although this didn't quite do it for me.

A Long Way To Shiloh - Lionel Davidson

I have to admit that although this is a slim volume, it was a struggle to finish it.  The main reason to keep going was the pleasant surprise I experienced when 'The Rose of Tibet' kicked into gear about two thirds of the way through.  No such luck here I'm afraid.  An uninteresting protagonist gets into various scrapes in Israel.  It had great potential but sadly failed to live up to it. The action is ratcheted up, but ultimately I found I really didn't care whether he lived or died.

A measure of how little satisfaction I got from this is that the only lasting memory I will take from it is that 'our man' had a job at the then fictional University of Bedfordshire.  I fear that the academic credentials of the current version of that institution are on a par with the literary credentials of this forgettable effort from Davidson.

The Rose of Tibet - Lionel Davidson

I've long been a fan of 'Kolymsky Heights' and 'The Night of Wenceslas', but hadn't ventured further into the world of Lionel Davidson.  I was tempted by the preview of this book available from the Kindle store, which proved to be an intriguing prologue.  That preview did its job very well, that and the knowledge that I had some credit on my account led to me actually buying an electronic book from Amazon - a rare occurrence indeed.

Book uploaded onto my device, I began to read with great interest.  An Englishman haring around Tibet in the early fifties in search of a lost brother, it was bound to be a fascinating romp.  How disappointed I was as page after page, then chapter after chapter, went by.  It was all pleasantly written and vaguely interesting (but I started to bridle at every mention of a 'butter lamp', which seemed to occur on almost every page), but going absolutely nowhere.

I kept going, not least because I had 'paid' for this.  If it had been a freebie, I would probably have given up by about the hundred and fifty page mark.  It was all getting a little sub-Lost Horizon, and that was not what I had signed up for.  Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, everything fell into place.  It was like a band who had been on stage placidly strumming their nylon-strung acoustics strapping on the loudest and fastest guitars ever.

The romantic interplay, which had been pure tedium, suddenly began to matter.  Then there was the action, the movement, the drama, suspense and excitement.  The travails of our protagonist here are legion, and the backdrop of real geopolitical events made it all the more believable.

I finished the book somewhat emotionally battered but puzzled as to why Davidson takes so long to hit his stride.  The are sections of 'Kolymsky Heights' that don't enthrall, but the initial and final journeys there are more than enough to sustain interest.  When it is on form, this book is up there with the best in Buchan or Stevenson's works of derring do.  The scenes trapped in icy Tibet also bring to mind 'Rogue Male' by Geoffrey Household.

The closeness of the three travellers at one point also left me thinking a little of Tintin, Chang and Snowy during their adventures in that very location. 'Tintin in Tibet' was created at almost exactly the same time, showing an awareness of Tibet among Europeans that was perhaps due to reports of the Chinese incursion.

In summary, plough (with your trusty butter lamp) through the first half and you will be rewarded no end.  It is always nice to have initial expectations confounded, and here they very much were.

Blood, Iron & Gold - Christian Wolmar

A nicely put together history of railways around the world.  Perhaps a little Euro-biased and suffers from a reliance on English language histories that have been previously published, rather than seeking out primary evidence in local languages.  Nevertheless, this is a useful one volume introduction and a worthy addition to the range of books that the author has published on the subject of railways.

The last book by Wolmar that I read was 'The Subterranean Railway'.  That seemed to zip along with relish, whereas at times, surprisingly given some of the amazing tales being recounted, this felt a little flat. Perhaps he is more at home with domestic railways rather than trying to cover their history around the world.

My favourite sections had to be those on the Cape-to-Cairo project and particularly the Victoria Falls Bridge. This will be a useful addition to my library of transport history books and one that will turn to in the future for information and inspiration.

The Last Englishman - Roland Chambers

This should have been the perfect read, combining two of my favourite subjects - Russian history and Arthur Ransome.  Sadly, it was anything but.  The book wore its research uncommonly heavily, making even subjects like Ransome's involvement with Oscar Wilde seem mildly tedious as opposed to interesting.

The sections in Russia were of a little interest and a writer with more flair than Chambers would have made much of Ransome's ailments and discomfort.  I have to admit to struggling through to the end in the way I would expect from an academic tome rather than a mass-market history book on the shelves of an airport branch of Smith's.

I learned from this that Arthur Ransome was not a great human being and that his life was one of no little incident.  I appreciate that this book tries to take on that life from a different vantage point to that portrayed by his most famous literary works. Unfortunately, those works represent the Ransome legacy, not the Russian tales, so relegating them to a few pages at the end of the book was a folly.

Overall view - I appreciate the work and research that went into the creation of the work, but I can't rate it even a decent read.

The Last Hundred Days - Patrick McGuinness

It is always difficult to create a work of fiction around real events.  Notable examples include 'The Day of the Jackal', where we know that Jackal can't possibly achieve his goal, but the tale is so gripping that becomes totally unimportant. I started reading this on a tiny plane hopping between an archipelago in the Taiwan strait and Taiwan proper, so the opening could not have been better.

McGuinness here is describing the last days of the Ceaucescu regime in Romania as 1989 comes to a close.  Anyone with a passing knowledge of recent history knows the bare bones of what happened there and this novel fleshes out events through a variety of characters. Romania in the late 80's was not a very nice place for many reasons and this work gets to the heart of the problems there.

Our narrator, and perhaps the least successful of these characters, is a young Englishman who has ended up teaching English in Bucharest by mistake.  The reason that I say least successful is that the traits, tropes and abilities of this character who must be at best in his early twenties are quite remarkable.  He has insight into language and culture alongside an uncanny ability to seduce Romanian women from very different backgrounds.

There are a few clanging errors that set me off course a little (truckers on the hard shoulder of the U-Bahn?), but overall it was a fascinating romp through a time I remember vividly from the BBC reports. The pacing was excellent, but ultimately the plot (such as it was) petered out by the end, overtaken by events.

The events of winter 1989 in Romania are murky to say the least and this book describes one of the strangest interluded - the mystery of the 'broken' leg.  Some of the characters felt more convincing than others, but overall it was that curious beast, a literary novel with a certain Ruritanian flair.

Highly recommended - I know that I have enjoyed a book when I find myself trying to visualise and cast the film or BBC miniseries as I read.

William Boyd

I've finally given in to temptation and 'Waiting For Sunrise' is sitting there on my Kindle as if butter wouldn't melt.  I've long enjoyed Boyd's output and thought that 'Any Human Heart' and 'Restless' saw him at the height of his powers, but for very different reasons.  'Ordinary Thunderstorms' I must read again, parts of it didn't sit quite right for me.

So, what are we to make of this news?  I have to admit that I loved 'Devil May Care', the Sebastian Faulks attempt at a Fleming pastiche, possibly because of the inclusion of the Ekranoplan rather than the faintly tedious villain.  I have yet to succumb to the charms of Jeffrey Deaver's oeuvre (though of course that day may come, there are some examples lurking on my Kindle and it is always possible that I could be snowbound in an airport one day), so didn't try 'Carte Blanche'.

To be perfectly honest, this sounds like one of those times where one of your favourite bands covers a song by another of your favourite bands.  The outcome is usually technically accurate yet somehow unsatisfying.  Can Boyd, a writer of some wit, inject life into his attempt, or will it simply be Fleming-lite?  Only time will tell, but it will doubtless be an essential read.

Hot Enough For June - A Speedy Review

On balance, this was not a bad watch.  Once you get past the clunking opening sequence clearly designed to comfort viewers weaned on the recent outpourings of the nascent Bond francise, it has enough of a flavour of the book to keep you reasonably enthralled and some half decent performances.  However, for anyone with knowledge of the book, the idea of Pan Whistler being a) Dirk Bogarde and b) somewhere in his forties, is a little much to take.

Sylva Koscina as Vlasta is suitably statuesque and can any film with John Le Mesurier, Leo McKern and Robert Morley in the cast not be worth watching? I had a slight problem with the way the actual 'Night of Wencelas' was filmed.  Perhaps a filmmaker today would revel in the claustrophobia and limitations of the 'square' and Whistler's increasing panic as the night went on.  Back in 1964, director Ralph Thomas seems to have gone for more of a travelogue approach, the Czech setting being mined as exotic fodder in the way of 'From Russia With Love', released a year before.

While I would hesitate to call it a good film, it captured the attention and held it until the denouement. Had I not been aware of the source material, I would probably have dismissed it as a cash-in vehicle for Bogarde on the back of Bond, which in one sense it is.

'The Night of Wencelas' is a cracking story that could be better served on screen than through this.  Is there enough in there to sustain a modern feature film?  My view is sadly not, especially when we see what was done to 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' recently. That was a very different kettle of espionage agents of course, but I can picture Davidson's work being dismissed for only having one linear plot line.  Perhaps a quality period drama is the way forward.  The Radio 4 version would be fine starting point

Hot Enough for June (3 out of 5)

Brevity in consideration - does length ever equal quality

It is far from being a new phenomenon, but it seems that to be successful writer of fiction these days, you need to put out a vast amount of product.  What would have been seen as a perfectly reasonable length novel from the thirties to the eighties now seems to be dismissed as a ‘novella’ and not of suitable substance for serious consideration.  Can a work that is limited to around two hundred pages have the same impact as one that runs to a thousand or more?  Does limiting pages lead to better, more considered writing or place too many restrictions on authors with unlimited imaginations. Let us consider the place of the vast tome through the ages.

I’ve always been aware of ‘Clarissa’, published in the mid-eighteenth century and written by Samuel Richardson, which weighs in at a not insubstantial 1534 pages and as near as dammit a million words.  Most impressive from a time of limited literacy and lower levels of printing technology, mere chicken-feed in the world of the internet and fan fiction.  But, and here is the important question, is it any good?  I am sure that there are many devotees of Richardson’s work around, but I can’t ever recall meeting any.  A work of that length, written such a long time ago, somehow doesn’t seem worth the effort.  I may be wrong and hope one day to find out, perhaps on a trip on the Trans-Siberian with heavy delays that free version I have put on my Kindle will come into its own.  Until then, I will only be able to ponder and consider starting with Richardson’s previous effort ‘Pamela’ which is almost a short story in comparison at 594 pages.

The real reason behind this question was a recent reading of ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami.  Now, before defenders of his work jump up to declaim that the work is in fact three books and by reading them together in one volume, I am not really reading it as the author intended, I will hold up my hands.  I did by the 3-in-1 version and ploughed through it reasonably quickly, questioning as I did whether it was actually any good or just a very long book that didn’t really get anywhere.  Had I read the first two books together and had the twelve month gap that the original readers had before part three appeared, I think my reading experience would have been enhanced.  It was too much as one vast tome and would have been better sold and indeed promoted as three short, linked novels.  I wonder how much marketing pressures from publishers have led to that brick of a book, a veritable Readers Digest compendium of a publication, being on the shelves of bookstores both virtual and physical.

This got me thinking even further about the size of books.  The ‘Harry Potter’ series is another case for consideration here.  I have to admit here to only having read the first two. Reasonably sized, nicely plotted and very enjoyable they were too. As the series continued, the width of the spines increased and with that my desire to read them decreased at a roughly equal rate.

Continuing with historical considerations, almost a century after Richardson’s heavyweight offering, Charles Dickens opened his account as a novelist with ‘The Pickwick Papers’.  Take a trip to the book store today to purchase a copy of that work and you will leave with a volume of around 750 pages, which at first glance seems to support a theory that long novels have been around for centuries and are a legitimate form.  Consider, however, the form in which that work was conceived and released to the public.  Even more so that in the case of ‘1Q84’ above, ‘The Pickwick Papers’ was developed to be read in instalments, in this case monthly oned. Reading the whole thing today as a continuous narrative is a bit like watching all twelve episodes of ‘Fawlty Towers’ back-to-back and coming away wondering what all the fuss was about.  I concede that in both those examples the quality of the work is high enough for that not to happen, but the idea still stands.

More recently, I blame the rise of both the airport novel and the ‘bonkbuster’ for perpetuating the idea that size is everything in fiction.  Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Arthur Hailey et al, you are to blame.  The idea that all your holiday reading could be sandwiched between two luridly illustrated covers is surely one that has gone forever in the era of the e-book?

Another set of books that got me puzzling over this conundrum were the three that make up ‘The Millenium Trilogy’. Stieg Larsson’s doorstop collection amazed me (and the publishing industry no doubt) by their ‘reach’ into the range of people I know.  A word-of-mouth hit too, no multi-million pound advertising campaign there, not until the recent film anyway, and little good did it do there.  I liked them; I have to admit that from the start. The premise of the first book carried me along (it harks back to the locked-rooms of the likes of John Dickson Carr) and the slightly clumsy written style I put down to being a mass-market book delivered in translation.  Yet, when I looked back at them and considered from a distance, my feeling was that there was at least one very good book indeed in there, possibly two and definitely not three.  Careful editing would have produced a very different result.  Was the published version a result of the publishers having a free hand due to the unfortunate demise of the author, or am I reading too much into it?

My position on this question is that books should never be sold or read on the ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ principle. A book should be as long as it needs to be, whether it is ‘Clarissa’ or ‘Kidnapped’.

     

On the 'To Read' pile

There is an always growing number of books on my 'must read' pile.  Usual routes to that stack are recommendations from friends, reviews from newspapers, radio programmes or blogs and almost never the Amazon 'people who bought this also bought this' link.

So, here follow the next candidates;

i) Bella Bathurst - The Lighthouse Stevensons. Biography of a family that would have been remarkable enough for their tenacity in building lighthouses in the face of enormous difficulties.  That one member of the family decided against the family business and instead gave us 'Kidnapped', 'Treasure Island' and more is an even more fascinating tale.  This should be a great read.

ii) Giles Foden - Zanzibar.  This is around a decade old now and I have to admit it was an impulse buy in HMV on Oxford Street, the two quid price sticker drawing me in.  I have something of a 'problem' with GIles Foden. I love 'The Last King of Scotland', but found both that and 'Ladysmith' terribly difficult to read, despite the end result being ultimately rewarding.  With 'Zanzibar', I suspect that I will find out whether it is him or me!

iii) Patrick McGuinness - The Last Hundred Days.  I've been saving this, hoping that I can really savour it. It is a book that I really want to enjoy. The unfolding drama of Christmas 1989 in Romania, the bloody conclusion and mindboggling aftermath of events like the Mineriad protests with legions of workers propping up a government that looked remarkably similar to what came before. I've always wanted to know more and I'm hoping that this will be the book to tell me.  I'm also delighted to see that there is more to Mr McGuinness than his appearances as sidekick to Peter Kay and a shouty Cilla for the new generation on ITV1.

iv) Simon Winder - Germania.  ''Don't Lets Be Beastly to the Germans'' sang Noel Coward, yet so often we are,  This was a purchase as part of that most heinous of offers, 3 for 2 in an airport branch of WHSmith.  The companion volumes in this unholy triumvirate were 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher, which was exceptional, and 'The Last Englishman' a biography of Arthur Ransome which has been so dry that reading it is redolent of those competitions to scoff cream crackers without water.  What am I expecting from 'Germania'?  A well-written introduction to Germany would be good and a few jokes too.  A greater understanding of a fascinating and somewhat alien (to a Brit at least) culture would be a bonus.  We shall see.

Hot Enough For June - Lionel Davidson at the cinema

I've long been a fan of Lionel Davidson's sparse but remarkable output.  'The Night of Wenceslas' was his first success, a tense but amusing tale of antics behind the Iron Curtain in 50's Czechoslovakia.  I'll find time to discuss the book in full, but I was astonished to find that there was a film version, the 'Hot Enough For June' mentioned in the title of this post.

Check the IMDB entry here. That is some cast list, an assistant to Basil Brush, Rumpole, The Master (well, one incarnation anyway and Dirk Bogarde.  I have sourced myself a copy and look forward to comparing it to the original book and the rather splendid Radio 4 dramatisation that was made some years back.

Now all we need is someone to start work on a film or small screen adaptation of 'Kolmsky Heights' and I will be very happy.

Blood River - Tim Butcher

I've just finished the fabulous 'Blood River', a gritty and epic description of a trip up the Congo in the footsteps of Stanley.

Butcher doesn't hold back on the poverty, terror and sheer horror of some of the places that he visits.  He also leaves the reader to decide their own view of the colonial period in that part of Africa, offering enough insight into the technological developments in the way of trains and ships that changed the region, but only for a fleetingly brief period.

Another thing to mention is the humanity that he comes across in what would be considered an inhumane environment, not only from aid workers and missionaries, but from the locals too.  There is tragedy in this tale and hopelessness, but there is beauty too, a rare feat in a 'mere' travel book,

A hybrid of regional history, travelogue and journalistic reportage is a difficult thing to pull off.  Butcher does it here brilliantly and leaves the reader glad they didn't accompany him, but very glad that he made the trip on their behalf.