A time of war
Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis I love Connie Willis! She writes intricate stories, meticulously researched, her characters come alive on the page, their environment is present in more than words and she does it all with gentle humour and romance. She writes a book about the Middle Ages – you are there. Simple [...]
Futures past
Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century by Paul Milo I’ve always been a bit of a science fiction nut. Gadgets fascinate me. I drive a car filled with buttons and screens. GPS, climate control, sound system, cruise control, iphone, bluetooth, remote controls… “We’re living in [...]
Old father Thames
Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd I ducked into a bookshop in Kings Cross Underground to get Peter Ackroyd’s marvellous book London: The Biography. I was there to check out every square on the British Monopoly board and I wanted to get my research right. The book was a superb resource. I buried my nose [...]
Legends of the Fall
The Pentagon was attacked on the same day, and a fourth airliner was hijacked and crashed at the same time, but it was the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre which dominated the television and print media. It’s what we were looking at on CNN, and the other two planes were [...]
Witness Number Five?
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly I love a good legal thriller, and Michael Connelly has produced a ripper with this one. We meet Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, again as he ploughs through a new world of legal practice, the humdrum but topical world of mortgage foreclosures. Happily we don’t spend the book rummaging [...]
Amis
The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow Ames is in Iowa, just north of Des Moines. I remember Des Moines. Discoverylover and I had been debating where the accent was and whether it was pronounced in the French fashion or what we imagined Iowans might say. I [...]
Ripperpotamus!
Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry I wasn’t sure what to make of this to begin with, but I found it increasingly brilliant as I went along. Stephen Fry has wickedly rewritten the country house detective mystery. Brought it into the modern age, along with associated bad language and cultural references. But realistically, it could have been [...]
The jazz writer
Michael Connelly, LA crime writer, packed out the theatre in the National Library of Australia yesterday and I was there in my cabbie clobber, thinly disguised with a Pops top. I’ve enjoyed all of his books and was glad of the chance to see the writer and hear him talk about his craft. He kicked [...]
Barely Brideshead
A poignant book. Written effortlessly by Waugh, this book is full of echoes, mirrors and allusions. Like the paintings of old English houses Charles paints, capturing the glory before the wrecking crew moves in to knock up a red-brick block of flats. here is the last sad glow of the English glory. Eton and Oxford, a decent regiment, a safe seat, a good match. Dinner at the Savoy and summers in Venice.
Texas With a Twist
Watch this space! Corn! It was impossible to escape the corney hokum of this little piece of Texas, carefully cornserved for the tourists. Longhorns, cowboys, marshalls, steaks that overflowed the serving plate, over-the-top bumper stickers, whimsical store names. Armadillos. Catfish and jalapeno. I had an absolute ball. My eyes were opening to the world, I [...]