#61 - 70 (I guess more it should more accurately say #70 - 61)
"This is the 3rd book in the Culture series I've read and once again, it didn't disappoint. I will say that at times I had no idea what was going on, but even then it didn't seem to matter. Basically the premise is that an unknown entity has been discovered somewhere in the known universe; has done something with the ship that discovered it and set a course of action that might result in a full-scale galactic war. That's the big picture, but also on the smaller scale, and these events might also be influenced by this entity (the named Excession in the title), we have various individuals who are guided/ heading towards each other and this Excession for a variety of purposes. I've not described it very well, but basically you have the intimate story of the various people; Genar Hofoen, Dajeil, and Ulver Seich who are brought together; stories of past events (Genar Hofoen and Dajeil both becoming pregnant, after Hofoen sublimates from male to female; their falling apart); both complex and simple. I enjoyed the stories of the ships (basically animate beings in their own right), even their names are interesting and fun (e.g. the Sleeper Service, the Fate Amenable to Change, the Honest Mistake, etc). The universe of the Culture is one of the most unique world's I've ever read about. The stories and characters are all so interesting and just to experience this world of SciFi makes reading that genre interesting and exciting again. I find it difficult to describe in a few words. You just have to try one of the stories to discover for yourself. Excession is the 4th book in the Culture universe/ series."
"Ross Poldark is the first book in the Poldark series by British author Winston Graham. I've enjoyed a couple of his books, previously, especially Marnie which was the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock movie. I'd watched the first season of Poldark on PBS a couple of years ago so had decided to give the book a go.
I chose it to read in Dec 2017 as kind of a filler to help meet my reading group challenge for the year. I was fairly sure I'd enjoy it but didn't think it would be a real classic. So much for expectations. It was excellent, a great story and peopled with sympathetic, well-crafted characters.
The first book is set in the 1780s. Ross Poldark has returned from the Revolutionary wars in America, to his family estate, hoping to fulfill a promise to marry Elizabeth Chynoweth. His father has died and Ross is now heir to that estate. He finds, to his chagrin, that his uncle has instead arranged for Elizabeth to marry Ross's cousin, Francis. So that's how the story starts.
Ross must bear this heartbreak and plot a course for his future. He must learn to run his estate, bring it back from disrepair, earn money, all those mundane things.
We find that he is an honorable man who cares for the people who live on the estate. Like many of the landowners in Cornwall, he runs a copper mine and has farmland. He wants to start a new mine and must persuade investors to take part in it.
Specific interesting incidents occur. Jinny, the daughter of one of his tenants, is 'stalked' by another tenant and Ross must sort out that situation. He also discovers a young girl who is being mistreated by her father, a drunk and he brings her to work in his household. Demelza is a wonderful character, bold, independent minded, just a pleasure to read about. Her budding relationship with Ross is one of the highlights of the book. As well, you have Ross's cousin, Verity, who lives at Uncle Charles's estate, who falls in love with a sailing Captain and all that ensues from that.
So many interesting story lines and some wonderful characters and sub-characters. I was taken by this story that I'm now looking forward to moving on to the second book, Demelza."
"Back in my university days, I took a Science Fiction novel course. One of the books we read was City, a story of the future where all that remains on Earth are dogs and robots. A beautiful, engaging, touching story. For some reason, I've never read another Simak book, until this past week. The Werewolf Principle, written in 1968, was a lovely surprise. In the future, mankind sent ships into space to search the universe for habitable planets. Along with the ships were two unique humans (maybe telling you their uniqueness might take some of the joy of discovering it for yourselves, so I won't elaborate). Suffice it to say, that one of them returns to Earth, discovered in hibernation in a capsule. Andrew Blake arrives, suffering from amnesia. Slowly he discovers himself and how he has changed over this 200 year journey. He is now more than Andrew Blake. Discovering how he has changed is part of the joy of this book; such an imaginative concept. I found myself saying 'Wow' many times. The book is thoughtfully crafted, intelligently written and the story and characters are all interesting and engaging. It's so nice exploring Science Fiction again, the imagination and the stories. I do like how Simak views the future, some concepts like the living homes are fascinating, and, yet, people still use coins and public phone boxes. I also liked the Brownies, the beings from another world who have settled on Earth and keep an eye on things. Everything about this story was fascinating. I had originally given it 4-stars, but as I write about it and think about it, it deserves more than that. It intrigued me, brought out emotions, both happy and sad, and just totally grabbed me, from beginning to end. It won't take me 40 years to read another Simak story."
"Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television 'family'. But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people did not live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known."
"This is the 3rd book in the Cornish trilogy. I enjoyed the first, The Rebel Angels, very much. It had been most enjoyable to get back into Robertson Davies. The second book, What's Bred in the Bone, while interesting, didn't hold the same level of enjoyment that the first did. So The Lyre of Orpheus has sat on my shelf for a couple of years now. I'm so glad that I dusted it off and got back into this trilogy. It was excellent. I loved everything about this, the writing, the characters, the story. The basic story is that the Cornish foundation, run by Arthur Cornish and his lovely wife, Maria, and assisted by a loose collection of directors, agrees to use Cornish foundation money, to fund the doctoral work of a young music student, Hulda Schnakenburg, who is trying to complete an unfinished opera by Hoffman, the Story of Arthur of Britain. A concurrent story has Simon Darcourt, old friend of Francis Cornish and of Arthur and Maria, seeking to complete a biography of Francis Cornish. The investigation into this biography, to find out the missing middle of Francis' life and the development of the opera, are fascinating stories. The characters, from the main ones, as well as Schnak and the others brought in to help with the creation of the opera, were lovingly written and so interesting. I won't say I'm an opera fan, but watching the creation and development and the ultimate presentation of this opera, was a joy to read. Throw in asides by Hoffman, throughout the story, as he watches from Limbo and waits to see what the ultimate result will be, and you've got a wonderfully rich story. Sex, cuckoldry and just downright entertainment and you have a fantastic, wonderful story. A perfect ending to this trilogy."
"What a wonderful book! Devastatingly sad at times, but also the story of survival, love, family. Set around 4 sisters Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May Price who go with their mother Orleanna and father, Nathan Price as missionaries to the Congo in the 60s. A wilful, strong tempered father who doesn't really care for his family, more for his desire to convert the Congolese to Christianity. The mother and her daughters who must cope and try to survive in this new country. A fascinating, well written story about their lives, told from the perspective of the four girls, with introductions to each section by their mother, looking back. At times, I've found it heart - achingly sad. But I loved the story. Beautifully crafted and one that is so hard to put down."
"Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to World War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and how it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten."
"Set in Bombay in the mid-1990s, Family Matters tells a story of familial love and obligation, of personal and political corruption, of the demands of tradition and the possibilities for compassion. Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small discordant family, is beset by Parkinson’s and haunted by memories of his past. He lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. But the burden of the illness worsens the already strained family relationships. Soon, their sweet-tempered half-sister, Roxana, is forced to assume sole responsibility for her bedridden father. And Roxana’s husband, besieged by financial worries, devises a scheme of deception involving his eccentric employer at a sporting goods store, setting in motion a series of events that leads to the narrative’s moving outcome. Family Matters has all the richness, the gentle humour, and the narrative sweep that have earned Mistry the highest of accolades around the world."
"I heard about Saki (AKA H.H. Munro), a British short story writer from the early 1900's only by chance. I found this book while wandering through a used book store in Kingston, Ontario and bought it partly because I liked the binding. Now that I've read the collection of short stories, I can honestly say how glad that I was to have taken the chance on this book. Saki's stories are funny, witty, sharp and to the point. Each story runs from 3 to 6 pages and each is concise and exact and so well-written. The foreword mentions that writers such as PG Wodehouse, of the Wooster and Jeeves stories, were influenced by Saki's works. I can see the similarities in humour, although Saki is more biting. I was not bored by any of the stories, and there are many in the collection, some made me laugh out loud, some chuckle and many had me thinking about the mind that created them. I don't know if you'll find a similar collection anywhere else. It was an excellent, most enjoyable read. (5 stars)"
"A Gun for Sale was Graham Greene's 7th novel, published originally in 1936. I've been slowly going through his books, especially his earlier works and he's become a favourite of mine. I can see inspirations for books like Brighton Rock in this book. In fact, it was his next published work.
The story is about Raven, a gun for hire, is sent to kill a foreign war minister. He is paid with stolen money, which makes him the subject of a police investigation by Scotland Yard (who don't know about his assassination). The officer in charge, Inspector Mather, is engaged to Anne, an aspiring actress about to go to Nottwich for a job in a panto show. Coincidentally, the man, Davis / Cholomondeley (he does go by various names) who paid Raven is on the train and being followed by Raven who wants to exact revenge for how he was tricked.
An undercurrent throughout the story is the ominous threat of war, partly due to the assassination, which is causing stress and mistrust within Europe.
The story is a string of coincidences; Anne is kidnapped by Raven as he tries to avoid the police; Anne goes to dinner with Davis and has her life threatened; Mather is assigned the case of trying to track down Raven; etc. It sounds convoluted but the story is presented in a straight-forward manner, tying up many aspects of the coincidences and making for an entertaining, interesting, tense story. The characters are well-crafted and you do get a good sense of who they are and why they are. All in all, an excellent story."
Next entry will feature the '50s. Now for a couple of Honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
The Purple Plain -
"During 1945 H. E. Bates spent some time in Burma and India with the aim of writing about the Burmese war for American readers. The experience inspired three ‘Asian novels’, one of which was “The Purple Plain”. After returning to England he heard a story about a pilot who, having lost his wife to a German bomb while on honeymoon, as a consequence had become "a much-decorated hero by the dubious method of trying to get himself killed". It provided the spark that prompted Bates to start working on the novel (in any event, because of his experiences while over there, he was already keen to write about his time in Burma). In the novel, Forrester, commander at an air station on the "purple plain" of Burma, loses the will to live, but regains it upon meeting a young Burmese woman, Anna, who has passed through her own wartime trauma. He survives a plane crash, rescues a fellow pilot, and is finally reunited with Anna. It is a tale of human courage and endurance in the face of tremendous odds, and it was certainly “something different” for Bates. The book was published in late November 1947, and in 1954 the story was filmed starring Gregory Peck and Win Min Than."
The Jacaranda Tree -
"During World War II, a small English community are forced to flee when Japanese forces invade Burma. Paterson, the manager of a rice-mill, organises the evacuation and takes with him his Burmese mistress and her young brother. The rest of the party take along their prejudices, their pettiness and their squabbles, and a small enclave of English insularity moves north through Burma. Inevitably, as the journey continues, bitterness, tension and insoluble conflict unfold...Inspired by Bates' period of service in the Eastern theatre of war, "The Jacaranda Tree" skillfully evokes the atmosphere of Burma during the chaos of invasion."
The Scarlet Sword -
"The entire action of The Scarlet Sword takes place in rather less than ten days at a Catholic mission in Kashmir . There, at the moment when Kashmir breaks under the ferocious tribal rush of Pathans and Afridis. About sixty people of many nationalities are trapped. They include not only nuns, two priests, and many Sikh and Hindu women and children, but a war correspondent named Crane, a young English Colonel and his wife, a nurse from Glasgow, an English girl and her mother, and a dancer from the brothels of Bombay. In the first murderous descent of Pathans several of these are killed. The rest, fortified and led by the two priests, succored and nursed by the nuns, remain to resist by immense courage, fortitude and humour tens days of nightmare."
So there you go. I hope you got a few ideas for possible reading choices. Enjoy the Oscars tonight and have a great week!
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