August-September Books Read

 Because of travel I was unable to report on August as a standalone month.  I write this blog entry as I go along, writing a short review after reading the next book.  However, it doesn't get published until the end of the month.

  

Scorpio Drums (1992) by Kenneth Bulmer is 235 pages long and continues the decline of the great series.  The first part of the book isn't too bad, as Dray and company descend upon a city hidden by a dense jungle.  They find the citizens frozen in time, in the midst of their daily and ceremonial activities.  They have been frozen for almost 300 years.  What a great story opportunity.  I became excited.  But then the book degenerated into yet another underground maze, with traps, fierce animals and, lastly, a tribe that worships a sacred fire.  Dray is after a collection of special rubies, wanted badly by yet another evil wizard.  Yawn.  So we wander below ground for over a hundred pages.  Dray becomes a slave again, then a sacrificial victim.  When it all becomes too much for him (seeing Deliah in combat to the death) he goes wild.  The evil wizard snatches the ruby we have been searching for through the entire book and disappears with it.  End of this story.  Still several more to get through.

** stars. 

 

The Children of Captain Grant by Jules Verne (also called In Search of the Castaways, a much better title) was published in 1867 and translated a year later.  It consists of three books that tell of an around the world adventure of the Scottish ship Duncan, led by Lord Glenarvan as they search for a missing boat captain, father to two children.  The expedition spends one of the books in South America, another in Australia, and the third in New Zealand.  It is a boys' adventure story, though with a lot of geography lessons thrown in.  The two females don't do much except not complain, and suffer with dignity in silence during the hardships.  The 12 year old son of the missing Captain Grant, however, is involved in several heroic deeds.  This is not my favourite Verne novel, and a lot of it is very slow going, especially the first book in Patagonia.  In a remarkable stroke of good luck, after nearly everything has gone wrong many times, everything works out fine.  The captain is rescued, the bad guy is left on a deserted island, and apparently everyone lives happily ever after.  The events and geography are perfectly integrated with known facts at the time, including war with the Maori in New Zealand and the fact that they were cannibals.  For its time, this would have been an example of "true adventure" story.  Worth reading, but certainly not essential Verne.  *** stars.

 

Hurricane-check.

 

A shipwreck-check.

 

The boy carried off by a giant bird--hmm, slightly unusual.  

All illustrations by Edouard Riou. 

 

Next up was a true classic of SF literature--The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells from 1897.  Wells does everything he can to make this story work, as he thinks of everything that might happen to give away the man.  Footprints in the snow, digestive issues, bleeding from wounds, jostled in crowds, hit from behind by vehicles.  The scientist who makes himself invisible is a very ornery and selfish man, and while at first we are sympathetic to him, once we hear his manifesto we can't wait for him to be caught.  What imaginative person has not wanted to be invisible at times?  However, once we see all the traps that can catch a person in such a state, it does not seem quite so wonderful an idea.  Wells has taken a universal wish and made it come true, for better and for worse.  The formula is still out there somewhere, written into three books that have now been missing for a very long time.  Perhaps they will turn up someday.  Perhaps they already have.  **** stars.  Recommended.

 

Original cover, and still the best one. 

 

A Woman of No Importance is a play by Oscar Wilde, first performed in 1893.  This has to be one of the drollest plays ever written.  The theatre director where Wilde's previous success had run (Lady Windemere's Fan) wanted another comedy, and he wanted it quickly.  Wilde obliged with this work, certainly not his best though filled with more witticisms than any large joke book.  A man discovers his son, whom he had abandoned along with the mother, and offers him a job as his private secretary.  Once the truth finally spills out, however, the father has to face up to the consequences of his previous inaction.  A serious play though filled with wit.  It's all too offhand for my taste, but I guess that is the point--society people are ultimately empty and worthless.  *** stars.

 

Mrs. Dalloway is the novel that put Virginia Woolf on the literary map, and kept her there.  Published in 1925 this novel, more than any earlier work, shows just what Woolf was capable of.  It uses as its framework a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class woman who lives to give parties.  We first meet Clarissa as she heads to the flower shop in the early morning to order flowers for her evening party.  We spend a day with her and people she knows, getting inside their heads in turn and sorting through their thoughts.  The story never dwells on any one person, but moves from person to person throughout the book.  Central to the story is Peter Walsh, just back from 5 years in Italy (1918-23).  He had been in love with Clarissa, and though they had got on well and were great friends, she choose Richard for her husband instead.  He is still in love with Clarissa, at least in some ways, even though he recognizes her for what she really is.  Also central to the story is Septimus, a war veteran suffering terribly from PTSD, which was not known about then.  His wife Lucretia (Reiza), an Italian woman he married in Italy after the war, is greatly troubled by his worsening mental state.  Dr. Holmes, a GP, is worse than useless to her and Septimus.  Dr. Bradshaw recognizes the soldier's condition but requires him to be institutionalized and separated from his wife.  Elizabeth is Clarissa and Richard's teenage daughter, just beginning to awaken to life and its possibilities.  All of these characters and more we learn much about during the novel.  While it might seem that the book is Joyce light, it is highly readable and not difficult to follow or understand.  It remains one of the better stream of consciousness novels to this day. **** stars.

 

Foundation and Empire is from 1952, Asimov's 2nd Foundation novel.  The book details the falling of the first Foundation, as well as the further disintegration of the Empire.  The Mule now takes front stage, and we don't discover who he/it is until the end of the novel.  I enjoyed this one more than the first volume, mostly because the characters seem a bit more interesting and more developed, and are given a bit more to do.  Seldon's predictions have broken down, unable to predict the Mule and what he has done to disrupt the plan.  Or has the plan broken down.  Harry Seldon knew something was going to happen, or else why would he have set up a 2nd Foundation.  This one is so secretive that no one knows its location or status.  Can it take on the Mule?  Should it take on the Mule?  We'll have to wait till next month to find out the big mystery.  A good read.  *** 1/2 stars.

 

Children of the Ritz is a 1927 novel by Cornell Woolrich, his 2nd.  While not a great piece of literature, it is a readable tale of an 18 year old spoiled rich girl who falls for the new family chauffeur.  They end up running away to be married.  He has recently won $50,000.00 at the racetrack, and their marriage gets off to a good start.  However, the young woman cannot give up the lifestyle she had when living with her family, who are now bankrupt.  She spends and spends, goes out dancing with friends and meets and falls for another rich man.  I kept waiting for something major to happen, for instance a murder.  But not much happens except for the marriage failing, the girl running back to her family (who now have money again), and the happy couple getting back together again at the end.  The chauffeur's family, especially his mom, will remind readers of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius and family.  Jerry's mom is very much like the one Woolrich gives us.  Worth a quick read, but not a recommendation.  ** 1/2 stars.

 

The Crooked Hinge is a 1938 murder/mystery novel from 1938 by the great John Dickson Carr.  In my teens I read everything I could by Carr, and my local library had many of his novels in paperback edition.  I collected him for years, too.  I haven't read a Carr novel in perhaps 30 years, but I'm happy to be back.  The author was greatly influenced by Chesterton, especially his Father Brown stories.  This is a fairly convoluted tale of murder, reminding me of the very first Father Brown story.  Amateur sleuths would have no way of solving this murder, even if the correct criminal was suspected (I suspected the correct person but had no idea how it was done).  This story involves witchcraft, automatons, the sinking of the Titanic and a lot of people.  Of course wheezing Dr. Fell solves the crime, but it takes a 22 page chapter at the end to explain it all to us.  A bit too far fetched for this reader.  Forgetting about the mystery component, however, it is a heck of a good novel.  It is perfect for a TV script.  *** stars.  Reviewed September 15th/26

 

Yeats' New Poems was published in 1938, the same year as Carr's mystery.  I particularly liked "The Three Bushes", a Pre-Raphaelite work of significance.  Is is about three memorial bushes planted for three deceased people.  Many of the poems refer to Irish history and characters who influenced it.  I really liked "The Ghost of Roger Casement," which reads like lyrics from a Pogues song.  And "The Municipal Gallery Revisited" seems to sum up much of the work in this collection, being a thoughtful ode to Irish struggles and personal friendships made along the way.

 

Don Delillo's White Noise is a novel from 1985. I think I've read it before, though I have no written account of it anywhere.  It's a book that often appears on "must read" lists, so I began reading, as usual, wanting to like the novel.  But part way in I found that I didn't really like it very much.  I found much of the writing glib, uninspired, too matter-of-fact and quite emotionless.  However, as I read on I would come across a line or paragraph that was truly well written.  I slowly began to like it, in places.  Then major events occur and the book begins to soar.  So I ended up liking it quite a bit.  Grocery stores feature widely in the story, places of sanity and where many of the characters often meet by chance.  This reminded me of Ballard's use of multi-storey car parks.  In fact, there is more than a hint of Ballard in Delillo's writing and style.  Even more of other writers also appear, including Barry Malzberg, Woody Allen, Dave Barry and even John Sladek.  A few quotes will give some idea of the style and quality of writing.

 

From Chapter 11: "Television is just another name for junk mail."

From Chapter 14: "Only a catastrophe gets our attention.  We want them, we need them, we depend on them.  As long as they happen somewhere else." 

From Chapter 19: "Bee [one of the hero's daughters] was small-featured except for her eyes, which seemed to contain two forms of life, the subject matter and its hidden implications."

From Chapter 22: There were two new developments at the supermarket, a butcher's corner and a bakery, and the oven aroma of bread and cake combined with the sight of a bloodstained man pounding at strips of living veal was pretty exciting for us all."

From Chapter 22:  (again in the grocery store) "Products from twenty countries.  It's like being at some cross-roads of the ancient world, a Persian bazaar or boom town on the Tigris."

From Chapter 27 (about a younger daughter): "She had a history of being devout in her victimhood."

From Chapter 37: "Would you prefer to know the exact date and time of your death?"  "Absolutely not.  It's bad enough to fear the unknown.  Faced with the unknown, we can pretend it isn't there.  Exact dates would drive many to suicide, if only to beat the system." 

From Chapter 40 (regarding his youngest child): "He walked the tricycle down the steps, guiding it with a duteous and unsentimental hand, letting it bump right along, as if it were an odd-shaped little sibling, not necessarily cherished."

 

I would recommend the book.  If readers don't like the first 50 pages or so, try to stick with it.  It gets better and better. *** 1/2 stars.  

 

I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes was next, published in 1936.  There is a preface from 2006 by Jeanette Winterson, as well the original introduction by T. S. Elliot from 1937.  The book came highly recommended, but after reading it I know that it is not for me.  The main characters are Robin, a woman who stirs the pot and is more or less the center of things; her spurned lover Felix, who has a son by her before they separate; Nora, a female spurned lover; Robin's newest lover Jenny; and the doctor, a man who talks incessantly and when in a conversation can never give a true answer at any time.  All the characters are mad, with Nora driven insane by her love for Robin and Robin herself so unsure of who or what she is that she is likely the craziest of them all.  The alcoholic impoverished doctor is insane, but we don't find out why until near the end.  Jenny is also mad about Robin and when Robin drifts away from her she is not far behind Nora in her obsession.  Felix wanders Europe with his handicapped son, totally adrift with no hope of ever being grounded.

Each character is introduced with a very long description before they have said or done anything.  While the book is quite readable it seldom makes sense.  Since crazy people are talking most of the time (the book is extremely heavy on dialogue), I suppose it is not meant to make much sense.  Descriptions tend to be on the bizarre side, not helping readers to picture what is meant but being quite descriptive nonetheless.  For instance: "In her face was the tense expression of an organism surviving in an alien element."  Or a more general example: "The French are dishevelled and wise; the American tries to approximate it with drink."  Try this one:  "There is no truth...you have dressed the unknowable in the garments of the known."  I like that one a lot.  One final word of wisdom from the author (usually it is the doctor speaking these sideways truths):  "...be careful whom you love--for a lover who dies, no matter how forgotten, will take somewhat of you to the grave."

A good read overall, but not an easy one.  I won't recommend it as it is not what I am searching for in a book, but give it a try if you want a bit of a challenge, or if you are pining away about a lost lover.  Good luck.  *** stars. 

 

I finished up with  another section of essays (three) by Stephen Jay Gould.  The book is called Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and The Diet of Worms, his tenth collection of essays on evolution.  Section IV of the book is called "History and Tolerance."  The first essay (the 11th of the book so far) is called "A Cerion For Christopher" and is a very readable account of Columbus' first landing in 1492, on the Bahamas.  This is one of the best essays on first contact I have ever read and can highly recommend it.  The next essay is called "The Dodo in the Caucus Race," and explains the demise of the giant flightless bird and how people at the time blamed its stupidity for becoming extinct.  This is eye-opening writing and a must for any student of science.  The final essay discusses Martin Luther's defense of his version of Christianity, as well as the way religion has led to so much violence and hatred.  Two sections and eight more essays remain.  So far this is easily his best collection, though they are all five star books.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June Reading Summary

Bulmer's Dray Prescott adventures just go on and on.  At least they are quite entertaining.  #31 in the series is called Masks of Scorpio, from 1984.  Dray has been reunited with his wayward daughter, and they are beginning to have father/daughter adventures on the planet Kregen.  The masks of the title refer to masks worn by the religious cult that Dray and Pompino are trying to eliminate, as well as masks worn by others who oppose the religion.  Once again Dray saves a little girl from sacrifice, and another temple gets burned.  But Dray gets sidetracked as Pandahem gathers a fleet and prepares to attack Vallia.  Dray and his daughter musts somehow stop the fleet before it gets started. 

Each novel contains at least a dozen separate adventures, along with plenty of camaraderie among Dray's followers, both men and women.  There is intrigue, savage fighting, and plenty of eating and drinking and even some singing.  The adventures continue and I couldn't be happier.

 

E C Tubb's Cap Kennedy #9 Earth Enslaved is from 1974 and is 128 pages long.  It's not really Earth, and it's not really enslaved.  But I quibble.  My main concern here is a male SF writer who, for most of his prolific writing career, has been a sexist beast (as opposed to a sexy beast, which I am).  In this story of an alternate Earth captured by aliens, woman are dominant and men are meek and subserviant.  Fine.  We've seen this a hundred times before in pulp SF, especially in Edgar Rice Burroughs' writing.  Here is my peeve with Tubb.  When all is saved and getting back to normal, Cap Kennedy (the strong and very manly type) tells the main effeminate male hero from this alternate Earth that it's time that men and women become equal partners, rather than have one sex dominate the other.  Certainly a very admirable statement from Cap (and Tubb).  The only problem is that Cap is returning to his own universe now, probably the most sexist one ever invented by any pulp writer.  I mean it's 1974 as he writes, and women have nothing but minor and subservient roles in all of Tubb's stories.  Cap works with an all-male team, led by an all-male administration, in a pretty much all-male dominated stories.  So where is the equal partnership that Cap was encouraging others to take up?  Or was it merely that he couldn't stand to see women bossing men?  Pray, readers, do not preacheth unless one practiceth. 

 

Moving on now to three novels in the Kindle Delphi Classics series, I begin with Oscar Wilde's first comedy play.  Lady Windemere's Fan is from 1891 and was a big hit in London when it came out.  The theatre manager asked for more, and Wilde was able to oblige him.  Though silly and perhaps even a bit fluffy, the play is often outrageously funny, with one liners popping up from stage left and stage right in often unexpected ways.  Sometimes they go by so quickly that one barely has time to laugh.  At least reading the play one can put aside the book for a moment or two before continuing (and with Kindle, proceed to highlight relevant sections).  One of Wilde's most memorable lines occurs in Act 3: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."  Not just funny, but truly profound!  Also from Act 3:  "There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman.  It's a thing no married man knows anything about."  One final example, from Act 1: "I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."  I could quote pages of this stuff.  Priceless.  The plot concerns a woman who believes that her husband is being unfaithful to her, and though she never learns the complete truth (which I find quite sad), everything ends well.

 

P.D. Wodehouse wrote a series of pulp novels about life at an English boys boarding school.  The books are easily read and nearly as easily forgotten.  They mostly concern sports, either cricket or rugby or football, but these are often used as props for the character situations that arise during the story.  In this one a bad egg tries to bully his way onto the first squad of rugby, despite his being a very poor player.  He goes to extreme lengths to get his way, and it says something about the boys who endure this mischief that things get settled on their own, without teachers or headmasters.  The Golden Bat is from 1904 and can be read very quickly.  It does have some lasting value and no doubt teaches all the right things to boys who read it at the time.  Wodehouse has many humourous situations and characters in the story, but there is enough nastiness to make it seem real enough.  On the lighter side are boys who smoke in secret, and two others who secretly have pet ferrets and visit and feed them in their hideaway.  On the darker side we have study rooms being wrecked and precious photos shredded, and a boy being framed for mischief to a statue that he didn't do.  Oddly enough the book could probably still be read by high school boys and enjoyed.

 

With the 1922 Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf begins her ascent (or descent, depending on one's view) into the hierarchy of avante garde writers.  While the novel is a far cry from Ulysses, it's also a far cry from her first two novels.  While Jacob may be the central character of the novel, much more is written about London, the English landscape, Paris, Athens, and at least a dozen other characters.  Some of these other characters are close to Jacob, such as his mother and his best friend.  But others are just on the periphery of his existence.   We seem to learn more about them than we do about Jacob.  What we do learn about Jacob comes from these side characters, who observe him and tell us snippets of information about him.

Ultimately I felt let down by the novel, though I do give the author full marks for attempting to diverge from the age-old story telling method.  While the novel isn't close to being as challenging as even a single chapter of Ulysses, I found my attention drifting quite often.  There are many fine passages to come across, but they are pretty far apart.  One of them talks about how straying for only a moment from one's path may lead to an entire new adventure.  Others are descriptions of what one might experience or feel, for instance at the Acropolis.

Overall, however, there is little to really engage a reader.  I rely on curiosity to keep me reading a book.  What might this character do next?  Or, now that this has happened, how will the character deal with the new situation?  Storytelling is probably the oldest cultural tradition we have, and it still engages most people, at least from time to time.  Throughout the book I had very little interest in Jacob, and even less in the people who knew and interacted with him.  I had nothing to grasp hold of.  Ultimately I came to the final page and was glad at my arrival.

 

Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is from 2020.  After reading the first chapter, a number of other authors popped into my head, sometimes a good thing.  Mervyn Peake, James Ballard, Iain Banks, Umberto Eco, and even Edgar Pangborn spring to mind.  Those are among my favourite authors, and while each has left their own unique literary footprint behind, they seem to share something about one's view of the world.  Clarke writes sparsely but well, though she tends to tie up too many loose ends--it would be nice to leave a few of them dangling at the end.  Her plot is concerned with "transgressive ideas", meaning those that are usually outside the limits of the modern definition of science.  The labyrinth also plays a major role in her philosophy, in this case an endless oversized house with gigantic rooms peopled with innumerable marble sculptures.  Characters are able to shift between one reality and one other one, though the author never defines exactly how this is done.  The novel is easy to read, leading us slowly and carefully through her story.  It begins like a great puzzle in which we do not have many pieces, and builds gradually until the last piece is found and put into place by the solitary main character.  Banks' The Bridge offers readers a similar experience, though much more intense and troubled, and the ending is more prosaic in its explanation.  Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before offers a third variation on the puzzle theme, and of course Peake's Gormenghast is probably the great grandfather of all such books.  Piranesi is an very enjoyable read, and is recommended if you like any of these others novels and authors mentioned.

 

I read the Kindle edition.
 

Cornell Woolrich was a novelist who had many of his stories and novels turned into major Hollywood films.  Cover Charge, from 1956, was his first published novel and it is quite a fun book to read.  The story begins in New York near the end of the first World War.  The first part of the book follows Alan and his climb from the gutter to considerable fame.  During the war there was a notable dearth of men, and he was soon earning a good living by working at jazz clubs as a dance partner to rich and often beautiful women.  Because of a heart defect he was ineligible for military service, though dancing all night doesn't seem to cause much of a problem.

The second part of the book follows Veronica, a woman he is destined to meet and later marry.  We first hear of her as a fifteen year old wannabe flapper.  She and Mary, a younger sister, live with their older brother and a grandmother in a rundown apartment in NYC.  She is soon living the high life, getting by on her looks and fun, outgoing personality.  The final section of the book deals with their eventual falling out, and what happened to each of the couple afterwards.

While the book has a somewhat confusing beginning, it quickly hits its stride and captures the reader, throwing him into a world of endless parties and drinking and dancing.  Woolrich is a colourful writer, and his novel includes many fine quips that reminded me often of Oscar Wilde.  When Veronica is asked for her thoughts on being a wife she replies, "It feels like when you get vaccinated," she said, "you're not sure whether it'll take or not."  Later another great one-liner pops up: "She was pure as the fallen snow, only she drifted."  A woman, describing Alan, has this to say:  But oh, his eyes; they make you think things that you shouldn't.  They're enough to make a good girl bad and a bad girl worse."

One more quote, discussing Veronica her girlfriend at 18 years old.  "Veronica and Rosalie are of an age, between them they discuss men and women and the world in general. They are in favour of men, skeptical about women, and not particularly interested in the world in general."

I look forward to reading many more books by Woolrich.

 

A group of about fifty poems by W. B Yeats was next.  The Wind Among the Reeds was published in 1899 and contains several of Yeats more notable works.   Included are Song of the Old Mother, The Fiddler of Dooner and The Song of the Wandering Aengus.  I also much enjoyed Into The Twilight and Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty.  A very worthwhile collection to have sitting around the house.

 

Finally comes an epic novel by Iain Banks.  Whit is from 1995 and is yet another display of the author's ability to tell a good story well.  Banks can be frustrating times.  The novel is very slow to get started, and the first half of the book suffers terribly from story interruptus.  Isis is the name of the heroine.  She is 19, innocent and naive.  She is at the centre of a religious community founded by her grandfather, and because of her unusual birth date (Feb 29th 1976) will eventually become leader of the group.  She is sent on a journey to find her female cousin, who has left the flock.  The girl who leaves the farm is a woman by the time she returns a few days later, and she soon experiences and learns that all is not healthy at the commune.  Banks fills in so much backstory in the first half of the book that the actual story of Isis' journey to London and beyond doesn't really get much chance to develop, as it constantly interrupted by pieces of backstory.  The book was probably put down unfinished by a lot of readers, and I would not blame them.  However, I am very glad that I stuck it out, because once the story is allowed to play out it just gets better and better.  For the second time Banks has made a female character the centre of the plot and the most important person in the story.  She is a strong character in the beginning, but her strength continues to grow as she encounters information that totally upends her world.  She proves herself many times over, and comes out ahead after all.  The book has a lot of subtle humour as Isis encounters the "real" world for the first time, managing to navigate it quite well despite her initial ignorance of how things actually work beyond the commune.  A terrific book, and a long one.  But the second half flies past when Banks lets loose his writing skills and fertile imagination.  Highly recommended.

 

I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Mapman Mike