Day: September 1, 2008

Phew. Caught up with all the reading I did this late spring and summer, just before Labor Day comes to a close. My apologies to those flooded with these blog reports of several months of reading in a handful of days. Now back to our regular irregular updates. 😉

Alan Furst is a find. Since the paperback of The Foreign Correspondent touts “New York Times Bestseller,” I’m slow in that revelation.

Start with the eventful lead-up to World War II, add Italian emigrés in Paris in 1938, when travel throughout Europe is still allowed (if dangerous to some), throw in the security services of four different countries, and add a surprising love affair. Furst delivers a compact, literary “small” thriller.

One note: Furst’s website is awful. I couldn’t find a link to The Foreign Correspondent page on the site itself, resorting to repeated Googling to arrive at the exact destination cited above.

Easy to trust Bernard Cornwell for a good read after all the Sharpe novels. (Which reminds me, I should return to those…)

Wildtrack (1988) reads like a Dick Francis book with sailboats instead of horses, reminiscent of Sam Llewellyn’s thrillers. (I’ve read several, all before I started keeping track on this blog.)

The only false notes in Wildtrack are Nick Sandman’s quickly changing feelings for the two leading women in the novel. His decisions don’t feel true to the character, distracting from the rising tide of the story.

I’ve kept Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children since college, when I was supposed to read the celebrated 1980 novel. My paperback copy is from 1991, and 17 years later, I’ve finally completed this sweeping story.

In only his second novel, Rushdie creates language and pulsating imagery like few I’ve read. Only immediate comparison would be Umberto Eco, but Rushdie is earthier and more direct, though just as erudite. Also, Rushdie stays in this century for his play with history. Midnight’s Children‘s conceit is the narrator’s intimate connection with the history of the subcontinent.

I’d appreciate pointers to an all-in-one history of the creation of India and Pakistan, and the subsequent disintegration of “East Pakistan” into Bangladesh.

Steven Berlin Johnson has been justly celebrated for several of his books. I’ve read his blog and many of his articles in Salon and The New York Times, but The Ghost Map was the first book I’ve read. The subtitle is “The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.” Johnson’s own sense of wonder in telling the story comes through. Biography of an idea, profile of an early scientist, chronicle of how ideas spread (as much as disease), and history of data visualization: this book wraps several narratives together, wonderfully.

I’m embarrassed to reveal that I read The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Please don’t repeat my mistake.

Murder in the White House by Margaret Patterson is an eminently forgettable mystery. Location, location, location may rule in real estate, but it’s not enough to make up for boring plot.

After all these years (and several re-readings of The Hunt for Red October), finding a pure Tom Clancy novel that I’ve missed helped fill several hours of travel. Without Remorse delves into the background of John Clark, a constant Jack Ryan companion in many of the novels. Clark was memorably played by Willem Dafoe in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger. (Dafoe is too small, but otherwise matched the character of this novel.)

Without Remorse takes place in the 1960s and early 1970s, prior to the Ryan universe. Here’s a plot summary, courtesy of Wikipedia. I’m just glad this was written by Tom Clancy, instead of being part of “Tom Clancy’s” world, penned by any number of other folks.

Orson Scott Card is profligate, and I’ve loved several of his books, notably Ender’s Game and a few others in that series. The Worthing Saga collects several related short stories and novellas in a single paperback. I appreciated the Trantor-like setting for several of the later stories, but overall, this was a struggle to complete.

The Most Dangerous Game by Gavin Lyall takes the thread of the well-known short story about man hunting man, and weaves it into a larger spy/mystery story. Nothing special, very much a genre book…fair work, but no need to seek out this 1963 thriller.