Things I have read in the past couple of years, and things I want to read

To see some things I want to read, you can view my Amazon UK wish list. To see another wish list and some of my Bookcrossing activity, check out my bookshelf.

Here are some highlights of books I have read in the past two years, when the tension-levels chez Deborama have been very high and consequently little or no blogging was happening.

The thing that stands out most, which was so excellent and moving and unforgettable that it immediately made it to my top 25 list, was E. L. Doctorow's The March. (I bought this in America, so this is the American paperback cover. I actually like the cover on the British edition better, which you will see if you follow the link, but the book is nearly unknown here.) I reviewed this book on Bookcrossing some time ago. Here is what I said soon after reading it:

This gripping work of historical fiction is, in my opinion, Doctorow's masterpiece. I cannot praise it highly enough. I wanted it never to end, it was that kind of book. The historical event it concerns is one I grew up surrounded by : Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's famous "march to the sea", creating a deliberate swathe of anarchy, suffering and often false jubilation from the north Georgia mountains to the city of Savannah.

Two novels that I read that were both highly political in content were very satisfying reads. Apart from that factor, they were very different. One is a current and well-known author, both for the genre and for his often controversial political positions: John le Carre. The book was A Most Wanted Man and it was absolutely chilling. The other was written by a virtual unknown. Again, I bought this book in America and it's not something you're likely to see in any bookshop in the UK, sadly. I say sadly not because this book is stupendous or anything, but because the state of the bookshop market in the UK is sad beyond belief, and far beyond what it is in the States, which is sad enough. Anyway, the book is Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta.

A Most Wanted Man is definitely le Carre's most paranoid spy story to date, easily (in my opinion) outstripping in cynicism and moral pessimism any of his incredibly dark Cold War era stories. For in Smiley's world, the spies had to do amoral things for (arguably) moral reasons, but the elected government was mainly insulated from the choice and the burden of what they put in place. In A Most Wanted Man, the government itself connives to set up an innocent man as a patsy in the war on terror, and not even for any valid reason from a moral standpoint, but just to keep power and the status quo. The really awful thing about this story is that it's so very very believable. Eat the Document is a story of the early twenty-first century denouement of a 1970's political crime entangled with idealism, young love and possible betrayal. It is wonderfully paced and multilayered enough in its plotting to be intellectually engaging, and as one who was on the fringes of the 1970s left, with all its cults and conspiracies and outrageous fantasies, for me the whole milieu as presented in the book rings remarkably true.

The next blog will cover the non-fiction books I have read, and also How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, The Girls by Lori Lansens and a couple of novels by Mary Wesley.

Greatest Living Author? I don't think so . . .

The Guardian found out how touchy some people can be when one of its stories referred to Martin Amis as "perhaps Britain's greatest living author." Obviously, there are plenty of people out there who think Martin Amis is pretty crap, and some of them are literature lovers. After digging out from under all the indignant e-mail and letters, the paper ran an article discussing who is Britain's GLA or - should there even be one? I think they tapped into a vein of weariness with all this faux-competitive "greatest" crap generally, although some people objected to it just because it focuses on the "living" part. Harold Bloom's controversial The Western Canon was alluded to, and that's always good for an argument.
The Best, according to various writers, critics and booksellers
Harold Bloom's book on the Western Canon

Fingersmith on the BBC

The BBC is showing an excellent dramatisation of Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters, which I reviewed earlier. Especially if you did not read the book, you must see this if you like a brooding romance and several wicked plot twists. Or if you just like what passed for hot lesbian action in the mid-Victorian period. Having read the book, I know what's coming and it makes a huge difference in the appreciation of the story. Whatever you do, do not let anyone spoil the surprise. It's quite delicious.

Dashiell Hammett

While I am waiting for that blast of either energy or inspiration to do my backlog of book reviews, I thought I would post a link to this excellent article about Dashiell Hammett from the San Francisco Gate. As you can probably tell from my choice of reading, I love detective stories, mysteries and crime writing. I am unusual in a way in that I almost equally like the sub-genres of the genre, called rather disparagingly "tea cosy" and "hard-boiled". Noir is another sub-genre that sits to the left of hard-boiled, and yet paradoxically can have a bit of tea cosy about it as well. I think Dashiell Hammett is the godfather of noir. And one of the things I really like, both in crime/mystery/detective fiction and in SF, my second great favourite genre, is a political subtext. Hammett's first of only five novels, Red Harvest, is also a classic, in this sub-sub-genre.

Happy Bloomsday!

Today is the day, and this is the blog. The Bloomsday blog, that is.

A writing competition - End of Story

Claudia Winkleman, eight best-selling authors, and four people with powerful credentials in the publishing and writing world, and the BBC, have teamed up to create an interesting new kind of competition. The eight authors have each written the beginning of a story. Your challenge, if you decide to accept it, is to finish the story of your choice. The story beginnings will be available on the authors web page in about two weeks. However, if you want to get a jump start on the writing, you can visit the Bookdrop page to get clues to where you can find a "cheat" - a book containing all eight story-beginnings. Or you can attend a BBC writing workshop and get the book there, as well as pointers on winning writing technique. You must be a resident of Britain to enter, and there is only one entry allowed per person. The competition closes the 31st of May, and will be judged by Carole Blake, Giles Corem, Muriel Gray and Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Hungry Mind Book Review's Best 100 of the 20th Century

I found this list while I was ego-tripping by seeing how high my blog comes for various Google searches. I will turn this into yet another of those list meme things and post it soon . . .