What book(s) are you reading currently? - Page 9

**tabler** · June 23rd, 2009, 01:40 PM

At the moment all my time reading is taken up with car brochures as I need a new work car! God they are rubbish who the hell writes these things (oh hang on, people like me

)

**scoundrel** · June 23rd, 2009, 02:35 PM

No question about it, I'm slumming.

The book presents four 1920s Christie novels featuring neither Poirot nor Miss Marple, in an attempt to show that there was more to her than just these two characters. The novels are:
The Secret Adversary (1922)
The Man In The Brown Suit (1924)
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
Is there more to Ms Christie? Well, yes, but not all that much.

Her social snobbery and elitist attitudes preclude the idea that anyone who isn't at least from the English minor gentry could be more than a minor, highly stereotyped extra in the drama. Her plots are, more often than not, flimsy and implausible, pivoting brazenly on the weakest of coincidences. Only rarely do her characters achieve slightly more than 2 dimensions and become interesting. Her sycophantic love of the English upper classes shines through over and over again and tests any modern reader's patience.

However: there are good things lurking in these books.

The Secret Adversary is a triumph of style over content but thoroughly readable (Christie is seldom boring) and the two lead characters, older versions of boys and gels found in the pages of Enid Blyton books, still manage to be sympathetic in their struggle to track down the villain, avoid being eliminated and earn some cash because they're flat broke. Their mutual struggle to admit to themselve and to each other that they are in love has a certain comic value and Christie relieves the flimsiness of her plot slightly with her ironic authorial voice:'Tommy' Beresford is following a suspect in the usual private detective tradition.

Though familiar with the technicalities from a course of novel reading, he had never before attempted to follow anyone and it appeared to him at once that, in actual practice, the proceeding was fraught with difficulties. Supposing, for instance, that they should suddenly hail a taxi? In books, you simply leapt into another, promised the driver a sovereign - or its modern equivalent - and there you were. In actual fact, Tommy foresaw that it was extremely likely that there would be no second taxi...

The Man In The Brown Suit depicts the strange events which befall the heroine from the moment when she sees a death on a railway platform where a man falls to his death under a train in his desperation to get away from a man wearing a brown suit. Trouble is, even though this brown suited fellow cannot possibly be The Man From The Prudential Insurance Company, judging by the victim's eagerness to be somewhere else, she definitely likes the look of him. Oh yes.

The mystery is establishing what the strange scene at the railway station was all about, and it soon becomes apparent that the heroine is putting her nose where it isn't wanted...

IMO this one is the best of the four. It doesn't use clunky plot devices nearly as much, so the action has more credibility; it leaves plenty of room for moral ambivalence; it tacitly admits that the heroine likes bad boys; the characters have their context in a world where people pay their own way and are not mere bored spoilt aristos looking for something to do.

The last two are cardboard dramas, both vehicles for Lady Eileen Brent, aristocratic flapper as sleuth. Their best feature is the rather sinister policeman, Superintendent Battle, a man who doesn't trust appearances and doesn't think conventionally and is a natural risk-taker. I also forgive these books because, years before she made her name as Lily Langtree, the actress Francesca Annis was really sexy as Eileen Brent in a very unadventurous BBC 1920s period serialisation on Christies's several Eileen Brent novels and I was just old enough to recognise this. The series was repeated on ITV3, graveyard of the cops and robbers shows, a couple of years ago, and it was nice to be reminded how good (and how attractive) Francesca Annis was, back in the day.

As for the books as books, they are readable and enjoyable but have no substance, except for an occasional subversive and semi-fascist appearance by Superintendent Battle, whose covert contempt for weakness and for cowardly and narrow minded respectability sits at odds with his vocation (it is a real vocation) to be a police detective.

Its like I said. I'm slumming.

**Wendigo** · June 28th, 2009, 08:34 AM

Pan Book of Horror Stories Vol 8

I've just started re-reading this, there's some great tales including - The Assassin (Raymond Williams), The Children (W. Baker-Evans), The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury) and one of my all time favourites The Janissaries of Emilion by Basil Copper.

**blondifan** · June 29th, 2009, 02:00 AM

I personally discovered Neil Young's 'After the Goldrush' album in my early teens. This began a lifelong love of much of his music. I say 'much of' because he has been so prolific and perversely diverse, it's challenging to admire all of his catalogue.
Although initially I had a love/hate relationship with many of his songs, as a thirteen year old, he was radically different from anything else in my small but rapidly growing music collection. My first manuscript book was 'Complete Vol 1'. Here I discovered the wonders of 'Drop D-tuning'.

Forgive me if I digress. Jimmy McDonough spent six years virtually living with this reclusive performer while he wrote this, compiling stories and anecdotes from those who knew him and the man himself. I find the style of narrative very relaxed and natural.
I keep a copy on my bedside table, for nights when I can't sleep, and have read it cover to cover a few times.
It's innarestin' when you find rare bootlegs such as 'Chrome Dreams', to read the stories behind each song, even on unreleased material.

**tabler** · June 29th, 2009, 10:08 AM

My first car when I was 17 was an 1100

(it was shite)

I have just started working my way through the Morse novels by Colin Dexter (again) they are the kind of books I return to periodicaly.

**retro72** · July 1st, 2009, 05:02 AM

The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. An apocalyptic sci fi classic in my not so humble opinion....

**Mal Hombre** · July 2nd, 2009, 06:25 PM

I'm re-reading Michael Herr's Dispatches, about his time as a war correspondent in Vietnam,if you look on page 149 you will find the original Mal Hombre

**retro72** · July 2nd, 2009, 10:12 PM

The BBC did a very decent TV series adaptation of the book in the early 80s. It had such an apocalyptic feel that not only reflected the book but also the scary times where nuclear war was a far from distant possibility between East and West...
In no way whatsoever should anyone subject themselves to the execrable 1953 film however with Howard Keel. A total travesty all round. The triffids looked like Dandelions on wheelchairs...

Anyway, back to the books and on the same sci fi vein the collected short stories of Philip K Dick. One of the most imaginiative writers ever and inspiration for many a film: Total Recall, Bladerunner etc...

**haldane4** · July 2nd, 2009, 10:28 PM

The BBC have remade The Day of the Triffids, probably for screening in the Autumn. I like to see more SF on our screens but I'd rather they adapted a neglected classic - John Christopher's The Death of Grass or Charles Eric Maine's The Darkest of Nights. They're equally post-apocalypic fun.

**haldane4** · July 2nd, 2009, 10:34 PM

Barrington J Bayley died last year - he was part of the UK New Wave along with Moorcock, Ballard, Aldiss etc. I would really recommend his books to everyone, particularly his short stories which are compiled in two volumes - The Seed of Evil and The Knights of the Limits. Inventive and challenging reading, Bayley often crammed with more ideas on one page than many writers manage in a lifetime.

RIP, Mr Bayley.

June 23rd, 2009, 01:40 PM	#81
tabler Comfortably Numb Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: St James Park Posts: 7,029 Thanks: 112,519 Thanked 146,054 Times in 8,009 Posts	At the moment all my time reading is taken up with car brochures as I need a new work car! God they are rubbish who the hell writes these things (oh hang on, people like me) __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. *Velcome to zee Forum. You must obey zee rules!*

June 23rd, 2009, 02:35 PM	#82
scoundrel Super Moderator Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: England Posts: 26,239 Thanks: 162,401 Thanked 278,546 Times in 26,184 Posts	Agatha Christie 1920s Omnibus No question about it, I'm slumming. The book presents four 1920s Christie novels featuring neither Poirot nor Miss Marple, in an attempt to show that there was more to her than just these two characters. The novels are: The Secret Adversary (1922) The Man In The Brown Suit (1924) The Secret of Chimneys (1925) The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) Is there more to Ms Christie? Well, yes, but not all that much. Her social snobbery and elitist attitudes preclude the idea that anyone who isn't at least from the English minor gentry could be more than a minor, highly stereotyped extra in the drama. Her plots are, more often than not, flimsy and implausible, pivoting brazenly on the weakest of coincidences. Only rarely do her characters achieve slightly more than 2 dimensions and become interesting. Her sycophantic love of the English upper classes shines through over and over again and tests any modern reader's patience. However: there are good things lurking in these books. The Secret Adversary is a triumph of style over content but thoroughly readable (Christie is seldom boring) and the two lead characters, older versions of boys and gels found in the pages of Enid Blyton books, still manage to be sympathetic in their struggle to track down the villain, avoid being eliminated and earn some cash because they're flat broke. Their mutual struggle to admit to themselve and to each other that they are in love has a certain comic value and Christie relieves the flimsiness of her plot slightly with her ironic authorial voice:'Tommy' Beresford is following a suspect in the usual private detective tradition. Though familiar with the technicalities from a course of novel reading, he had never before attempted to follow anyone and it appeared to him at once that, in actual practice, the proceeding was fraught with difficulties. Supposing, for instance, that they should suddenly hail a taxi? In books, you simply leapt into another, promised the driver a sovereign - or its modern equivalent - and there you were. In actual fact, Tommy foresaw that it was extremely likely that there would be no second taxi... The Man In The Brown Suit depicts the strange events which befall the heroine from the moment when she sees a death on a railway platform where a man falls to his death under a train in his desperation to get away from a man wearing a brown suit. Trouble is, even though this brown suited fellow cannot possibly be The Man From The Prudential Insurance Company, judging by the victim's eagerness to be somewhere else, she definitely likes the look of him. Oh yes. The mystery is establishing what the strange scene at the railway station was all about, and it soon becomes apparent that the heroine is putting her nose where it isn't wanted... IMO this one is the best of the four. It doesn't use clunky plot devices nearly as much, so the action has more credibility; it leaves plenty of room for moral ambivalence; it tacitly admits that the heroine likes bad boys; the characters have their context in a world where people pay their own way and are not mere bored spoilt aristos looking for something to do. The last two are cardboard dramas, both vehicles for Lady Eileen Brent, aristocratic flapper as sleuth. Their best feature is the rather sinister policeman, Superintendent Battle, a man who doesn't trust appearances and doesn't think conventionally and is a natural risk-taker. I also forgive these books because, years before she made her name as Lily Langtree, the actress Francesca Annis was really sexy as Eileen Brent in a very unadventurous BBC 1920s period serialisation on Christies's several Eileen Brent novels and I was just old enough to recognise this. The series was repeated on ITV3, graveyard of the cops and robbers shows, a couple of years ago, and it was nice to be reminded how good (and how attractive) Francesca Annis was, back in the day. As for the books as books, they are readable and enjoyable but have no substance, except for an occasional subversive and semi-fascist appearance by Superintendent Battle, whose covert contempt for weakness and for cowardly and narrow minded respectability sits at odds with his vocation (it is a real vocation) to be a police detective. Its like I said. I'm slumming. __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

June 28th, 2009, 08:34 AM	#83
Wendigo Former Staff Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Blighty Posts: 113,794 Thanks: 259,909 Thanked 1,139,388 Times in 113,911 Posts	Pan Book of Horror Stories Vol 8 I've just started re-reading this, there's some great tales including - The Assassin (Raymond Williams), The Children (W. Baker-Evans), The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury) and one of my all time favourites The Janissaries of Emilion by Basil Copper. Last edited by Estreeter; November 11th, 2021 at 11:33 AM.. Reason: dead image

June 29th, 2009, 02:00 AM	#84
blondifan Vintage Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 4,406 Thanks: 55,000 Thanked 60,211 Times in 4,401 Posts	Shakey - Neil Young's Biography I personally discovered Neil Young's 'After the Goldrush' album in my early teens. This began a lifelong love of much of his music. I say 'much of' because he has been so prolific and perversely diverse, it's challenging to admire all of his catalogue. Although initially I had a love/hate relationship with many of his songs, as a thirteen year old, he was radically different from anything else in my small but rapidly growing music collection. My first manuscript book was 'Complete Vol 1'. Here I discovered the wonders of 'Drop D-tuning'. Forgive me if I digress. Jimmy McDonough spent six years virtually living with this reclusive performer while he wrote this, compiling stories and anecdotes from those who knew him and the man himself. I find the style of narrative very relaxed and natural. I keep a copy on my bedside table, for nights when I can't sleep, and have read it cover to cover a few times. It's innarestin' when you find rare bootlegs such as 'Chrome Dreams', to read the stories behind each song, even on unreleased material.

June 29th, 2009, 10:08 AM	#85
tabler Comfortably Numb Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: St James Park Posts: 7,029 Thanks: 112,519 Thanked 146,054 Times in 8,009 Posts	My first car when I was 17 was an 1100 (it was shite) I have just started working my way through the Morse novels by Colin Dexter (again) they are the kind of books I return to periodicaly. __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. *Velcome to zee Forum. You must obey zee rules!*

July 1st, 2009, 05:02 AM	#86
retro72 Vintage Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Weirdsville Posts: 776 Thanks: 5,007 Thanked 9,135 Times in 774 Posts	The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. An apocalyptic sci fi classic in my not so humble opinion....

July 2nd, 2009, 06:25 PM	#87
Mal Hombre El Super Moderador Join Date: May 2009 Location: Adoptive Monkey Hanger Posts: 58,144 Thanks: 772,750 Thanked 855,838 Times in 57,575 Posts	I'm re-reading Michael Herr's Dispatches, about his time as a war correspondent in Vietnam,if you look on page 149 you will find the original Mal Hombre __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. If in doubt, Just ask Yourself What Would Max Do ? It is a porn site,But its a Classy porn site. To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

July 2nd, 2009, 10:12 PM	#88
retro72 Vintage Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Weirdsville Posts: 776 Thanks: 5,007 Thanked 9,135 Times in 774 Posts	The BBC did a very decent TV series adaptation of the book in the early 80s. It had such an apocalyptic feel that not only reflected the book but also the scary times where nuclear war was a far from distant possibility between East and West... In no way whatsoever should anyone subject themselves to the execrable 1953 film however with Howard Keel. A total travesty all round. The triffids looked like Dandelions on wheelchairs... Anyway, back to the books and on the same sci fi vein the collected short stories of Philip K Dick. One of the most imaginiative writers ever and inspiration for many a film: Total Recall, Bladerunner etc...

July 2nd, 2009, 10:28 PM	#89
haldane4 Vintage Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: 1977 Posts: 598 Thanks: 3,187 Thanked 7,055 Times in 592 Posts	The BBC have remade The Day of the Triffids, probably for screening in the Autumn. I like to see more SF on our screens but I'd rather they adapted a neglected classic - John Christopher's The Death of Grass or Charles Eric Maine's The Darkest of Nights. They're equally post-apocalypic fun. Last edited by haldane4; July 2nd, 2009 at 10:28 PM.. Reason: Sp

July 2nd, 2009, 10:34 PM	#90
haldane4 Vintage Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: 1977 Posts: 598 Thanks: 3,187 Thanked 7,055 Times in 592 Posts	Barrington J Bayley died last year - he was part of the UK New Wave along with Moorcock, Ballard, Aldiss etc. I would really recommend his books to everyone, particularly his short stories which are compiled in two volumes - The Seed of Evil and The Knights of the Limits. Inventive and challenging reading, Bayley often crammed with more ideas on one page than many writers manage in a lifetime. RIP, Mr Bayley.