What book(s) are you reading currently?

[scoundrel]

The Four Adventures of Richard Hannay by John Buchan: printed 1936.

I bought it for £7.50 from a second hand book shop on Charing Cross Road (not No84: thats a Pizza Hut these days). The four adventures are;

The Thirty Nine Steps: lots of film versions but not one which actually resembles the book.

Greenmantle.
Mr Standfast
The Three Hostages.

They tell me a lot about where we British were between 1915 and 1930 when the books were written. There are some revelations of really offensive anti-semitism; we British were clearly superior to everyone else in general and non-white people in particular (not their fault, we just were...); watch out for Johnny Foreigner; the lower classes need to be kept in their place, and deserve respect only if they know their place without having to be told. A really astonishing exhibition of bigotry and prejudice. I want to hate these books.

Yet I can't quite manage it. The basic storytelling is really fluent and at times captivating. There is an underlying shrewdness which makes his characterisations credible, and frequently there shows through a compassion and love of humanity which is at odds with his racial and class prejudices. Buchan is much too warm hearted to be a successful fascist. Even his villains are often shown to be courageous and endowed with brutal honesty. He finds traits to admire in people who one would expect him to detest.

His portrayal of the consciencious objector, Lancelot Wake in Mr Standfast is a good example. Those who do not know Wake well think he is either a coward or actively disloyal to his country: he is even punished by being made to serve in a construction battalion (alternative to prison) because he is not actually a pacifist: he refuses to fight because he thinks WW1 in particular is a stupid waste of life. Buchan (speaking in Hannay's voice) disagrees with Wake's refusal to fight but agrees with Wake's hatred of the war and his refusal to hate the Germans just because they are the ''enemy''.

In Greenmantle there is a remarkable interlude in which Buchan shows ordinary German civilians with respect and sympathy. Hannay is a spy on the run in Southern Bavaria. The weather has turned to snow, it is getting dark, he is hopelessly lost, there are security forces hunting him, and, just to make things perfect, he is going down with malaria. He is literally considering whether or not to lie down and die when his luck changes and he finds a forester's cottage where the family (who do not know he is a fugitive) take him in. Later on he deceives them by pretending to be a German spy undercover, but only to make sure they tell no-one that he was there: he is frightened for their sake, not his own.

The family consists of a woman and four young children: her husband has been conscripted and is fighting in Russia. Hannay has a pack full of food (his emergency rations) and gives it to her for the children just before the malaria makes him totally delerious. He faints as she is weeping and kissing his hands. Afterwards it turns out that it was Christmas Eve (Hannay wasn't very focused on festivities), there was no food in the house, and the woman had only just finished a prayer for God to have mercy on her family on Christmas Day when Hannay hammered on her front door: she is convinced that he is an Angel sent to save them, and tells Hannay so. Her actual words are:

''The Good Lord has sent you...Now the little ones will have their prayers answered and the Christkind will not pass by our door.

I love the ambiguous word ''Christkind''. It can also be translated ''Christ-Child'': as though Jesus has come into their house. That's really subtle writing. Hannay is humbled and rather ashamed. He silently renounces hatred of the Germans as a people for ever.

Greenmantle was written and published in 1916.

Buchan's political and social views are borderline fascist but he is a very good storyteller and full of a redeeming kindness and decency. I frequently flinch at some of the casual prejudices he displays but if you read the books it soon becomes apparent that he doesn't really hate anybody, not even Hannay's deadliest enemies, the cabal of spies in The Thirty Nine Steps: when they are caught, he fears them even more because they are plainly motivated by love of Germany. They were in their own way valiant men of honour, and Hannay is chilled with shock and fear when he realises this, but he cannot hate or despise them.

If you can bear with the bigotted reactionary views, very typical of the period, give John Buchan a chance.

[Bovon]

SC - ^^^^ Love a good potted narrative line.

And so -



EDIT: This is the second of the two-for-a-fiver I picked up by M.C.
For almost two-thirds of the book it was pleasantly believable,
But then, (and I should be getting used to this guy's writing by now),
I expected Month Python's Graham Chapman to come
Storming on to the page saying: 'Stop this. Stop this now. It all
Getting very silly etc'. Anyway he didn't, and to his credit, M.C.
Gives us a not-everyone-lived-happily-ever-after ending.
Yeah, worth a read, and given the Military-Industrial nature of
The U.S., possibly nearer to the truth than I'd like to imagine.


Am now picking up this -



EDIT: Mmm. The Big Yin has had an interesting life, including some awful experiences at the hands (literally) of members of his family. Comes across as a decent individual (and a very funny one IMO), worth a read.

[tabler]

I have just started, Eric Clapton The Autobiography but will have a Stephanie Plum novel on the go at the same time.

[Leprechaun]

I work my way through the German version of Ian Carr's great Rough Guide to Jazz at the moment - and notice how many fine Jazz Rock Releases I not yet have ...

[Simo]

With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain by Michael Korda , a very good read .

[haldane4]

Down To A Sunless Sea by David Graham - about a transatlantic airliner caught mid-flight when a nuclear war breaks out. Not bad at all, one of those 80's holocaust paranoia novels you'd buy at an airport.

[doyle]

"The Comedians" by Graham Greene. Though I like old Greenie, I found this a little disappointing.
He even makes some very rookie errors - has one character scratch his chin when he has a broken arm, for example.
It reads like something dashed off in a hurry; or maybe he simply wanted to finish it.

[Wendigo]

and right back down to Earth with, The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories

No really classic stories so far but R.Chetwynd-Hayes "The Thing" was pretty good.
I've read further and it has the classic tale "The Monkey's Paw" as well so it gets better.

[Bovon]

Originally Posted by doyle

"The Comedians" by Graham Greene. Though I like old Greenie, I found this a little disappointing.

This is one of those that GG considered to be his 'entertainments' rather than his heavier work, Power and The Glory etc. I read it years ago and found it a bit thin - the film version I found even more confused.

[scoundrel]

Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik

Technically I have been in the middle of reading this one since 2007 and I'm still only part way through. It is the only book I've ever been so shocked by that I couldn't go on. I managed House of Dolls (awful horrifying story of how a Jewish girl suffered before and during her incareration in a concentration camp until she was happy to die). I managed The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes (short? These crimes were legion and their depravity beggars belief). But Fight Club holds a different horror: the inner sickness of the human soul.

I recoiled when the narrator went to support groups for the terminally ill, pretending to be dying when he is actually fit as a fiddle, just to revel vicariously in the suffering of others. But whenever I related my indignation to my friends they would collapse convulsively in helpless laughter.

I almost threw the book away when Tyler Durden used body fat from his girlfriend's late mother in order to manufacture soap. He cannot understand why she is not a happy camper: its not like he killed her mother or anything...

Again I related this one to my sister and she laughed so much that she almost needed an ambulance.

I'm starting to pick up the wavelength. Fight Club is the UberSickPuppyFest of all time. I'm beginning to suspect that there could be much much worse still to come.

Daddy Longlegs Jean Webster

This one couldn't be more different. I read it once when I was a kid at school. Years later (Millenium) I bought a copy as a present for my niece and had to buy a second one because I kept the first copy for myself.

Its a total girls book (chick lit?) and really targeted at adolescent girls at that. But it is a minor classic and well worth anyones time. The story is told mainly in letters from the heroine to the un-named benefactor who is financing her college education (she is a pennyless orphan from an orphanage) and they are brim full of insight and shrewd understanding of people and life. They are often very funny, laced enjoyably with malice, yet also kind hearted and forgiving. I particularly enjoyed the heroine's love-hate relationship with her terribly terribly posh room mate, Julia Routledge Pendleton, who is sooooooo annoying but gradually turns out to be rather a good egg. When Judy (our narrator) is invited to spend holiday time in Julia's family home she sees Julia differently: her defects are much easier to understand and she deserves credit for being as human as she is.

Most of all I find the heroine's love of life inspiring. As she herself puts it:

''Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that that requires spirit.''

Good read, clever book.