OK. Lets get down to business. I'll start as usual with the Non-Fiction. I don't know why I do this. Perhaps because it relates to the real world rather than to some fantasy created by a novelist or poet. Start with reality and then drift off through normal fiction and sci-fi into the wider realms of fantasy.
First off, I read Mark Stevens's Broadmoor Revealed which is an account of the creation and operation of this secure asylum for the criminally insane. Stevens has only been able to use documents from before 1900 for his research. He starts by describing how the place came into being and its design and construction. Then something on the running of the place. And then he describes a number of the inmates in some detail. It's an interesting book that leaves you wanting to know more, much more. Then there was Jeff Jeven and Jonathan Cape's biography of Jeven's father told as a graphic book, Green River Killer. I thought the story they had to tell was fascinating, but was definitely not impressed by doing it through graphics. All the interesting nuances that could have been used are lost. Peterson Anderson's book of 204 photos in World War II Photo Stories was OK to look through, but I felt it could have done with more narrative linking the photo stories. But, then, that's me. Max Arthur's Fighters against Fascism is about the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939) and Englishmen who fought on the Republican side. Too often we forget this war which the Germans and Italians especially used to test out their battle theories before using them for real in the Second World War.
And, finally, an utterly incredible book. It's old. But that doesn't make any difference. It's Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World about Scott's 1910-12 expedition to the Antarctic. One element of the work there was to collect Emperor Penguin eggs so the embryology could be studied to test a theory about the evolution of birds. They could only be collected in the depths of winter in incredibly low temperatures. So low, indeed that Chery-Garrard's teeth cracked. It's a really moving book, especially the account of how they realised that Scott must have died and then, when they found how close he was to the next depot, they all felt guilty about not having made an attempt to put another depot a few miles further on.
So now it's fiction's turn. Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit is an interesting story set in Soviet Russia which is also a criticism of collectivisation. How he got away with publishing it, I don't know. Lovely story. Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood is an extraordinary love story set in Japan. You don't want it to stop, even though it has a firm finish beyond which it cannot really go. The translation into English is utterly superb. Lee Vidor's Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds has an interesting title and a disclaimer saying that the Holocaust really happened. But, I'm afraid, it goes pretty fast downhill after that. If a student of mine had handed an essay in that was written like this book, I would have handed it straight back and told them to go away and re-write it.
In the way of historical fiction I've only read Julian Rathbone's The Last English King. It is a fascinating story following one man from his Anglo-Saxon village, his career as a bodyguard and fighter for King Harold and then, having fought at Hastings, his further adventures as a pilgrim to Jerusalem. The story goes back and forth between the pilgrim and his companion s and past events in England. It's well structured, well researched and well written.
Thrillers have been quite a heavy portion of my literary diet this month. Three Philip Kerr novels about his excellent Berlin based detective Bernie Gunther, A German Requiem,March Violets and The Pale Criminal. These range from Berlin in the later 1930s to after World War II. If you didn't know your Berlin before opening one of these books, you will by the time you put it down. There is extraordinary topographic detail demonstrating Kerr's superb research. David Downing's Zoo Station is also set in Nazi Germany and is about how an Englishman married to a German woman spies for the Nazis, Soviet Russia and the UK simultaneously. This, too, has excellent topographic research on Berlin and its environs. Sara Blaedel's Call me Princess is about a demented rapist. The police follow clues suggesting it's one man, but to their horror, it turns out to be someone very close at hand. Victorine E Lieske's Not what she seems combines romance with murder - or should that be the other way round? Good read, though.
And, finally, romance. Sarah Morgan's Bought: Destitute yet defiant is a pretty good read. As too is Patricia Watters' Colby's Child set in the wild west of the USA in the gold rush years. You will be pleased to know that the hero turns his back on gold for the heroine. And then there were Richard Crawford's Soul Mates, Shannon Stacey's Yours to keep, Janice Cantore's Accused and Bonnie Nadzam's Lamb. As you can tell, I enjoy reading these romances, but so many of them are formulaic that they tend to run together in a jumble in my memory. The trouble is that I've been suckered by Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and most romances I read follow in her footsteps.
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