Some books are like a vacation. Open the covers, look at the first paragraph and you’re on your way to some exotic location, away from the everyday grind. You can go hunting with Hemingway, rafting with Twain or sailing with Thor Heyerdahl. Those vacations are wonderful, but come along with me to the South of France. You won’t have to pack a bag or learn the language but you must bring along your sense of humor. It’s required when you check in to The Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle Peter Mayle made enough wealth and fame in advertising to retire early to a farmhouse in France. Then he became internationally rich and famous writing about his retired life. The Hotel Pastis is a novel but there’s enough about advertising and the South of France there to suggest it’s a thinly disguised memoir with just enough fiction in it to keep people from suing. Truth or libel, the book is a treat. The hero, Simon Shaw, is a man in need of an interest. His work life doesn’t fascinate him any more: the ad agency he helped build is so successful that all he does is butter up clients, cash the…
There are a lot of genres in crime fiction. There are cozy mysteries and hard-boiled detective tales, capers and whodunits. There are police procedurals, legal thrillers, psychological suspense books and we’ll have some more genres next Tuesday. In the meantime, one of my current favorite writers is Val McDermid, the journalist who created what she calls “Scottish Noir”. This means her characters have the uncompromising, tough and amoral personalities the frequented Dashiell Hammett’s novels but McDermid’s stories are settled in the cold, bleak areas of Scotland. Add to this mix a set of villains so strange that Thomas Harris could have invented them and you’ve got Scottish Noir. These books aren’t for everyone but, boy, are they good. McDermid is best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series but if you want an introduction to her work, I’d start off with the thriller, A Place of Execution. A Place of Execution is about the twin investigations into the disappearance of Alison Carter, an adolescent that disappeared one night in December of 1963. Allison’s home was Scardale, a one-road village where half a dozen families have lived since the world began. The young Detective Inspector, George Bennett, has to figure…
It’s easy to fall in love with fiction. If the writer’s done his/her job, a reader can sit back with a well-formed story, a balanced plot and distinctive characters with unforgettable lines. Everything should work out in fiction. Non-fiction’s not quite so easy. Perhaps the hero didn’t have a memorable speech or the author missed meeting that all-important member of the cast. That author can either tell the truth or stretch it, both of which create their own downsides but, if a talented writer finds an interesting subject and is willing to do the research, some non-fiction books are terrific. But reference books are the Rodney Dangerfields in a printed world: they rarely get any respect, so nobody wants to write them. Without plot or characters, the tomes seldom get attention. I know of three exceptions to the rule. You can read them for reference or for pleasure but either way, you’ll never be bored. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. This book is history, itself. An English publisher named Beeton talked his wife into assembling this household bible in the 1850’s and for decades it reigned in the homes of British middle and upper class citizens while Victoria reigned…
I’ll never forget reading that blurb. It was on the back of a beige book my mother had brought from the library and when I read it, I said, “Well, that’s a bit much. I flipped the book over and looked at the pen-and-ink cover drawing and the red and black type underneath. It still didn’t look very promising. I looked askance at my mother who shrugged her shoulders. “Read it or don’t” she said. “I thought you might like it, you liked animal stories when you were little.” She looked at the cover and added. “It has rabbits in it.” That’s how I met Watership Down. I didn’t know it at the time but I was merely the latest in a long line of people to underestimate this story, starting with its author. Richard Adams entertained his daughters during rides to school with stories of what they saw along the way: country roads and rabbits. It wasn’t until the girls demanded a written account that he started to shape the tale. Then, four publishers and three agents turned down the manuscript saying “Adults won’t read an animal story and it’s far too scary for kids.” The publisher who printed…
Is it true that children no longer read The Sword in the Stone? A friend of mine with kids says so. Between dystopias, vampires, diseases and monsters, kids are skipping the fantasy that stood the Arthurian legend on its head and that makes me sad. Almost two generations of readers have come of age with no idea of White beyond a Disney movie or a Broadway show their grandparents talked about. Forgive them, Merlin, they don’t know what they’ve missed. For one thing, they skip on a wonderful story with a delicious sense of humor. Malory wrote about Arthur’s birth in Le Morte D’Arthur but we never get to see the young prince grow up; he goes from infant to sword-puller in less than a thousand words and there’s no guessing what happened in between. T. H. White invented all that by mixing modern sensibilities with chivalric legends and he did it with a sense of humor. One good example (a disgusting one but good) is the subject of fewmets, something the roaming King Pellinore knows a good deal about. His sole object in life is to chase after the Questing Beast and a required part of the hunt is…