recent bookstore trawling

[truepenny]

Ambrose, Stephen E. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. [Mirrorthaw's]

Aubrey, John. Aubrey's Brief Lives.

Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary.

Butler, Anne M. Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West 1865-90.

Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: The Authorized Biography.

Cohen, Rachel. A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967.

Crofts, Freeman Wills. The Cask.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography.

Goerner, Fred. The Search for Amelia Earhart.

Graves, Robert. Good-bye To All That.

Hodgell, P. C. Dark of the Gods.

Hoffmann, E. T. A. Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann.

How to Plan and Remodel Attics and Basements. [One of these things is not like the others ...]

Le Carré, John. The Russia House. [Mirrorthaw's]

Ludlum, Robert. The Bourne Identity. [Mirrorthaw's]

Martin, George R. R. Fevre Dream.

Moore, Alan, J. H. Williams III, and Mick Gray. Promethea Book 1.

O'Brian, Patrick. The Mauritius Command.

Styron, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

Tiptree, James, Jr. Meet Me at Infinity.

Westbury, Virginia. Labyrinths: Ancient Paths of Wisdom and Peace.

White, Michael. Tolkien: A Biography. [I like parallax views in my biographical reading]

Wilson, A. N. C. S. Lewis: A Biography.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. [was horrified to discover I did not actually own this]

Also, in a sudden access of something-or-other, Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair, The Seeds of Love, The Hurting.

Comments

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

Aubrey's Lives! Crofts' The Cask, Graves' Good-bye To All That!
Hodgell's Dark of the Gods!

*resists urge to move into truepenny's house.

Although I have a copy of the Crofts and have read the rest. But still....

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Do you not read Le Carre? I think you'd like him.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and did not enjoy it. Does that suggest a fundamental incompatibility, or is there other Le Carré I might prefer?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I know Spy is the most famous Le Carre, but I don't like it at all; I see it as a transitional book between his undistinguished early work and his much more interesting later work. The Russia House is okay--I thought it was great when I read it, because it was my first Le Carre, but it's not nearly as strong as some of his others.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a masterpiece. I think A Perfect Spy is, too, but this is more of a minority opinion. I'd say start with TTSS. And if you like it, it makes up a trilogy with The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People; if you don't like it, it comes to a definite conclusion.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

O'Brian, Patrick. The Mauritius Command.

This was the last one I finished--I read a couple, then wait a few months before I start the next.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I too hated The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, on basis of my desperate need to break the violins that kept playing in the background as So-and-so made his tragic choices. I was under the impression that it was a terminal character flaw, in Le Carre himself and possibly in the whole subgenre of the British grim-lite spy saga.

On your recommendation, I might be inspired to try again, though.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is based on the treason of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Spies, which means that anyone who knows the story will know who the mole is immediately. And it's incredibly suspenseful anyway, which Le Carre manages to pull off by making the entire book about the effects and implications of the betrayal, the investigation a struggle of professional competence against personal reluctance to believe in this horrific revelation.

The protagonist is George Smiley, whom you may or may not remember as the grey, dowdy, middle-aged spy who sets up the protagonist of Spy for a fall, in the better interests of the British Secret Service.

There are other things I could rave out--Le Carre's a brilliant hand at dialects, there's one five-person conversation with three or four different accents and it sounds like a real conversation, not a pantomime--but those are the main points.

His women unfortunately are either victims or monsters (though sometimes sympathetic ones), although I hear this improves in later books.