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defrog
Read, read, read. Book report, book report, book report. Blog. Repeat.JUST FINISHED
Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling The Capital City Of The Future by Tom Scocca
A book that’s supposed to be about Beijing’s urban transformation for the 2008 Olympics, but is more about Scocca and his family living in Beijing as expats during that transformation time. Scocca does cover the build-up to the Games first hand, from the construction of the venue and urban renewal plans to Beijing’s anti-pollution measures and weather control schemes. But he spends too much time talking about what it’s like to live as an expat in Beijing when all this is going on, how hard it is, and how different everything in China is compared to the US – which is fine, except that it probably belongs in a different book. It’s too bad, because there are a lot of good stories in here about Beijing’s Olympic makeover, and while Scocca keeps putting himself in the way of the story, he doesn't do it to the point of being egotistical or whiny. But he does do it enough to distract from the story I’m trying to read. Maybe it’s because, being an expat myself (and havong spent a lot of time in China), he’s not telling me much I don’t already know. Still, I ended up fast-forwarding through the book.
JUST STARTED
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Awhile back I picked up a single-volume hardback of Murakami’s epic homage to 1984 at a flea market for a few dollars, but I’ve kind of been avoiding it because it is, well, epic. But now somehow I’ve decided it’s time to tackle it, and the first few pages are already weaving that old Murakami magic that makes even the ordinary seem a bit surreal. This will probably slow up my book-report progress. But it’s not like I’m on a deadline or anything, so why not?
RECENT TITLES
Berlin Game by Len Deighton
The first volume in the first trilogy starring British agent Bernard Samson, a former field agent now working a desk in London, who is asked to go back into the field after a valuable contact in East Berlin, known as Brahms Four, demands to defect to the West. Samson’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to convince Brahms Four to stay put. Having read and enjoyed Deighton’s Harry Palmer novels, this took a little getting used to – narration-wise, Samson is similar to Palmer in tone, but not in terms of character background (Palmer is a working-class bachelor, Samson is a well-connected family man who married into money, although his wife Fiona does work for the same agency). But once I got the hang of it, I really got into it. Like the Palmer books, Berlin Game goes for realism instead of Bond/Bourne thrills, so adjust yr expectations accordingly. For me, I enjoyed it a lot, and I have the next two books in the queue somewhere.
JOB: A Comedy Of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein
Christian fundamentalist Alex Hergensheimer finds himself unexpectedly shifting between various alternate Earths. On the bright side, he meets the woman of his dreams. On the downside, it’s all leading to Armageddon, and she’s a pagan worshipper, and his main concern is how to get her to accept Christ as her savior before the rapture. If that puts you off, it may help to know that this is all meant to be satire. Heinlein does a great job with the notion of how to deal with world shifts that rob you of yr identity and cash, and while his version of Heaven and Hell may seem old hat these days, it was a fresher idea when he wrote the book in the early 80s. And it’s almost as if Heinlein saw the rise of the Christian Coalition coming a mile away. On the downside, Alex’s first-person narration plays it so straight that it’s hard to believe he’s that oblivious to his own hypocrisy (though he’d hardly be the first fundamentalist to be so described, and that may actually be the point). The only really hard part to take is the romance between Alex and Margrethe, which is so loaded with cornball dialogue that I knocked a whole star off my Goodreads rating as a result.
His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Resuming my quest to read all the Sherlock Holmes, this is the next-to-last collection of short stories, published in 1917. And a fine collection it is, not least because the stories flesh out the characters of Holmes and Watson even further, and occasionally highlighting their flaws as much as their strengths. The one odd duck in the collection is the title story, which is actually a spy story rather than a mystery, and it’s okay but a bit flawed, as the ending sticks to mystery-story conventions that don’t quite work in an espionage story. Still, the spy genre barely existed when Doyle wrote it, and it’s easy to criticize in hindsight. Anyway, it’s still a good collection overall.
Maigret In Court by Georges Simenon
In which Chief Inspector Maigret is indeed in court, testifying to his investigation into the murder of a woman and her daughter. The twist: he’s just not convinced the suspect is capable of the murder despite the evidence against him. As usual, what looks a pretty straightforward case turns out to be anything but, as Simenon reveals why Maigret has misgivings, and what he has intended all along to do about it. Short, sweet, and a serious page-turner by the middle of the book.
Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin
A travelogue that uses George Orwell’s time in Burma (where he was a policeman for two years when Burma was still part of the British Empire) as a roadmap to visit different locations in the country, as well as a touch point to discuss what it’s like to live under a harsh totalitarian regime not unlike the ones described in Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm – so much so that both novels are considered by some local intellectuals to be unofficial sequels to his debut novel Burmese Days. Larkin does a reasonably good job of maintaining the balance between travelogue and Orwell/Burma comparisons, though the Orwell parts seem a little light at times. Still, I found it fascinating. One thing: the book does contain spoilers if you haven’t read Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984, so if you ever intend to read them, do so before reading this.
Orwellian,
This is dF
