Eventually the library will hunt me down
Feb. 15th, 2013 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandra...but I have at last finished two of my outstanding overdues, thus delaying them a little.
What I've just read:
John Le Carré's The Looking Glass War, which was probably the most angry book I've read in a long time - it's a coldly furious dissection of British Intelligence as practised by people who are caught up in their own myths and departmental squabbles for status, and the inevitable human cost. Funny, in parts - Avery, the young star of the Department, is sent on a faked passport to Finland, to retrieve the body of another agent, and has been told to identify himself as the dead agent's half-brother, and the scene in which he does so only to be asked why the dead body's clothes all feature another name, and then fails to remember his supposed half-brother's age is hideously, embarrassingly, compelling. I'd like to know what happens to Avery after this book, actually; I'm not sure his disillusionment is survivable.
Jan Morris' Venice - I don't think I could ascribe a single dominant emotion to this. There's affection and admiration for the city, as well as a nostalgia for the departing present (much of it is written before Venice's recent tourism revival), but there's also a lot of spite, not always comfortably directed - "The important thing to know about the Murano glass makers is that almost everything that they make is, at least to my taste, perfectly hideous. This has always been so." is probably a fair cop, but "The British seem to me to provide the best of the men (often distinguished, frequently spare, sometimes agreeably individualist) and the worst of the women (ill tempered, hair unwashed, clothes ill fitting, snobby of embarrassingly flirtatious)" says a lot more about Morris than about the tourists. And, also, an odd absence at the heart of it all, as Morris is a participant who keeps insisting on being an observer - the bit where she's watching her son head off to school over a bridge struck me as very deliberately impersonal. I liked best the historical anecdotes, especially where Pepin invades the lagoon, and lands on Malamocco to interrogate the only remaining inhabitant, an elderly lady, about the best approach to the city itself. "Sempre diritto," she says, straight ahead, and Pepin's fleet promptly sails into a mudbar and the Venetian navy come out and pounce.
Also, m/m romances in which either the love interest has an anxiety disorder or they're an ex-con. No one's managed to combine both, but I have just finished one with an agoraphobic and the ex-con who's hired to deliver his groceries.
What I'm reading now: Amazon delivered my hard copies of Captive Prince with unexpected swiftness (nearly a month ahead of their projected dates, which has left me impressed but rather twitchy about their pretty appalling labour record). I read the first one yesterday and am happily sinking into the second.
What I expect to read next: I need to make a decision about the Len Deightons. Also, the Jan Morris was sublimating the fact that I want to reread Last Letters from Hav, and don't know which box it's in, so there might be another ransacking this weekend.
What I've just read:
John Le Carré's The Looking Glass War, which was probably the most angry book I've read in a long time - it's a coldly furious dissection of British Intelligence as practised by people who are caught up in their own myths and departmental squabbles for status, and the inevitable human cost. Funny, in parts - Avery, the young star of the Department, is sent on a faked passport to Finland, to retrieve the body of another agent, and has been told to identify himself as the dead agent's half-brother, and the scene in which he does so only to be asked why the dead body's clothes all feature another name, and then fails to remember his supposed half-brother's age is hideously, embarrassingly, compelling. I'd like to know what happens to Avery after this book, actually; I'm not sure his disillusionment is survivable.
Jan Morris' Venice - I don't think I could ascribe a single dominant emotion to this. There's affection and admiration for the city, as well as a nostalgia for the departing present (much of it is written before Venice's recent tourism revival), but there's also a lot of spite, not always comfortably directed - "The important thing to know about the Murano glass makers is that almost everything that they make is, at least to my taste, perfectly hideous. This has always been so." is probably a fair cop, but "The British seem to me to provide the best of the men (often distinguished, frequently spare, sometimes agreeably individualist) and the worst of the women (ill tempered, hair unwashed, clothes ill fitting, snobby of embarrassingly flirtatious)" says a lot more about Morris than about the tourists. And, also, an odd absence at the heart of it all, as Morris is a participant who keeps insisting on being an observer - the bit where she's watching her son head off to school over a bridge struck me as very deliberately impersonal. I liked best the historical anecdotes, especially where Pepin invades the lagoon, and lands on Malamocco to interrogate the only remaining inhabitant, an elderly lady, about the best approach to the city itself. "Sempre diritto," she says, straight ahead, and Pepin's fleet promptly sails into a mudbar and the Venetian navy come out and pounce.
Also, m/m romances in which either the love interest has an anxiety disorder or they're an ex-con. No one's managed to combine both, but I have just finished one with an agoraphobic and the ex-con who's hired to deliver his groceries.
What I'm reading now: Amazon delivered my hard copies of Captive Prince with unexpected swiftness (nearly a month ahead of their projected dates, which has left me impressed but rather twitchy about their pretty appalling labour record). I read the first one yesterday and am happily sinking into the second.
What I expect to read next: I need to make a decision about the Len Deightons. Also, the Jan Morris was sublimating the fact that I want to reread Last Letters from Hav, and don't know which box it's in, so there might be another ransacking this weekend.
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no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 09:49 am (UTC)What did you think of it?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-16 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-15 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-16 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-16 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 09:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 05:46 am (UTC)The library will always find you :)
So I'm guessing Captive Prince is good? *grin*
no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 09:37 am (UTC)Captive Prince is a lot of fun - fictional historical, lots of politics and tension, and bucketloads of UST. On the other hand, if you wait until later, she might have made some progress on the third one, and you will not be hanging in suspense at the end of book 2's crashing cliffhanger with the rest of us!
At least the library is currently just sending helpful emails and not blacklisting me...
no subject
Date: 2013-02-18 04:53 am (UTC)The second book has a massive cliff-hanger? Then I'm steering clear. Nothing drives me nuts more than a cliff-hanger :)
And UST? Sorry, massive brain drain :)
And I'm guessing you can't renew your library books?