from https://picclick.it/Pan-THE-SPY-WHO-CAME-IN-FROM-THE-296332075807.html, via DuckDuckGo
Better late than never, so let’s begin!
This month I moved from history to historical fiction.
From modern spy novels to medieval detective fiction, I had centuries worth of fun!
Deep Questions, Cal Newport, Episodes 381-390
Some non fiction first.
I finished catching up with all the episodes of the podcast and now I’ll keep listing them as soon as I finish a batch of ten (around 8+ hours of listening to something counts as book length to me. Unless it’s a four hour Dan Carlin episode. Those are dense 😂)
The new episodes hew toward philosopical discussions about how to live in a world that is slowly being infected with AI. What is true? What is art? Is AI really taking over the world? Is AI really an apt term for what we are seeing? Pretty interesting listen.
Beyond the Rift, Peter Watts
Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts.
— James Nicoll
Watts is one of my favourite authors. I often wonder why he did not get popular.
The Rifters trilogy is my favourite science fiction series. Nothing has come close yet. Power is now taken from geothermal vents in the oceans. The only folks who can adapt to this environment are folks with psychological disorders. They’re given iron gills and other alterations to withstand deep sea pressure. Murder and mayhem ensue. Between the crazy beasts in the dark of the ocean and the crazies themselves.
Techno lingo mixed with poetry, crazy doomsday scenarios and lots of potty mouthedness! Nobody writes quite like him. Nobody writes what he does either. Hard biological sci-fi.
If you’d read the adventures of Lenie Clarke, then nothing about today’s creeping AI world and its dumb “intelligence” would surprise you. And that is precisely why I want to go read Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth once more. To see if the books still engage.
You can too! The novels are available as ebooks in various formats for free on his website.
(If you are going to print them, then caveat printor! These are chonky beasts.)
But all this is besides the point. Beyond the rift, is a lot of short stories in the world of the Rifters. It clears up, follows through or talks about other things in that setting. I loved it.
Pspsps, some short stories are available on the link I shared above as well!
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
Daddy gave me a even more battered copy of the book, than the pic above.
I don’t know what possesed him to do that. I don’t know what his fascination with Le Carré (& Forsyth) was. For a man who would normally be pretty optimistic and generaly full of hope, to be suggesting I read a book with such a cold, inhospitable view of the world was quite out of character. But I loved reading all about Smiley and the circus. And I spent most of my boyhood, learning about WWII and the cold war world via Smiley and gang.
The book is a modern classic, though I don’t know why. Probably just a luck of the draw? I’m not complaining though. It’s a wonderful piece of spy drama.
On teensy flimsy actions, on such tiny wings does the world turn. What if Liz and Leamas didn’t get together? Would Smiley’s plan have worked then? A cynical yet bemused Le Carré would say yes and invent some other small thing that would have things just as bleak as they turned out to be.
Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality
These came before Spy did, and read more like dark Christie novels. More detective than spy. Good fun!
Falco, The Official Companion, Lindsey Davis
Medieval detective fiction is no longer enough. I’m now going to ancient Rome for some crime!
I found Lindsey Davis’ Falco who is a soldier turned detective in ancient Rome. (with some Britain thrown in.)
This book is a non fiction companion to the series and the world ala GRRM’s, A World of Ice and Fire. These are Davis’ thoughts and recollections on how she created Falco, the history (actual and imagined) of the world at the time, the impetus behind why he behaves the he does and all sorts of other bits and bobs. She shares her day, her writing process and lots of intersting tidbits from here there and everywhere. This was tonnes of fun. I’m going into the series, really pumped!
The Novice’s Tale, The Servant’s Tale, and The Outlaw’s Tale, Margaret Frazer
I turned away from Frazer’s group of players in her Joliffe series (which I began last month) and went a few decades earlier to meet Dame Frevisse.
She is a hosteller when I meet her in the Novice’s tale, which solves the problem of how a nun in a convent, is able to meet and talk to people. She’s also Chaucer’s niece which gives her a wee bit of influence.
She reads like a more wonderfully written Sexton Blake. The way they solve crimes is not a coming together of what you may have observed, but something that is happens or is shown at the very end. I hope it gets better with the solution and the foreshadowing as I go deeper into the series. What makes me want to read though is the journey, Frazer takes us on and the conversations these people have and the expositon of the lives they lead. All that is wonderfully done!
In Novice, a crazy rich woman, comes to get her niece back from the convent where Frevisse is and then gets murdered.
Servant, brings in Joliffe who I read last month into this world when his band of players come to the convent, bearing the dead body of a villager who they claim they found on the way. One of the players is blamed, and accusations fly across the three engaged parties. Who killed that loathsome villager?
Outlaw, seems like an episode of a serious K drama, where the main cast takes off to Jeju island for a holiday and something happens there. Dame Frevisse is accompanying her fellow nun to her home for a baptism, when they are kidnapped! The kidnapper is Frevisse’s cousin! And then he’s murdered!
Frazer writes good page turners!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
Modern detective fiction! A journalist plays detective in this one.
Take a girl on the autistic spectrum, give her a really bad childhood, and have still be as normal as possible.
An old man, keeps getting flowers on his dead grand-daughter’s birthday for close to thirty years after she dies.
A self absorbed yet talented journalist who loses darn near everything and now has such a stain on his integrity that no one will believe him.
Bring them all together, add in a pile of dead bodies in the freezing countryside of Sweden and you have a thriller!
I read it when it was first published and I turned to it again. It still holds up. It’s a fun read.
Larsson supports women and is a feminist, yet does not quite know how to write women. He still makes the book work though.
Lisbeth Salander is a woman who hates men who hate women. And she really is badass!
More next month! À bientôt!
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