Reading list for August 2006

Currently reading
Jared Diamond, Collapse
I.B. Singer, Meschugga - not in Jiddish :-)

Recently read
John Griesemer, Signal to noise
Martha Grimes, The winds of change
Benoîte Groult, Salz auf unserer Haut
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good omens
Alexander von Schönburg, Die Kunst des stillvollen Verarmens
Rebecca Solnit, A field guide to getting lost

Salt on our skin is a wonderful, funny and moving story of life and love across (social) boundaries, about a twenty-year affair: a love story in installments between an intellectual Parisienne (tautology, I know) and a Breton fisherman, which ends as it must at our common end. Highly recommended, well worth the effort to seek out a copy.

Spoiler warning: fans of Martha Grimes who have read neither this book nor The blue last should skip the (invisible) rest of this paragraph. Other readers may highlight it to read the text. I heaved a sigh of relief to discover that Jury did not die at the end of "The blue last," as the tale takes place afterwards; there is some suggestion in the text that there might even be another book set between these two in which he recovers. The story is considerably nastier than the usual run of Jury's cases.

Rebecca Solnit is praised on the back cover by the Financial Times' reviewer for "flawless, scintillating prose." Really? Every third page contained a clot of infelicity that made me snort fire, but perhaps my standards are too high. Solnit desperately needs a firm-handed and widely-read editor, to make the lumpy, would-be-wistful prose match the quality of the thought behind it (which is scintillating). The long chapter "The blue of distance" on the early European explorers of North America is at the centre of her argument, that there is a difference between being lost and simply not knowing where you are, and that the former may be a desirable condition. One of those rare books which one wishes had an index.

Alexander Graf von Schönburg is scion of a noble family "which has been declining gracefully for the last seven hundred and fifty years," and so has learned a thing or two about the fine art of becoming poor without losing one's grace or dignity. The frame story of his family's rise and fall is interestingly told, but the book itself is the usual "be happy with what you've got" mantra, different from the rest only in the unusually high quality of the writing. A parallel tale: I was telling G about reading this, and he jumped in to say that it had become a bestseller and that AvS was no longer poor, therefore the book was now invalid and I was a fool to read it (slightly paraphrased). By this logic, only people who have died of cancer may write books about being ill.

Pratchett and Gaiman's Good omens would have been the book of the month had the very different Salz auf unserer Haut not pipped it at the post. The combination of authors works well, Pratchett's absurdist nothing-so-funny-as-everyday-life and Gaiman's mystical nothing-so-strange-as-everyday-life complement each other nicely. Recommended.

Next month's list
Last month's list