William Gibson, Spook Country

What a relief to read Spook Country. I've had a bit of a bad run lately book-wise and this was much needed. It's a quietly fun, intelligent book with what I think of as calm writing and a lack of pretension. It was entertaining, certainly, in the Michael Chabon sense of the word.

There are three centers to the story: Hollis Henry, writing a piece on locative art and more for the mysterious Node magazine; Tito, part of a family of spies originally from Cuba, trained from birth and working for their grandfather's benefactor; and Brown and Millgrim, a spook of some sort and his Volapuk-speaking, Rize-addicted hostage. The plot is driven by the search for a mysterious container and its contents.

Gibson assumes his readers aren't idiots and doesn't feel the need to show his research as far too many writers are wont to do. For example, he introduces Santeria, a Cuban religion, and gives us enough information to give depth to Tito, but does not spend pages telling us how much he has learned about it. It is as if he trusts us to read about it ourselves if we would like to know more. (It's interesting. I might.) As a result, the book is more graceful and light than it would have been with a less-confident author who needed to show his work.

After reading this, I was taken with the possibilities of how the story could have been told. The basic, stripped down plot could have been used by a spy writer for a post Cold War novel. Or perhaps, varying a point or two, someone could have written a novel along the lines of PopCo by Scarlett Thomas (which I liked, pretty much). I like this version; the writing is insightful and clever but without being weighty or too worthy.

There are certainly more novels to be had from the characters in the book, something along the lines of "The Adventures of Hollis and Reg" or follow a member of Tito's extended family. I would love to catch up with them in a few years' time.

Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty

Edna St Vincent Millay is my favorite poet. I can still remember reading a sonnet of hers in a friend's American literature textbook and immediately going out to buy her Collected Poems. Her poems resonate with me and I've never outgrown them - does anyone outgrow love, sex, longing, desire or death?

Nancy Milford's biography of Millay, Savage Beauty, is amazing. Norma Ellis (née Millay), Millay's sister and executor, allowed Milford complete access to all correspondence, notebooks, diaries and estate as well as shared her own memories of Millay and her family. Milford also interviewed surviving friends and persuaded them to share their letters with her. A large part of the book is original texts and remembrances from friends and Norma. Milford adds enough details and explanations to glue it all together coherently. Any indiscretions are treated with fairness and a respect for the poet but nothing obvious is held back, except for the three things Norma mentions she destroyed: an indiscreet letter returned to Millay, an ivory dildo which "Norma admitted was difficult to burn", and a set of pornographic photographs of Millay and her husband. The result is that I feel like I knew Edna St Vincent Millay from birth to death as an intimate friend would.

Millay was the poet of the Jazz Age, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. She is best know for her poem "First Fig":

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!

Her poetry is stunning and fearless, defiant and remorseless. A wicked wit runs through it, skewering herself, those she loved and those who loved her. It recognises the sadness in betrayal and death but never succumbs to sentimentality.

She was a New Woman, a bohemian in the 1920's and her life is even more interesting than her art. Millay was married. Her husband supported her in every endeavor she undertook, from writing to managing lovers including a longstanding affair with a younger man to an addiction to alcohol and morphine. It makes for fascinating reading and gave me a new perspective on her poetry.

I highly recommend this book if you are a fan. I would guess that Milford's biography of Zelda Fitzgerald is also excellent. And if you have never experienced Millay's poetry, have a look and maybe you will fall in love with her as I did.

Charles Elton, Mr Toppit

Mr Toppit reminds me of A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Some of the plot turns (I'm loath to call them twists, they're more like bends) are familiar and the story, although with different characters and in different settings, runs along similar lines. Maybe: it's the same pattern cut with different cloth. I don't know enough about sewing to know if that analogy works.

This is one of those books that might be worth reading if people around you are reading it or you have a book club of the drinking while discussing type - it's easy to read, engaging enough and has some bits that would make for decent conversation.

John Le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

This is a seriously depressing read. Don't do it if you're feeling at all depressed about the state of the world, what we've come to or, actually, if you're in any way shape or form depressed about anything at all. Take precautions: arrange to see a silly movie with a cheery friend when you're finished and proactively take a few doses of your favourite ssri.

A Most Wanted Man is about a Muslim Chechen, maybe, young refugee who has escaped to Hamburg from a jail in Turkey after being tortured there and in Russia. It is a novel showing the consequences of the war on terror and how it has influenced our compassion. There are good guys who want to help and bad guys who want to hurt. The characters are one dimensional but the novel is a good, if profoundly pessimistic, read. Le Carré seems to loathe the American counter-terrorism people; they are written as cartoons. However, I have a feeling that this might be his experience of them in real life and they are, in fact, just like that.

The most distressing thing about this book is that it is believable. Actually, the good guys aren't quite. I have a strong suspicion that what happens is heartbreakingly all too real.

Christopher Brookmyre, A Snowball in Hell

I'm a fan of Christopher Brookmyre. I've read most of his books and some are better than others, but I've enjoyed them all. Until this one.

Brookmyre writes satirical Scottish crime fiction which is funnier and more engaging that it sounds. Not for the squeamish, but the genre isn't for the squeamish, of course. He's had some fantastic protagonists, Jack Parlabane being my favourite and I would love another book with Jane Fleming from All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye. Previous bad guys have been the Scottish government, Catholic church and NHS trust managers as well as a terrorist or two. In short, his books are generally a satisfying romp with a bit of social commentary thrown in.

In A Snowball in Hell he loses it, the touch, what have you. It's a story about a terrorist who is kidnapping, torturing and killing b-list celebs to make the world a better place. The story is one of his weaker, the characters are somewhat pathetic although I liked them when I first met them a couple of books ago, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense and the ending is obvious. That all can be forgiven; authors have better and worse books and these things happen.

However, Brookmyre tries to elicit a laugh with the torture but it's not funny. Torture, at this moment, isn't funny. I'm not sure it ever is or was. The book isn't big and isn't clever. If you haven't read Brookmyre before, start with a different book and if you are a huge fan, do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Duncan Sarkies, Two Little Boys

In the end notes of Two Little Boys, Duncan Sarkies writes

"Two Little Boys is a crime story. You know all of those 'bizarre crime done by an idiot' stories you read on page 5 of the newspaper? This story is one of those. So I guess you could find it filed under 'White-Trash Darwinist Penthouse-Forum-Influenced Stoner Crime Fiction'."

That's an excellent description. The story is written alternating the perspectives of Nige and Dean, two Kiwi mates who have smoked a bit too much dope, perhaps lost a few too many brain cells and killed one too many backpackers. The tone is spot on. The book is a surprisingly sweet love story as well - Sarkies seems to genuinely like the boys.

I loved it. It doesn't take itself seriously and is a great easy read. If you can possibly read it in a stoned Kiwi accent all the better.

Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

Sometimes I feel guilty about my reading. I think I should read more non-fiction and more books that are thought provoking about big and important issues. Books that make me come across as intellectual rather than some mindless housewife who reads for (horror of horrors) entertainment. Written down this makes me look vain and seems absurd. And it is and I am, of course, but there you go.

What I read is, I suppose, not so awful but one love is the dreaded "f" word - fantasy. I'm not a fan of heaving breasts and knights rescuing damsels from dragons, although I'm sure there are some good books in that, but I love, eg, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (please don't look too closely at the covers, they contain some heaving bosoms), most stuff from Neil Gaimann and Ray Bradbury is my favourite author. These are comfort reading and re-reading.

Needing more to read on holiday, I picked up Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands which consists of 16 essays - "an exhilarating ode to reading and writing" according to the back of the book. Ticks the boxes for quality reading or, perhaps more precisely, for reading I can talk about at the school gate and look well-read. Not bought with the best of intentions, but I loved it. It's fabulous.

The first essay was my favourite and re-defines the word "entertainment" amongst other things. Is "re-defines" the right word? It takes entertainment back to an earlier definition - a "lovely one of mutual support through intertwining" which Chabon proposes, in relation to reading, to "encompass everything pleasurable that arises from the encounter of an attentive mind with a page of literature". Forcing science fiction, fantasy and the like into "genre slums in the local Barnes & Noble" and out of the stacks of "literature" is bemoaned and Chabon notes that some of the finest short stories are written on the boundaries "in the spaces between genres".

In a later essay he analyzes Cormac McCarthy's The Road as science fiction. Other essays call for children to read more comic books, celebrate fan fiction and discuss how he thought he would become a hard sci-fi writer. It does what it says on the tin or, more correctly, on the back of the book. Fantastic stuff for a reader who has been beaten down a bit by wine-drinking book clubbers with a narrow view of what constitutes a book worthy of reading.

I feel validated, really. The books I love are loved by a guy who has awards attesting to his literary worth. I realise I shouldn't need said validation; it's a little sad. But reading this has been confidence building. And it was entertaining, in the very best sense of the word, to boot.