Reading List:
Coben, Harlan. Promise Me.
McCarry, Charles. The Tears of Autumn.
Saramago, Jose. The Cave.
Stewart, Mary. The Last Enchantment.
Stewart, Mary. The Wicked Day.
Fiction:
Coben, Harlan. Promise Me. Dutton, 2006. 370 pages.
The late, great, Robert E. Howard once said that his hero had to be a little stupid, because if he were too intelligent he wouldn’t get into the situations Howard needed him to encounter. Howard may have been speaking of his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, but the comment applies to many of the heroes of thrillers and adventure novels. Many of these stories depend upon vows of secrecy or other mechanisms to keep the protagonist from just picking up the telephone and calling the police, the potential victim’s parents, or the local newspaper, an act which would end the novel on page 15.
This is one of those stories. Myron Bolitar, sports agent and former basketball star, foolishly extracts a promise from the teen-age daughter of a friend to call him if she’s in trouble. To induce her to keep the promise, which he intends as insurance against her taking a ride with a drunken boyfriend, he promises not to reveal anything he might learn to the girl’s parents. By the time Bolitar is induced to break that promise, both he and the girl are in deep trouble. This story hinges on a foolish promise, and upon hiding a bit of information that should have been exposed rather quickly. These artifices allow Coben to keep us turning the pages in this thriller, but they also make it rather unsatisfying in the end. If Myron Bolitar were just a little smarter, there’d be no story here at all.
McCarry, Charles. The Tears of Autumn. Overlook Press, 2005 [1974]. 276 pages.
Speaking of satisfying thrillers, this lovely, lovely book, first published in 1974 is one of the best I’ve ever read. We’re talking about deep plots on the order of John LeCarre, elegant prose, and terrific descriptions of scenes around the world. There is a sequence in Vietnam which is as heart stopping as anything in the oeuvre of Adam Hall. McCarry, who worked for the CIA in the 50s and 60s, sets up Paul Christopher as smart, knowledgeable, and brave, and Christopher drives himself into the middle of the Kennedy assassination plot. McCarry does a beautiful job of working his fictional scenes into the background of facts, so that the reader will find himself asking if this is the real explanation of Kennedy’s killing.
Overlook press began reprinting McCarry’s novels in 2005, and this was the first of the series. It was an excellent choice. I, for one, intend to find more Charles McCarry novels and read them. If they are all as good as The Tears of Autumn, I’m going to spend many enjoyable hours with them.
Saramago, Jose. The Cave. Harcourt, 2002. 307 pages.
Saramago is a Nobel Prize winner in literature and a well-known Portuguese of the leftist persuasion. As the title indicates, this spare story draws upon Plato’s parable to explore our struggles to cope with a world we perceive only dimly. Unfortunately, a couple of the major characters failed to come alive for me, and the economy Saramago creates is simplified to the point of being a parody. I don’t think there was really enough here to make a novel of even this moderate length.
Stewart, Mary. The Last Enchantment. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1979. 538 pages. Sequel to The Hollow Hills.
This is the finale to the legend of Merlin, and Stewart does a nice job of wrapping up this complex tale of love and betrayal. The way she portrays the relationship between Guinevere and Bedwyr captures the tragic conflict between love and duty, desire and nobility. By the way, Stewart doesn’t include the character Sir Launcelot du Lake, noting that this name is a late addition to the Arthurian legend. This book completes the story of Merlin and Arthur, but it doesn’t quite complete Arthur’s tale.
Stewart, Mary. The Wicked Day. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983. 453 pages.
The Wicked Day is the story of Mordred, King Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister. Naturally, no good can come of incest and deception, and this book takes us through Mordred’s life, as told by himself, to the point when he and Arthur, all unwilling, battle each other for the kingdom and all is lost. No, this isn’t a cheerful story, as it seems that human frailty, misunderstanding, and suspicion must turn all good intentions into daggers pointed at the hearts of those we love. Throughout the Arthurian legend runs a theme of good intentions thwarted and love gone wrong. This book makes that theme starkly plain.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label Arthurian legend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arthurian legend. Show all posts
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Knight's Reading List XVII: May 2008
Reading List:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
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