Finished The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. His first novel. A series of loosely related adventures detailing kind and wealthy old Samuel Pickwick and the namesake club he founded. Bored with the club’s usual activities, he takes a handful of members with him around England to see what they see. Very good, and one can feel the promise of his future works in every page. First published in serial form from March 1836 to November 1837, this was the first instance of novel serialization. The action nominally takes place from 1827-28, although critics have noted some references to events anachronistically occurring after that window.
Originally titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Containing a Faithful Record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members, the novel’s development has an interesting history. Robert Seymour was the illustrator for the series installments. Prior, he had originally come out with a series of “cockney sporting plates” showing the mishaps of a club of members who would go off into the countryside on hunting and fishing expeditions. Their guns would go off accidentally, their fishhooks ended up caught on the seat of their pants, that sort of thing. At this time the young Dickens was working as a parliamentary reporter and roving journalist, but he had also published some sketches on life in London with Seymour’s publisher, so Dickens was known to them, and they asked him if he might could develop a series of loosely related tales that would connect Seymour’s drawings. He agreed, and thus the novel. But Dickens started getting ahead of Seymour, and instead of Dickens writing a story for Seymour’s drawings, Seymour ended up having to come up with sketches to illustrate Dickens’ installments. The two argued early on, and Seymour committed suicide. Seymour was immensely talented and popular and was apparently under crushing pressure by his publisher apart from Pickwick, but the argument with Dickens was probably the main trigger. (Another illustrator was found.) Seymour’s widow maintained to her dying day that her late husband was the one who had come up with the idea for the book and had created several of the main characters before ever meeting Dickens. To his dying day Dickens denied this, claiming sole credit for himself. Seymour’s widow never received a penny in royalties, but literary historians today agree Dickens was simply being a total dick and that he co-opted credit from Seymour. Be that as it may, it was the start of an illustrious career, one whose cultural ramifications reverberate to this day.
Meanwhile, I have started my next read, The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly
Same. The main thing I remember is that on almost every page there was a delightful image or simile. He’s really, really stylish. I don’t know there’s a whole lot of great story there, but it’s a cool as hell read.
In the late nineties I got to hear the author William Gibson talk about it. He pointed out that cyberspace, the ultra-cool home of the hackers, was really just The Internet, which means that main character Case was infected with a fungus that prevented him from logging onto AOL, and that “Case longed for email” doesn’t sound quite as badass.
Speaking of eighties science fiction, I just finished a reread of Octavia Butler’s Dawn for a book club. It hit me really differently from how it hit in my teenage years. Spoilers for a 4-decade-old book follow:
The protagonist Lilith (subtle name there) is woken up by aliens, post-nuclear apocalypse. She and an indeterminate number of aliens have been rescued from a dying earth and put in stasis for a few centuries while the aliens restore Earth to a liveable state; the humans will then be sent back, with the genetic modifications that render their descendants a cross between the humans and the aliens.
In my adolescence I think I read the aliens as benevolent saviors. Now, I read them as colonialist rapists. It’s a little more complex than that, but I had a lot more sympathy for the humans that hated the aliens this read through.
I read Dawn for the first time as an adult, and I agree with your (second) take on it.
Finished Crime Through Time III, edited by Sharan Newman, which is a collection of historical mysteries. By far the best was “Smoke”, by William Sanders. Also finished Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers, by John Sutherland. Much of it was trivia I’d read elsewhere, but I did enjoy what I hadn’t seen before. That said, there were a number of mistakes that should have been caught. For example, Jesus is said to only have used an ass as a means of transportation, and Sutherland explicitly says that he never rode in a boat. Oh yes, He did.
Also, Sutherland calls Sherlock Holmes an “amateur” detective. No, he got paid.
Next up: Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem, and Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, by Jerry Spinelli.
I finished Three Act Tragedy by Dame Agatha Christie, in a record one day of reading. None of her books are very long, but this was quite a marathon. I enjoyed it quite a lot and since I am reading in roughly publication order, I am watching her hone her craft and become the best selling author of all time.
I am still pushing through Blitz by Daniel O’Malley, thank someone the next book in the series is a normal length one.
I’ve also been reading A Fellowship of Bakers by J. Penner on Kindle. Fortunately it’s a Prime selection because this main character’s self esteem issues, she has none and refuses to accept that anyone complimenting her is sincere, are wildly getting on my last damn nerve. I’ll give it a little more but…
I have tried reading Th Pickwick Papers, and have always given up on it. Dickens is hit or miss with me. I either love him or hate him. Loved Christmas Carol, Tale of wo Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations. Hated Hard Times, all the other Christmas books, and The Pickwick Papers.
Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius William E Wallace
The relationship and rivalry between the two great artists of the Italian Renaissance.
Short book, but fairly informative and interesting
Final Orbit Chris Hadfield
A thriller set during the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous mission in the mid 1970s. The author is an astronaut who spent time on the ISS, so the parts that take place in space are pretty good reading. The overall plot is so convoluted and improbable that you just have to suspend any rational thinking about it and enjoy the action.
I’m working my way through the September/October edition of Asimov’s Science Fiction. I’ve noted a couple of authors I want to read more of – John Kessel, and Ted Kosmatka.
John Kessel wrote an interesting “ghost story”, where the main characters include HG Wells, Catherine Wells, Stephen Crane, and other contemporaries. This genre of historical fiction that includes actual historical figures is something I’m growing to like more as time goes on. I read The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl (The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl | Goodreads) a while back, and I enjoyed it quite a bit (it is a murder mystery involving Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others) . Is there a name for this subgenre of historical fiction, that use actual historical figures as protagonists, that never actually engaged in the events of the story?
The other standout short story to me so far is The Signal and the Idler by Ted Kosmatka. It looks like he wrote a couple of novels over a decade ago, that I might have to check out. The story is a slowly building thriller involving cryptocurrency and quantum computing. Not sure how it’s going to end, but it’s definitely grabbed me so far.
Finished Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem (translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox). While the plot didn’t appeal to me and there’s material in here which really didn’t age well, the worldbuilding was interesting, and I thought the ending worked perfectly. Also finished Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, by Jerry Spinelli. It was okay. I did really like the part in which he remembered watching the first moon landing on TV, but it didn’t seem real to him. Then he ran outside and listened to it on the radio in the family car. Then it seemed real. He’d grown up listening to radio dramas and was used to making up the pictures in his head.
Next up: Passing, by Nella Larsen, and Horses: A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World, by Ludovic Orlando, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan.
I finished This House Will Feed. It was okay. I didn’t find it particularly well-written, and the title doesn’t make any sense. It’s not horror, but a mild ghost story. However, the historical setting, the epigraphs, and the glossary at the end elevate it.
Finished The Penguin Book of Pirates, edited by Katherine Howe. Eeerie the way she evidently knows the area around where I live so well. On to A Load of Balls: The QI History of Sport. I gave a copy of this to a friend or CHristmas, and decided I ought to read it myself. A quick read, so far. And as fascinating as watching QI. It’s written by the QI “Head Elves”, James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynsky. They’ve evidently written a stack of QI-banded books, and have a show or something called No Such Thing as a Fish, which I now have to look up.
On audio, I re-listened to The Day of the Jackal on a trip, and am now reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which I got for Christmas.
Finished the first; meh. One of the main characters is the dumbest fucking cop, I swear, in all of English-language literature. By the end I was practically shouting, “Why don’t you [do this, and do that, and do this other thing that any cop smarter than a rutabaga would do]?”
Still reading the second. Not quite as good as I remember.
I tried Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Assistant to the Villain, which wants to be a funny, snarky, self-aware semi-dark romance but just misses the mark completely. Ugh. Terrible.
Instead, I’m rereading Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The ODESSA File for the first time in forty-some years. It’s about a young German reporter in the early Sixties who tries to infiltrate a secretive organization of retired SS men. Really good!
Finished Passing, by Nella Larsen, which was an insightful story about 1920’s New York, and Horses: A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World, by Ludovic Orlando, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. It was very interesting.
Next up: Kolymsky Heights, by Lionel Davidson; and The Other Girl, by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
Finished The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly. A Lincoln Lawyer novel, with an assist by investigative reporter Jack McEvoy. Mickey Haller has left criminal defense behind and now litigates in civil court. He is representing a mother whose teenage daughter was murdered by the girl’s ex-boyfriend, who was encouraged to do the deed by an AI chatbot companion. She is suing the maker of the chatbot. McEvoy joins the team and provides critical research. I always found McEvoy to be Connelly’s weakest character, but he does okay here. Very good, although the ending seemed a bit perfunctory. I am pleased to see two more Connellys are set to come out this year, one featuring Stilwell for the second time along with Renee Ballard, the other with Bosch and Haller.
Have started Mr Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood.
One of my all-time favorites. I was lucky to get (second hand) a review copy before it was formally released and loved it. I “filmed” the story in my head many times. When the movie finally did come out, I was delighted that they’d done many of the same things I did, but they changed the end of it. And I don’t think they pointed out that the Nazi villain of the piece actually WAS a real Nazi villain. Forsyth got the info on him from those trying to track him down.