Michael Burleigh

Holiday Reading?

Sunday 17th August 2008
I'm off to Melbourne in ten days time, and then for a well-earned rest in Malaysia where I plan to indulge my love of fishing. The last time I tried this, off NSW, the Aussie macho men (my brother-in-law and his son) grew progressively sour as I hauled in 32lbs of fish. I seem to have spent the last few weeks reading about German depredations in Poland in September/October 1939- grim stuff like the one armed farmer who was shot because both hands didn't go up in response to "Haende Hoch"! Need a break and something else to read. My agent suggests I take a few Saul Bellow novels along since I've never read him, but then he would since he has Bellow's estate. Do commentators have any suggestions about reading material? I used to be a big fan of Carl Hiasen, Elmore Leonard, Andrew Vachs (one for Elberry to ponder)...........I've got Ron Suskind's latest book lined up, but that's a bit of a busman's holiday or is it coals to Newcastle (great place all Tories note). No, no Elberry, I can almost imagine recommendations so grim.....
10:28 am
Print

previous | next
Back to michael burleigh's Blog

COMMENTS

elberry
August 18th, 2008
6:08 PM
John le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl is good on 70s terrorism, and a good read too. Alan Furst's The Polish Officer and Dark Star are both excellent Nazi-era spy thrillers. Or there's PG Wodehouse if you want a total break from Nazis...oh wait...

Vernon Howell
August 19th, 2008
1:08 AM
I'd recommend Daniel Kalder's Strange Telescopes, which is a really unusual exploration of weird substitutes for religion in the former Soviet Union, and quite funny too, though definitely not to everyone's taste...

mburleigh
August 19th, 2008
9:08 AM
Thank you Elberry. I want a break from terror as well as Nazis. I suspect Andrew Vachs may appeal to your darker side- he sports an eye patch too. In practice I'll drag a pile of books around and look at none of them. Maybe that's no bad thing. If you read all day, all year, what's the point?

George Street
August 19th, 2008
9:08 AM
The novel 'Christine Falls' by Benjamin Black (John Banville) is interesting. 'Falling Man' by De Lillo is interesting for different reasons. I see Elberry has got there before me with le Carre but has failed to recommend 'Absolute Friends' which links nicely with your current interests. One of the best novels I've read this year has been 'Redemption Falls' by Joseph O'Connor followed closely by the David Downing 'Station' novels (very light but skip by nicely). Why not read 'Great Expectations' again? We're reading it to out four year old at the moment - what a story. Fishing? FISHING? Redmond Hanlon's 'Trawler' is fun: if only for the colour plate of the trawler's engineer - Dougie Twatt. Have you caught up with 'Deadwood' yet?

mburleigh
August 19th, 2008
1:08 PM
Thanks George and Vernon. Will take up some of those suggestions. Never heard of Strange Telescopes or Redemption Falls. Yes, FISHING. Only from boats on the sea, though I caught a nice sea bream within minutes of standing on an Australian beach once. I like the feeling of something maybe on the line given by those slight quivers and that lethal greedy gulp. And no I don't see it as a gin palace opportunity since I can't drink either gin or beer. I've got a recommendation for you lot- Glenn Patterson, Burning Your Own, which Paul Bew recommended to me when I wanted something set in Ulster. I like the sound of Dougie Twatt. A friend of ours spent six months on a prawn boat between North Australia and Indonesia- he met a lot of Dougie Twatts' on that ship.

Will
August 19th, 2008
3:08 PM
There aren't that many good novels around. Fiction has become either an academic exercise nobody would want to read or updated versions of the stories that made fortunes for Alexandre Dumas and Conan Doyle. But what about Patrick O'Brian's novels? I'm a great fan his his Aubrey/Maturin series, and one of the novels is partly set in Australia. There may be a few fishing scenes at different points. While on holiday in Connecticut last month, I picked up Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and huguely enjoyed what I read. Sometimes reading a book again after a passage of years can be a treat. But perhaps enjoying Swift marks me as to ascerbic for the present age.

Will
August 19th, 2008
3:08 PM
Talk of fishing reminds me of our house in Virginia where we had a pond full of bass, perch, and catfish just a stroll away. Many evenings I'd walk down with a fly rod for a few hours of enjoyment. My daughter, then about 5, caught her first bass there. Hated leaving that place. Driving off when we moved was like the scene in Giotto's expulsion from the garden of Eden.

mburleigh
August 19th, 2008
6:08 PM
Ah Will. A fellow fisherman. Who was that great 20th century southern novelist you recommended to me? Not Faulkner but someone more obscure. Or was it Catholic Chris in Arlington?

elberry
August 19th, 2008
9:08 PM
Funny, i was fantasising about losing an eye and having to wear an eyepatch today, clearly a sign, will check Vachs out. i am hard pressed to think of any good books that have nothing to do with either Nazis or terrorism. Even Jane Austen usually features subplots about assassination and/or one-armed Nazi generals hiding in the gazebo.

Will
August 20th, 2008
3:08 PM
Walker Percy is the writer you have in mind. Definitely worth reading. His uncle William Alexander Percy wrote "Lanterns on the Levee" which is fine perspective on Mississippi, albeit one that the bien pensant would find politically incorrect. Flannery O'Connor is another great Southern writer whose interests parallel Walker Percy's. Since you mention William Faulkner, it's worth noting that his brother John Falkner--William changed the spelling of the surname to be a contrarian--wrote a novel about the Mississippi Delta called "Dollar Cotton" that really caputures a world that's passed away. Thinking of brothers, John Severn wrote a fine collective biography of the Wellesley brothers showing how Wellington and co. made their way. I think the TLS reviewed it recently.

mburleigh
August 20th, 2008
6:08 PM
Has it come to that Elberry? Sounds like virtually every item of BBC Radio 4 drama.

Shane
August 22nd, 2008
9:08 AM
Hi Michael, while not exactly light relief I must recommend 'Galina: a Russian Story' by the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. The loss of Solzhenitsyn brought it too mind recently. It's a magnificent book - not least for the insights into Shostakovich and Rostropovich. I found it most inspiring. Keep up the good work.

mburleigh
August 22nd, 2008
2:08 PM
Thank you Shane for your recommendation and encouragement in these credit crunched times (management nota bene). I'll get that one. At this rate I'll need a separate plane for the small library. Perhaps posters could help next with films, DVDs and CDs? While I try to maintain some sort of cultural life, part of the point of living in central London, in practice when writing a new book one tends to spend all day reading materials for it. In this case new barbarities unearthed by intrepid 20 something Germans.

POST A COMMENT

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.