Great Books to Read for the New Year
My fellow insects,
I hope you all had a good Christmas holiday and a jolly New Year; I was in bed by 10:45 p.m. with a good book, and what a book……
Sashenka by Simon Montefiore
……… this is a big, sweeping, romantic adventure of half a century of turbulent Russian history. It is the story of a young girl living in St Petersburg who at the age of 16 becomes a Bolshevik revolutionary during the reign of the Czar in 1916. She has to be ‘bought’ out of jail by her father, the head of a wealthy family, but she continues to help the Bolsheviks, as her mother parties with Rasputin and her other friends. Sashenka marries and has two, children, but then embarks on a love affair that has dreadful consequences. The final part of the book takes place with the third generation in 1994 when a young historian eventually manages to get into the Stalin archives and unravels a horrendous story of betrayal and savage cruelty, but with an ending to the story that will stay with you for a long time.
All through the book, the background details of life in Russia at the time of the Czars and on through the revolution, right up to the collapse of communism, simply add to the enjoyment of Simon Montefiore’s fine writing. For those of you who do not know his work, he has had great success with his two outstanding biographies of Stalin and this is one of the main reasons for the authenticity of this, his first piece of historical fiction. When writing Sashenka, he used a lot of his research work from the Stalin books.
For lovers of historical fiction, and for those of you who, like me, like to learn more history through this fascinating medium – after all, he is a renowned historian – I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Magnificent.
Corsair by Tim Severin
You may remember that back in October I recommended a book called White Gold by Giles Milton, a wonderful history of the white slave trade to Africa in the late 1600’s. Well, this is a fascinating piece of historical fiction which is centred around the same period in history.
Set in the late 1600’s, Corsair is the story of an Irish young man, Hector Lynch and his sister Elizabeth who are living in a village on the south coast of Ireland when they are both taken by Barbary corsairs and sold at auction in Algiers. At the time of their capture, the Slaves are separated by gender and, after converting to Islam to avoid the worst of the horrors of the slave trade, Hector and another slave, Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean who has become a friend, have to survive adventures peopled by a series of ferocious historical characters, by their quick witted actions as they become embroiled in the Mediterranean naval wars.
Hecctor’s main concern is the whereabouts of his sister and it is this need that drives him on through shipwrecks and, having escaped from the African slave trade, being re enslaved by French Christians. He eventually finds out the awful truth about what has happened to his sister when he is shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco.
Being written by another well known historian, this book will intrigue you, not only by its story, but also by the meticulous research that has gone into defining the extraordinary characters who are featured all through the book, from a power-crazed sultan through sadistic seamen to fanatical members of the Christian Knightly Orders. Be sure to read the historical notes that Tim Severin provides at the end of this excellent book.
Happy chewing till next time,
The Booklouse
Recommendations for Your Christmas Bookshelf
December 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
My fellow insects,
As this will be my Christmas offering to you, I am going to review three books each one of which would make a wonderful present. I believe that a book is such a good present, as it gives both the pleasure of reading to and excites the imagination of, the receiver. Here you have fiction, a memoir and historical fiction.
Imagining Don Giovanni by Anthony Rudel
This is a delightful book not just for those of you that appreciate classical music. This is a wonderful love story full of [passion and drama concerning the composition of the opera Don Giovanni. Knowing, as we do from papers, that Casanova was in Prague at the time that Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte were working on the opera Don Giovanni which was to be based on the scandalous life of Don Juan, Anthony Rudel, son of the famous conductor Julius Rudel, has written an excellent piece of historical fiction.
At the time, Mozart was having a little trouble with the cast of Don Giovanni and their interpretation of the love affairs as portrayed by his music and the words of Da Ponte. It took one of the world’s greatest lovers (if history is to be believed!) to go on stage during the rehearsals and demonstrate how to act out love and passion for your fellow actors. There are some wonderful scenes in this book when Casanova is teaching the actors, at the same time we are treated to Mozart’s strong feelings and longing to be with his wife, Costanze, and family back in Vienna.
This is a story full of passion for other human beings, music and the theatre; it is a marvelous piece of fiction based on fact from which a lot can be learnt and a lot imagined.
The Greek for Love by James Chatto
This is a memoir with a difference. James Chatto is an Englishman who fell in love with a Canadian, Wendy Martin, who became his wife, but not before a passionate and, at times, melancholy love affair takes place starting one summer many years ago on the island of Corfu. You may well have read some of Chatto’s writings in Canadian magazines and newspapers, as he and his family have lived for some time in Toronto as well as on Corfu.
James and Wendy were captivated by the way they were accepted so readily by the locals once they had bought and renovated a ruined house on Corfu, amongst the olive trees and grape vines. The way they did this is very different from certain other stories based in the south of France. They were on Corfu at a time when they could swim naked off a deserted beach which now is surrounded by villas and bijou hotels. The more they learned Greek, the more they enjoyed the social life of the local village and particularly the stories and myths as told by and about the locals on balmy evenings at a table outside the local taverna, where there was always much laughter and plenty of local wine. There are descriptions of wonderful meals (Chatto has published several cook books) of fresh sardines, lamb as only the Greeks know how to cook it and fresh fruit from the surrounding trees.
It isn’t until near the end of the book that a tragedy occurs that brought tears to my eyes for the first time in many, many years of reading all different types of books. Tragic as this part of the book is, it in no way detracts from this wonderful story; indeed, it gives one tremendous faith in human kind and the ability of all of us to survive unwanted and unwarranted tragedies in our lives. This is a delightful memoir, superbly narrated, funny, imaginative and very, very readable.
Angel’s Game by Carlos Zafon
For those of you who haven’t read any Zafon, give yourselves an early Christmas present and go and buy a second hand copy of Shadow of the Wind by Zafon, you will love it. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a very well known Spanish writer of historical fiction in Europe and has been translated into about 40 languages. As a historian, there is much that can be learnt in a most pleasant way from reading his books.
Angel’s Game is another of Zafon’s books translated by Lucia Graves, Robert Graves’s daughter, and it is this translation that makes for such a fine book for those of us reading it in English – unlike certain other Spanish writings which have been translated using modern idioms even in 18th century dialogue.
This is the story of a young man, David Martin, who lives in a dark and mysterious house in the centre of Barcelona and spends his time writing cheap and gaudy novels under a pseudonym. He is visited by a French editor who decides to make him an offer. If he will write a most extraordinary book, the like of which has never been seen before, he, the French editor will give David Martin a fortune to do with as he pleases. The house itself features strongly in this story because of its previous owner whose personal belongings are still to be found in a locked room at the back of the haunting house.
Needless to say, not everything is as it seems in this gothic universe of romance, tragedy and mystery all surrounding the passion of books. This is a masterful story and, yes, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books does appear again in this intriguing and well written book.
I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and good chewing amongst the pages as well as at the festive table. Here’s to 2010!
The Booklouse.
Booklouse Book Reviews for December
November 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
Image Credit: Chud Tsankov Illustrations
My fellow insects,
I hope you have been enjoying my recommendations and this time I have two books for you, both of which have something of a nautical theme.
High Endeavours by Miles Clark
This book has just about everything anyone could want to chew on between the two covers of any book; adventure, intrigue, an elicit love affair and drama, all laced with an unending inquisitiveness about our world. I am talking about the lives of Miles and Beryl Smeeton, who as I’m sure many of you know, lived for a while on Salt Spring Island.
Written by Miles Clark, who was one of the editors of Yachting Monthly, High Endeavours chronicles the lives of the Smeetons before they fell in love and continues afterwards with their adventures around the world together. By the time they were both fifty, they sat down with a world atlas and discovered that they had crossed every page either together or separately.
This is an amazing story of endurance, courage and a sense of fun, in other words a true sense of adventure, which at one point took them on an eighteen month voyage on their yacht Tzu Hang out of Victoria, BC to Australia which turned into a ten year adventure, with a couple of dismastings thrown in, but they still managed to return and tie up in front of the Empress ten years to the day after they had left.
I will leave you with a note that I found in the front of my second hand copy:
“Dear ….
I’m sure you will find this one of the most interesting, enchanting and inspiring accounts of how life can (sic) be lived! Merry Christmas.”
Kydd by Julian Stockwin
Here we have a wonderful, relatively new, author of the Napoleonic days of naval antics. Different from Forrester, Alexander Kent, Patrick O’Brian, Pope et al, in a major way and that is that the hero in this series, Thomas Kydd, is a wig maker from Surrey who is in a bar one night with a friend having a quiet drink when the press gang arrive and he is swept up and lands on the deck of Duke William, an old line-of-battle ship of the Royal Navy.
The vantage point of the common sailor makes for an excellent twist to the normal stories of this very popular historic fiction genre. It is a while before Thomas Kydd finds out that he loves the life of a sailor but with the help of his friend, who has a very different reason for going to sea, he is soon noticed as a competent seaman who can command the respect of others, except for the usual officer or two who have managed to buy their way into positions of authority, and use it for nefarious purposes.
Julian Stockwin is himself ex Navy and he is one of the few who made it from the lower decks to officer during his time of service which is certain to help in his expression of the feelings of his hero throughout this series.
At the moment there are ten books in this excellent series with the latest having just been published – Invasion.
Good chewing till next time,
The Booklouse.
Ripsnorting Reads Recommended by the Booklouse
October 5, 2009 by admin
Filed under Arts & Culture, Booklouse, Features
Image Credit: Illustration by Baldinger
My fellow insects,
Here are a couple of books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and hopefully you will enjoy them too, as we cruise into the fall.
The Island by Victoria Hislop
This is a debut novel about a girl, Alexis, who is madly in love but at the same time wants to find out about her mysterious family history which mainly took place on the Greek island of Crete. Hislop has obviously done a great deal of research on the island of Crete and its much smaller offshore neighbour, Spinalonga, the once Greek leper colony.
This is a saga of ruined relationships, resurrected love affairs and a wonderful insight into the all too complex feelings of various family members over two generations. Hislop writes with true feelings for her characters, both from their points of view as well as her view through the sharp lens of history. There are absorbing comparisons made between the Cretan characters and those who have been cast out to the leper colony. It never fails to amaze me how history can still cause dramatic effects on later generations.
The British newspaper, the Observer, said of this book: “At last – a beach book with a heart.” Believe me, it reads just as well in front of a roaring fire with or without a glass of Domestica.
There is another very good book by her based on the Spanish civil war which I have just finished reading and I will be writing about in a later blog posting.
And now for a little non-fiction:
White Gold by Giles Milton
I have to confess that this is written by one of my favourite historians. This is the story of the more than one million slaves of Islam in the 18th century, and it centres around the history of a cabin boy named Thomas Pellow who was captured by the Barbary pirates in 1716. Milton used the published versions of Pellows diaries and notebooks and those of others, on which to base this factual history.
This book is an incredible account of a little known piece of history about white slaves under the Islamic regime of the sultans in Morocco in Africa. The sultan of the Imperial Moroccan court is a man who had 2000 horses in stables alongside his palace, where the horses could enjoy stained glass windows in their stables and crystal fountains in the stable yard. He had an army of some 10,000 men in the same palace that was surrounded by a wall which he attempted to build, measuring 300 miles long.
This is a fun and fanciful story, but at the same time a disturbing account of what it was like to be a white slave in Africa, where the characters of the minor players are as colourful as the events in which they take part. They even managed to keep the flag of Islam flying for six months on the island of Lundy off the North coast of Cornwall – so much for to-day’s concerns about Islam.
For those of you who might not know the marvelous work of this intriguing historian, he is also the author of Nathaniel Nutmeg and Big Chief Elizabeth, amongst other good non-fiction reads.
Good chewing till next time,
"The Booklouse" - A published children’s author and former James Bay resident who now works at Russell Books on Fort Street in Victoria, BC
Fellow Insects
September 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under Arts & Culture, Booklouse
Image Credit: Lindedesign at flickr.com
The reason why this column is not called "Bookworms" is as follows:
No single species may properly be called the bookworm because a large number of insects feed upon dry, starchy material or paper amd may damage books.
(The above was extracted from the Encyclopedia.)
Each month I shall be reviewing a couple of books that I think will be of interest to you; if they are not , please do not chew on them in your fury as they will probably taste revolting. Also, a number of the books that I recommend, some of you may well have read, as I shall not necessarily be reviewing NEW books all the time.
If you would like to ask for suggestions in a given genre, please feel free to contact me via the contact form on this website.
Here’s a couple for you to enjoy in the meantime:
The Meaning of Night: A Confession (by Michael Cox)
I love the opening of this book:
‘After killing the red haired man, I took myself off to Quinns for an oyster supper.’
You guessed it, this is a Victorian thriller written in Victorian English. This book is an absolute delight to read and has an excellent plot line as told by a male protagonist (stay with me). This is one of those books where you think you have nailed the plot early on, but there might just be a few twists and turns before you realise that you weren’t quite right. The writing is old fashined enough to be wonderfully descriptive, but not so old fashioned as to be difficult to read or in any way affect your enjoyment of the story. Watch out for the fun historical notes at the bottom of some of the pages, which all end with the letters: Ed (see my final paragraph).
Sadly, Michael Cox died of a rare form of cancer about three months ago, but not before he heard from his publisher that they were going to publish the sequel, The Glass of Time. Let me tell you, there had to be a sequel, you will know what I mean when you finish The Meaning of Night.
The Glass of Time: A Novel (by Michael Cox)
Here is another excellent read, but this time with a female protagonist. It is 22 years later, and again the plot is one of those that seems so simple at the beginning; but just you wait. Whatever you do, be sure to read these in order.
If you are wondering about the late Mr. Cox’s credentials for this type of writing, he was the Editor at Oxford University Press for many years, specializing in Victorian matters, including crime.
Happy chewing till next time,
"The Booklouse" - A published children’s author and former James Bay resident who now works at Russell Books on Fort Street in Victoria, BC
