Here are a couple of excellent articles from the New York Times books section for anyone who fancies a bit of feminist inspiration. The first reviews a book by Lisa Appignanesi about the historical collision between women and the mental health establishment. Plus, Germaine Greer on Shakespeare’s wife and The Telegraph on cult books.
We’ve started this series (once again being read out loud) in an attempt to fill the hole in our reading lives opened up by the completion in March of the entire sweep of Modesty Blaise novels. Feeling daunted by the sheer scale of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin saga, and yet wanting something with a bit of staying power, this eight (or sometimes nine) volume science fiction epic seemed like an excellent choice - and so it has proved.
This is the most recent volume in the Titan reprint series to fall into my hot little hands and, in common with its predecessors, it contains three full stories - The Puppet-Master of the title, With Love from Rufus and The Bluebeard Affair. It’s fair to say that this is one of the lighter-hearted collections.
I’d been looking forward to this as something of a treat. Having finally filled in the holes in my Austen reading by completing Sense and Sensibility, Emma and the fragments Sanditon and The Watsons over the course of the last few months I had been promising myself a crack at this very well-received biography, published in 1997, next.
More kudos for whoever stocks the graphic novel shelf in my local library - I hereby send you another “ook” of cyber-approval. Knowing about the Alan Moore connection, and having read The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, I just had to give this one a try and ended up thoroughly satisfied that I had.
Here’s an opinion piece from The Telegraph on the JK Rowling vs Steve Vander Ark copyright case that I found reasonably sane and intelligent. It neatly sums up how easily the most worrying thing for me and a lot of other people are the implications that a judgement in Rowling’s favour would have for the wider world of publishing and the intellectual arena.
A bittersweet moment, this. After an intense spell of working through the entire series of Modesty Blaise novels that started at the end of last year, with the help of a devoted fan who was kind enough to read the whole lot out loud,this signifies the end.
Spotted in The Telegraph today - another attempt to come up with a definitive list of the 100 (plus ten this time, couldn’t they bring it in at a round figure?) books you should be displaying smugly to visitors, or shouldn’t reach retirement age without reading, or whatever it is this time around.
Often the introductions to these Titan reprints of complete stories from the long-running Modesty Blaise cartoon strip are among the most interesting bits of the book. That is because the author, Peter O’Donnell generally writes a bit about how he came to dream up the story, about his relationship with artists or publishers or a little about the craft of creating a comic strip.
This is an important volume in Titan’s Modesty Blaise series, and for a sad reason. Almost exactly half-way through artist Jim Holdaway, who had been responsible for originally creating the visuals for Modesty and Willie as we know them, died suddenly. The introduction to this volume contains a tribute to him from Peter O’Donnell and an explanation of how his replacement, the Catalan artist Enrique Badia Romero, came to take over.
As a fan of thrillers, I like a John Grisham novel as much as the next thrill-seeking escapist. Thus I was interested to see the review of the latest on in the New York Times.
This, the penultimate book in the Modesty Blaise series, is most notable for the really striking change of tone that sets it apart from the other volumes - and, purists may say, not always to the good.
Interesting bit of marketing from horror author Scott Sigler for his book Infected, due out on April 1 (though whether that is solely in the US or in Europe too is anybody’s guess). Following a link off a New York Times book email I ended up with a limited opportunity to download a free and DRM-unfettered PDF of the entire work.
A great way to start 2008: having this short story collection read out loud in front of the fire. We’re busy reading our way through the entire Modesty Blaise pantheon (OK, the novels plus those strips that are more accessibly reprinted) and Pieces of Modesty is a first. It’s a short story collection technically bridging the period between the major adventures of The Impossible Virgin and The Silver Mistress but the stories were, in many cases, written earlier and then not published. Many of them were, apparently, even illustrated. And, as the Wikipedia article on this collection points out, some elements are re-used in the newspaper strips.
Ahahaha. 2007 finally dispensed with and only a month behind now! Here is my list of books read in January which I had better get written up quite fast.
Summary of books read in 2007 - arranged by genre.
I’d had a bit of a rude awakening regarding the Civil War and the Restoration courtesy of my favourite book of 2007, An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. This splendid historical thriller is set during the period in question - and made me realise how just little I actually knew about it. So off to consult the Googloracle and track down an authoritative biography of England’s most recent military dictator. This brought me to the feet of Christopher Hill who in 1970 wrote this ground-breaking biography.
And so to our last Modesty Blaise novel of 2007 - we really did go at them during this last month of the year. This book, published in 1969 and therefore not to be confused with the 1986 PD James novel of the same name, raises the stakes on the first page by separating the protagonists at the outset.
Three more stories in this second Titan volume of reprints of the original Evening Standard strips.
A comic series (with absolutely no connection with the similarly-named TV show) that I hadn’t come across before and another one found just lying about on the display stand at the local library. And I’m glad it was, because it was really good. Apparently this has a little bit of comics history attached to its name, thanks to the fact its first few words are all “fuck” and it was the first one to be published under the Marvel MAX imprint that was designed for adult readers. Rumour (and Wikipedia) has it that it was actually one of the reasons this imprint was created in the first place.