Full Dark, No Stars is an anthology of four Novellas, each focusing on a particular emotion (guilt, anger, greed, desperation) and how each of us may have a different person hiding inside us capable of doing things that we never imagined - good and bad.
1922 tells the story of a father who conspires to kill his wife with his son's help and must then confront and deal with the guilt and emotional consequences of his terrible act.
Big Driver follows a writer seeking revenge after being brutally raped and left for dead only to realize that the predicament she has been thrust into is far more complicated than she first thought.
Fair Extension, the only obviously supernatural tale in the book, is a darkly humorous story showing us what happens when a terminally ill man makes a deal with the devil and the devil honors his bargain.
A Good Marriage, loosely based on an actual event, is about a woman who discovers that her husband of over 25 years is a serial killer and how she deals with her shocking revelation.
Even though all four stories are relatively fast reads, King does a wonderful job of introducing us to the main characters and helping us get into their heads and understanding their motivations. A common criticism hurled at Steven King is that he has never been good at writing female characters but Big Driver and A Good Marriage give us two women who show strength and courage and drive the narrative rather than being swept up in it.
After his near fatal accident, King's writing style was visibly changed, almost as if he was in a hurry to tell his stories. He takes his time here, gradually opening up each story and slowly drawing the curtain on each revelation, keeping you glued and turning the pages.
Diana Athill's letters to an American poet, Instead of a Book.
She is a memoirist in her 90s; an editor in her time who has had a few books published. I got thru the letters in around two days, obviously readable, it's all about the trials of getting older and living with a long-term ageing partner who seems very grouchy and no fun to be around. It made me want to read her other books, though she doesn't always get a sympathetic write-up on Amazon, as she is often the other woman in her love affairs, and seems a bit hard-nosed. The poet to whom she's writing, Edward Field, does some good stuff and he is the one who lobbied to have it published (to promote his own work, I cynically thought at times) but his work doesn't show up on amazon much at all. Still, I may investigate further. She may seem to be the type other reviewers over praise, because she is from their literary world. But I was kind of engrossed by her life unfolding over two decades of correspondence.
This is a Bernie Gunther-novel, the (anti?) hero of the Berlin Noir-series. While the series started out as hard boiled detective novels, very much in the tradition of Chandler and Hammet, but relocated to Berlin in the 30's. While the authorities in the American novels of the genre often were corrupt, they were almost boy scouts compared to the nazis. Gunther is a tough cop/ex-cop who is in many ways cold and cynical, but is a true believer in democracy and has moral standards. While there are murders and detecting in this story, the focus is on how Gunther has the misfortune of getting involved with some of the most shadowy organisations of mid-20th century. Worst of all, Gunther is sent to Eastern Europe and gets involved with "anti-partisan warfare" and discovers just how evil Hitler's (and Stalin's) regime is. Gunther has to compromise his standards and more than the uniforms are "field grey".
While this book is darker in tone than the other books in the genre, it is often funny. Gunther is very sarcastic, and he knows how to deliver killer lines. This book is essentially a spy thriller. I wrote about an earlier Berlin Noir book that Kerr could write a very good James Bond novel if he reigned in the humour. He has done precisely that in Field Grey, and now I'm sure: PHILLIP KERR SHOULD WRITE JAMES BOND NOVELS. Kerr has written suspence novels with a though, smart, womanizing, hard-drinking hero before. This novel ads espionage, globe-trotting (Cuba, New York, France, Germany, Ukraine) and the right level of humor. Start reading this fantastic author and be convinced!
It is a great book and I thought the length and tone of it was perfectly done. There are several lines and passages in it that will stick with me forever. The perspective sounds truly like a romantic observer in a lush and philosophic film. I think it has certainly earned its praise and standing.
Recently reread A.J. Quinnel's Man on Fire. This book is probably best known as the inspiration for two films: The first made in 1987 starring Scott Glenn, the second in 2004 with Denzel Washington. Alas, I haven't seen the Glenn version, but I did enjoy the latter film, even if I thought the last third or so had some serious story flaws.
Unlike the 2004 movie, the 1981 novel takes place in Italy and around the Mediterranean. One thing in particular I liked about the book is how it describes the hero, Marcus Creasy, getting back into shape after being seriously wounded in a gunfight. He doesn't do anything fancy. Creasy instead retreats to a small island of Gozo in Malta, where he spends his time going on long ocean swims and helping villagers with projects such as building stone walls out of heavy rocks.
—Le Samourai
A Gent in Training.... A blog about my continuing efforts to be improve myself, be a better person, and lead a good life. It incorporates such far flung topics as fitness, self defense, music, style, food and drink, and personal philosophy. Agent In Training
The Rats By James Herbert. I'm on a bit of a Horror Binge at the moment
and having fun re-reading some of my teenage favs. It's the first Book I've
read From a download on Kindle. and I've just started Lair, which is basically
The Rats 2. )
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
almost done with A Dance with Dragons...fifth book in the Game of Thrones series. wish I had more reading time than my half hour lunches at work...such a good book
The Rats By James Herbert. I'm on a bit of a Horror Binge at the moment
and having fun re-reading some of my teenage favs. It's the first Book I've
read From a download on Kindle. and I've just started Lair, which is basically
The Rats 2. )
You're about to find out where 'Babs' Broccoli got her nickname from...
Shardlake is a legal beaver who works in Chancery Lane, he is a hunchback and servant of Thomas Cromwell, who is working according to Henry VIII's plan to dissolve the monasteries and seize their money and lands.
He has to go to a monastery on the south coast to investigate the beheading of his legal predecessor on the grounds. It's all a bit Name of the Rose, he even has a young accomplice with him, but the writing isn't stellar and I can't say it's a page turner either. It sort of plods along; almost a bit Brother Cadfael mysteries. The author bungs in plenty of contrived historical references to Holbein and other stuff of the time, sort of box ticking in the early chaptors, which takes you out of it a bit, but it's not too bad. Can't say I really cared who the murderer was either, though when it came it was a surprise.
The next book is better, I'm told.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
FelixLeiter ♀Staffordshire or a pubPosts: 1,286MI6 Agent
Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway
June 1923. An ordinary mind on an ordinary day and everything that goes on in it.
I thought I would hate it but I devoured it. I loved the period and loved seeing into the depths of all the character's minds. I had an Oxford World Classics copy which was helpful because it had explanations in the back for a lot of things. If, like I, you don't know London and the fact that some of the references are rather dated, it really helped. There were other things where I just liked having the background. The book made me very aware of just how complex our mental lives are. We are never just living in the present; we are constantly reflecting on past experiences. I liked how the past and the present all blurred into one and everyone's lives seeped into one another.
A fantastic novel
Another 20s era book but v different. The Great Gatsby.
Though I hear the film doesn't really owe much to it. I read the book decades or so ago and it made no impression on me. Now I realise I was trying to get to the plot, and I'm not sure there is one yet, it's more that rather arch, Agatha Christie social observation. It's compelling because the narrator is a bit of a geeky outsider, yet on the other hand he has a certain superiority by being able to nail the situation and people's motives. Guess even Jeeves had that way about him, he was the narrator but of course some of his phrases 'She had a laugh like the cavalry charging over a tin bridge' are Wodehouse; Jeeves is too much of a chump to come out with that.
Up to about page 50. BTW, that actor off How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is almost a good likeness for Scott Fitzerald, if a bit chunky. It's odd such a brilliant writer was such a flake in real life, querying Hemingway for reassurance about the size of his male member (according to Hemingway, who was also not a splendid fellow).
It's been a while since I last posted in this thread, so I'm trying to think of everything I've read since -
One project I've taken on is to read the Tarzan novels...not particularly great and chock full of painful coincidences, but interesting from the standpoint that Burroughs does a nice job of keeping a balance between 'jungle' and 'civilization' settings for the stories.
Tackeled a few of Appleton's 'Tom Swift' stories and found them to be simple fun, and a nice little peek into life at the turn of the century.
Tarzan is a great read. People are always surprised when I tell them that Tarzan's first language was (SPOILER ALERT) French!
The scent smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.
I've never read Tarzan, so this is amazing. ) It's like
finding out Batman was originally a short, fat welsh
bloke.
Out of interest is it a good read ?
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
The man-eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Patterson, about two lions that killed around 100 workers at a railroad under construction in Africa in 1898. A fantastic and often scary first hand account from Patterson, the British engineer who hunted both lions. The film "the Ghost and the Darkness" was based off of it with Val Kilmer as Patterson.
I've never read Tarzan, so this is amazing. ) It's like
finding out Batman was originally a short, fat welsh
bloke.
Out of interest is it a good read ?
Entertaining enough...it's sins are forgivable by the fact that it's a short read.
The man-eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Patterson, about two lions that killed around 100 workers at a railroad under construction in Africa in 1898. A fantastic and often scary first hand account from Patterson, the British engineer who hunted both lions. The film "the Ghost and the Darkness" was based off of it with Val Kilmer as Patterson.
I bought this book for my boss last year and was reluctant to give it away. I had read a condensed retelling of the events by American author Peter Capstick - an excellent author of the big-game hunting genre. He's definitely worth looking into if you enjoy that sort of thing.
Fans of a certain age will recall the 1960s film and its hero Harry Palmer, who was pitched as the antithesis of the glamour spy James Bond. Now the film seems quite Bondian really, as it has a bona fide movie star in Michael Caine, was produced by Harry Saltzman and stars Guy Doleman (Thunderball's Count Lippe) as Palmer's boss. It also has John Barry's wonderful score.
I hadn't got through the book until now, and it's a fair bit different to the film, though the whole grammar school vs public school elite strand is intact.
Fleming's world is all about our thinking that we could step into Bond's shoes and aquit ourselves with aplomb, given a morning's training. That's escapism for you. I mean, Bond has a smattering of languages, but rarely do you see him use them, as it would bring it home to us that having never become fluent in French despite hours upon hours of tutelage, we'd never be Bond. In Ipcress, our hero picks up a gun and has to memorise or recall which kind of bullets it is compatible with.
Everything is written to bamboozle the reader, to make him feel out of his depth. I don't think we even get a physical description of his boss's until later on, and you realise that the in-depth descriptions Fleming gives of a love interest or villain on first meeting are to put the reader in the picture and make him feel in control.
The chief difference with the film is that the hero goes on some intentional exotic travel in the book, whereas the film is very much London-based. Here, our spy seems more knowing as he goes to Beirut for an operation to recover a kidnapped operative, and later a US nuclear test site in the Pacific.
There is some brilliant writing, phrasing in the book, that could be Raymond Chandler or PG Woodhouse (both went to Dulwich College in south London).
The protagonist is nameless in the book, and they thought up the name Harry Palmer for the film. For any young Bond fans, the film is well worth a watch.
Thanks for the pic NP, I remember selling many copies of that book through my shop.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,690MI6 Agent
I tried Len Deighton's The Ipcress File once but found it a difficult read and sadly gave up on it. I need to return to it at some point as the film is a spy classic. -{
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Of course, other films followed: Funeral in Berlin and Million Dollar Brain.
However, things got a bit much in the last Harry Palmer film of the 1960s, when our hero uses Russia's Labour Day to carry out a raid on the Kremlin's gold reserves, making his getaway with other British spies in a fleet of minis, with the Russian police's Ladas in hot pursuit. The song, The Self-Preservation Society was the quintessential anti-capitalist anthem, of course.
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Laurence Bergreen, 2003
tells the story of the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan, the first to circumnavigate the globe, over 1519-1522, along with many relevant contextual detours.
In the 1400s, Portugal had improved ship design so that the mast may be rotated, allowing boats to tack against the wind. This innovation allowed their ships to sail round the south coast of Africa into the Indian Ocean, where they claimed the Spice Islands (the Moluccas, in Indonesia)
After Columbus reached America, claiming it for Spain, the pope arbitrarily divided the planet between the two rival empires, following a line through the Atlantic, which could not be found because nobody could measure longitude yet, and continuing round the other side, despite severely underestimating the circumference of the globe. The Spanish argued since no one knew where this line was, the Spice islands could just as easily be in their half of the globe.
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portugese navigator, out of favour with his own king, so he took his plan to reach the Indies, via some as-yet-undiscovered-and-possibly-nonexistant passage through the Americas, to the Spanish king. This was high treason, especially as he took Portugal's maps. At that time, unauthorised possession of a map was comparable to trading secrets with the Russians. But the Spanish did not trust Magellan either, many on the expedition assuming he was himself a Portugese spy, and he had to violently put down a mutiny off the south coast of Brazil. The book describes the Inquisition-style torture methods he was entitled to use to punish the mutineers, as the ultimate authority of the expedition a year away from civilization. He employed drawing and quartering, disembowelment, that sort of thing.
After months of false starts they found what is now the Magellan Strait and began the trip across the Pacific, assuming those Spice Islands were right over the horizon. It took them another four months to reach the Philippines, with a whole lotta scurvy going on. There, Magellan started trying to convert the natives, and chose to take sides in a local rivalry between tribes. He ended up being literally hacked to pieces by one of the tribes just weeks before his expedition finally reached the Moluccas.
Of the five ships that began the expedition, only two made it to the Moluccas, and only one was able to successfully sail away with its hold full of cloves. Magellan's surviving Spanish rivals assumed control and over a year later just barely completed the voyage, claiming all credit and reward for successfully reaching the Spice Islands and bringing back those cloves. 237 men began the voyage and only 18 returned home, most of them near death when their shambles of a boat sailed into Seville. Spain and Portugal continued to argue over whose Empire included the Spice Islands for many more years, and other European countries entered the overseas Empire game.
One interesting factoid: the century before Portugal and Spain began the era of exploration and empire-building, in the early 1400s, China built a navy with hundreds of boats much larger than anything Europe would build for centuries, and began exploring the Indian Ocean for the purposes of trade, with no secondary aims of religious conversion or Empire building. When the Emperor who started that project died, the next Emperor declared the whole naval thing contradictory to Confucianism and banned it. I have come across this surprising detail before, in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, where he argued that unknown and seemingly arbitrary decision to give up a Chinese navy opened up the opportunity for Europeans on the other side of the planet to fill the void and rebuild the world in their image (at least for the next 500 years, but all things must pass). The world we live in could have looked very different if it weren't for that one Emperor's strict definition of Confucianism.
The book sounds amazing, CP. I live just a few minutes from where Magellan fell and the pics posted are of Magellan's Cross which is the place where he was killed and of the warrior and tribal leader Lapu-Lapu.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
We're not very well read are we? Top of this page goes back to a post I made three years ago!
Well let's sort that out right away, I've finished colonel Sun which I thought was a good bond continuation, particularly enjoyed reading the inspiration for a certain Spectre scene. Ive just started "The Snowman" by Jo Nesbo only a few pages in but I think I'm going to enjoy it.
Other than that, Casino Royale got a re read, I read Scott Marianis latest Ben Hope offering that I always enjoy.
It was either that.....or the priesthood
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,579Chief of Staff
Last read Night School by Lee Child...a good Jack Reacher novel -{
Shardlake is a legal beaver who works in Chancery Lane, he is a hunchback and servant of Thomas Cromwell, who is working according to Henry VIII's plan to dissolve the monasteries and seize their money and lands.
He has to go to a monastery on the south coast to investigate the beheading of his legal predecessor on the grounds. It's all a bit Name of the Rose, he even has a young accomplice with him, but the writing isn't stellar and I can't say it's a page turner either. It sort of plods along; almost a bit Brother Cadfael mysteries. The author bungs in plenty of contrived historical references to Holbein and other stuff of the time, sort of box ticking in the early chaptors, which takes you out of it a bit, but it's not too bad. Can't say I really cared who the murderer was either, though when it came it was a surprise.
The next book is better, I'm told.
Read them all and enjoyed them similar genre is the John Shakespeare (William's. Forget). Y Rory Clemments
Comments
Full Dark, No Stars is an anthology of four Novellas, each focusing on a particular emotion (guilt, anger, greed, desperation) and how each of us may have a different person hiding inside us capable of doing things that we never imagined - good and bad.
1922 tells the story of a father who conspires to kill his wife with his son's help and must then confront and deal with the guilt and emotional consequences of his terrible act.
Big Driver follows a writer seeking revenge after being brutally raped and left for dead only to realize that the predicament she has been thrust into is far more complicated than she first thought.
Fair Extension, the only obviously supernatural tale in the book, is a darkly humorous story showing us what happens when a terminally ill man makes a deal with the devil and the devil honors his bargain.
A Good Marriage, loosely based on an actual event, is about a woman who discovers that her husband of over 25 years is a serial killer and how she deals with her shocking revelation.
Even though all four stories are relatively fast reads, King does a wonderful job of introducing us to the main characters and helping us get into their heads and understanding their motivations. A common criticism hurled at Steven King is that he has never been good at writing female characters but Big Driver and A Good Marriage give us two women who show strength and courage and drive the narrative rather than being swept up in it.
After his near fatal accident, King's writing style was visibly changed, almost as if he was in a hurry to tell his stories. He takes his time here, gradually opening up each story and slowly drawing the curtain on each revelation, keeping you glued and turning the pages.
Highly recommended.
She is a memoirist in her 90s; an editor in her time who has had a few books published. I got thru the letters in around two days, obviously readable, it's all about the trials of getting older and living with a long-term ageing partner who seems very grouchy and no fun to be around. It made me want to read her other books, though she doesn't always get a sympathetic write-up on Amazon, as she is often the other woman in her love affairs, and seems a bit hard-nosed. The poet to whom she's writing, Edward Field, does some good stuff and he is the one who lobbied to have it published (to promote his own work, I cynically thought at times) but his work doesn't show up on amazon much at all. Still, I may investigate further. She may seem to be the type other reviewers over praise, because she is from their literary world. But I was kind of engrossed by her life unfolding over two decades of correspondence.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
This is a Bernie Gunther-novel, the (anti?) hero of the Berlin Noir-series. While the series started out as hard boiled detective novels, very much in the tradition of Chandler and Hammet, but relocated to Berlin in the 30's. While the authorities in the American novels of the genre often were corrupt, they were almost boy scouts compared to the nazis. Gunther is a tough cop/ex-cop who is in many ways cold and cynical, but is a true believer in democracy and has moral standards. While there are murders and detecting in this story, the focus is on how Gunther has the misfortune of getting involved with some of the most shadowy organisations of mid-20th century. Worst of all, Gunther is sent to Eastern Europe and gets involved with "anti-partisan warfare" and discovers just how evil Hitler's (and Stalin's) regime is. Gunther has to compromise his standards and more than the uniforms are "field grey".
While this book is darker in tone than the other books in the genre, it is often funny. Gunther is very sarcastic, and he knows how to deliver killer lines. This book is essentially a spy thriller. I wrote about an earlier Berlin Noir book that Kerr could write a very good James Bond novel if he reigned in the humour. He has done precisely that in Field Grey, and now I'm sure: PHILLIP KERR SHOULD WRITE JAMES BOND NOVELS. Kerr has written suspence novels with a though, smart, womanizing, hard-drinking hero before. This novel ads espionage, globe-trotting (Cuba, New York, France, Germany, Ukraine) and the right level of humor. Start reading this fantastic author and be convinced!
It is a great book and I thought the length and tone of it was perfectly done. There are several lines and passages in it that will stick with me forever. The perspective sounds truly like a romantic observer in a lush and philosophic film. I think it has certainly earned its praise and standing.
its amazing how we won the war
Unlike the 2004 movie, the 1981 novel takes place in Italy and around the Mediterranean. One thing in particular I liked about the book is how it describes the hero, Marcus Creasy, getting back into shape after being seriously wounded in a gunfight. He doesn't do anything fancy. Creasy instead retreats to a small island of Gozo in Malta, where he spends his time going on long ocean swims and helping villagers with projects such as building stone walls out of heavy rocks.
A Gent in Training.... A blog about my continuing efforts to be improve myself, be a better person, and lead a good life. It incorporates such far flung topics as fitness, self defense, music, style, food and drink, and personal philosophy.
Agent In Training
and having fun re-reading some of my teenage favs. It's the first Book I've
read From a download on Kindle.
The Rats 2.
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
You're about to find out where 'Babs' Broccoli got her nickname from...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Shardlake is a legal beaver who works in Chancery Lane, he is a hunchback and servant of Thomas Cromwell, who is working according to Henry VIII's plan to dissolve the monasteries and seize their money and lands.
He has to go to a monastery on the south coast to investigate the beheading of his legal predecessor on the grounds. It's all a bit Name of the Rose, he even has a young accomplice with him, but the writing isn't stellar and I can't say it's a page turner either. It sort of plods along; almost a bit Brother Cadfael mysteries. The author bungs in plenty of contrived historical references to Holbein and other stuff of the time, sort of box ticking in the early chaptors, which takes you out of it a bit, but it's not too bad. Can't say I really cared who the murderer was either, though when it came it was a surprise.
The next book is better, I'm told.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
June 1923. An ordinary mind on an ordinary day and everything that goes on in it.
I thought I would hate it but I devoured it. I loved the period and loved seeing into the depths of all the character's minds. I had an Oxford World Classics copy which was helpful because it had explanations in the back for a lot of things. If, like I, you don't know London and the fact that some of the references are rather dated, it really helped. There were other things where I just liked having the background. The book made me very aware of just how complex our mental lives are. We are never just living in the present; we are constantly reflecting on past experiences. I liked how the past and the present all blurred into one and everyone's lives seeped into one another.
A fantastic novel
Though I hear the film doesn't really owe much to it. I read the book decades or so ago and it made no impression on me. Now I realise I was trying to get to the plot, and I'm not sure there is one yet, it's more that rather arch, Agatha Christie social observation. It's compelling because the narrator is a bit of a geeky outsider, yet on the other hand he has a certain superiority by being able to nail the situation and people's motives. Guess even Jeeves had that way about him, he was the narrator but of course some of his phrases 'She had a laugh like the cavalry charging over a tin bridge' are Wodehouse; Jeeves is too much of a chump to come out with that.
Up to about page 50. BTW, that actor off How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is almost a good likeness for Scott Fitzerald, if a bit chunky. It's odd such a brilliant writer was such a flake in real life, querying Hemingway for reassurance about the size of his male member (according to Hemingway, who was also not a splendid fellow).
Roger Moore 1927-2017
One project I've taken on is to read the Tarzan novels...not particularly great and chock full of painful coincidences, but interesting from the standpoint that Burroughs does a nice job of keeping a balance between 'jungle' and 'civilization' settings for the stories.
Tackeled a few of Appleton's 'Tom Swift' stories and found them to be simple fun, and a nice little peek into life at the turn of the century.
Or that Jane was actually an American...
finding out Batman was originally a short, fat welsh
bloke.
Out of interest is it a good read ?
Entertaining enough...it's sins are forgivable by the fact that it's a short read.
I bought this book for my boss last year and was reluctant to give it away. I had read a condensed retelling of the events by American author Peter Capstick - an excellent author of the big-game hunting genre. He's definitely worth looking into if you enjoy that sort of thing.
Fans of a certain age will recall the 1960s film and its hero Harry Palmer, who was pitched as the antithesis of the glamour spy James Bond. Now the film seems quite Bondian really, as it has a bona fide movie star in Michael Caine, was produced by Harry Saltzman and stars Guy Doleman (Thunderball's Count Lippe) as Palmer's boss. It also has John Barry's wonderful score.
I hadn't got through the book until now, and it's a fair bit different to the film, though the whole grammar school vs public school elite strand is intact.
Fleming's world is all about our thinking that we could step into Bond's shoes and aquit ourselves with aplomb, given a morning's training. That's escapism for you. I mean, Bond has a smattering of languages, but rarely do you see him use them, as it would bring it home to us that having never become fluent in French despite hours upon hours of tutelage, we'd never be Bond. In Ipcress, our hero picks up a gun and has to memorise or recall which kind of bullets it is compatible with.
Everything is written to bamboozle the reader, to make him feel out of his depth. I don't think we even get a physical description of his boss's until later on, and you realise that the in-depth descriptions Fleming gives of a love interest or villain on first meeting are to put the reader in the picture and make him feel in control.
The chief difference with the film is that the hero goes on some intentional exotic travel in the book, whereas the film is very much London-based. Here, our spy seems more knowing as he goes to Beirut for an operation to recover a kidnapped operative, and later a US nuclear test site in the Pacific.
There is some brilliant writing, phrasing in the book, that could be Raymond Chandler or PG Woodhouse (both went to Dulwich College in south London).
The protagonist is nameless in the book, and they thought up the name Harry Palmer for the film. For any young Bond fans, the film is well worth a watch.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
However, things got a bit much in the last Harry Palmer film of the 1960s, when our hero uses Russia's Labour Day to carry out a raid on the Kremlin's gold reserves, making his getaway with other British spies in a fleet of minis, with the Russian police's Ladas in hot pursuit. The song, The Self-Preservation Society was the quintessential anti-capitalist anthem, of course.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Laurence Bergreen, 2003
tells the story of the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan, the first to circumnavigate the globe, over 1519-1522, along with many relevant contextual detours.
In the 1400s, Portugal had improved ship design so that the mast may be rotated, allowing boats to tack against the wind. This innovation allowed their ships to sail round the south coast of Africa into the Indian Ocean, where they claimed the Spice Islands (the Moluccas, in Indonesia)
After Columbus reached America, claiming it for Spain, the pope arbitrarily divided the planet between the two rival empires, following a line through the Atlantic, which could not be found because nobody could measure longitude yet, and continuing round the other side, despite severely underestimating the circumference of the globe. The Spanish argued since no one knew where this line was, the Spice islands could just as easily be in their half of the globe.
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portugese navigator, out of favour with his own king, so he took his plan to reach the Indies, via some as-yet-undiscovered-and-possibly-nonexistant passage through the Americas, to the Spanish king. This was high treason, especially as he took Portugal's maps. At that time, unauthorised possession of a map was comparable to trading secrets with the Russians. But the Spanish did not trust Magellan either, many on the expedition assuming he was himself a Portugese spy, and he had to violently put down a mutiny off the south coast of Brazil. The book describes the Inquisition-style torture methods he was entitled to use to punish the mutineers, as the ultimate authority of the expedition a year away from civilization. He employed drawing and quartering, disembowelment, that sort of thing.
After months of false starts they found what is now the Magellan Strait and began the trip across the Pacific, assuming those Spice Islands were right over the horizon. It took them another four months to reach the Philippines, with a whole lotta scurvy going on. There, Magellan started trying to convert the natives, and chose to take sides in a local rivalry between tribes. He ended up being literally hacked to pieces by one of the tribes just weeks before his expedition finally reached the Moluccas.
Of the five ships that began the expedition, only two made it to the Moluccas, and only one was able to successfully sail away with its hold full of cloves. Magellan's surviving Spanish rivals assumed control and over a year later just barely completed the voyage, claiming all credit and reward for successfully reaching the Spice Islands and bringing back those cloves. 237 men began the voyage and only 18 returned home, most of them near death when their shambles of a boat sailed into Seville. Spain and Portugal continued to argue over whose Empire included the Spice Islands for many more years, and other European countries entered the overseas Empire game.
One interesting factoid: the century before Portugal and Spain began the era of exploration and empire-building, in the early 1400s, China built a navy with hundreds of boats much larger than anything Europe would build for centuries, and began exploring the Indian Ocean for the purposes of trade, with no secondary aims of religious conversion or Empire building. When the Emperor who started that project died, the next Emperor declared the whole naval thing contradictory to Confucianism and banned it. I have come across this surprising detail before, in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, where he argued that unknown and seemingly arbitrary decision to give up a Chinese navy opened up the opportunity for Europeans on the other side of the planet to fill the void and rebuild the world in their image (at least for the next 500 years, but all things must pass). The world we live in could have looked very different if it weren't for that one Emperor's strict definition of Confucianism.
(map from Wikipedia)
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Other than that, Casino Royale got a re read, I read Scott Marianis latest Ben Hope offering that I always enjoy.