bunn

I haven't finished reading this yet, but I already know it's going to be the kind of book where I just want to read out random passages to strangers, so here is a bit I liked:

"To the lawyer, truth is facts unadorned. Whether such facts are ever findable is another matter.  To the creative writer, fact is raw material, not his taskmaster but his instrument, and his job is to make it sing... Was there ever such a thing as pure memory?  I doubt it.  Even when we convince ourselves that we're being dispassionate, sticking to the bare facts with no self-serving decorations or omissions, pure memory remains as elusive as a bar of wet soap."

This is so true.  I don't remember actual stuff that happened.  I only remember the story I told myself about it afterwards.  It's a way better story, anyway. Internally consistent, people have motivations that make sense, it's just so much better than the primary world.

The first chapter is titled "Don't Be Beastly To Your Secret Service"  and is mostly about people working for MI5 and MI6 ranting at spy-thriller writers.  It amused me enormously, and here is a randomly selected line, about his experience at MI5:

"Spying on a decaying British Communist party twenty-five thousand strong that had to be held together by MI5 informants did not meet my aspirations."

Or, on British Intelligence in general "I would guess there is not a spy agency anywhere in the Western world that has enjoyed more mollycoddling from its domestic media than ours. Embedded scarcely covers it. Our systems of censorship, whether voluntary or imposed by vague and draconian legislation, our skills in artful befriending, and the British public's collective submission to wholesale surveillance of dubious legality are the envy of every spook in the free and unfree world."

He contradicts himself a bit, but I find him too hilarious to care.

Oh drat, some LJ change has disabled my 'all power corrupts but we need electricity' tag for being too long.  ALAS.

A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury - Edith Pargeter : a deeply unfair and biased review by bunn.
( Read more... )
Our Game - John le Carré
This is another of le Carré's books about belief, which I think in the end is what his Smiley books were about too...( Read more... )

Wine of Angels - Phil Rickman
( Read more... )

The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
( Read more... )

Currently reading: Fire & Sword by Louise Turner, aka endlessrarities :-)

I kept seeing people recommending this Second World War novel, about a British agent (Scottish!) and her English pilot in occupied France. Eventually, I buckled to the power of suggestion and came by a copy. Then it sat on my 'to read' shelf for ages without quite managing to pull me in. Yesterday, I finally got around to it - and got sucked in with a sort of loud SCHLOOP noise like something going horribly wrong with plumbing. I read the whole thing pretty much at one sitting.

The premise is that it's 1943, and the agent, Queenie, has been captured. The Gestapo have been torturing her (rather more torture description than I prefer to read in general, but I never felt that it tipped over into being gratuitous or self-indulgent) - and she's writing down everything she knows about the British War Effort.

For some reason, she is writing it in the form of a story told from the point of view of the female pilot who flew her to France. Queenie is an aristocratic scion of an old Scottish family, the pilot is heir to modest wealth from the new motor cycle industry, and the story is really about how they have become friends.

( Seriously, read this bit only if you have already read the book. It's a really good and enjoyable book but if you read this first it will spoil it. )
It was a bloody good book though.