What I've been reading

Time is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis
by Connie Willis

"What do church choirs, alien visitors, the London Underground, time travel, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Agatha Christie, old Hollywood stars and quantum physics have in common? These disparate things all feature in the stories collected here."

A book of her short stories - not as good as the novels, but then I wasn't expecting it to be. Still mostly good fun and very occasionally brilliant, with the usual duds that are inevitable in any collection, even a collection labelled 'best of...'

Moll Flanders
by Daniel Defoe

"Born in Newgate Prison to an incarcerated mother, Moll Flanders is compelled from earliest childhood to make her own way in the world and to live off her wit and beauty. Her desire to climb the rungs of society leads her through a tangled web of incest, adultery, prostitution, deception and theft."

This was written in 1683, which is hard to imagine - less than 20 years after the  Great Plague and Fire of London, and at the end of the reign of Charles II after the Restoration. At the time it was presented as a real autobiography, and it shines a bright light on the seedy underside of English society at the time. Because the protagonist is constantly in terror of poverty she is always trying to find a way to make a living, which is what leads her eventually to crime via many unlucky marriages. But as usual I enjoyed the insight into 17th century society more than I enjoyed the story.

Goodnight Mister Tom
by Michelle Magorian

"The gruff and surly Mr Thomas Oakley is less than pleased when he is landed with a scrawny little city boy as a guest, but because it is compulsory that each villager takes in an evacuee he reluctantly agrees."

This is really a children's book, but it appeared in my Classics list and I felt I could do with an easy read for a change, after the fairly heavy duty choices I've been making alongside the difficult books about Buddhism. And it's a good book although not easy, set as it is at the start of World War 2 and featuring an abused boy, although the author is really skilful at portraying the effects without us seeing the abuse itself. Recommended for a break after 17th century fiction.

Suite Française
by Irène Némirovsky

narrated by Carole Boyd

"In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation are brilliantly explored in this gripping and heart-breaking novel."

At the end of this audio book there's an extra section of author biography, which makes it all the more poignant as the author and her husband both died in the concentration camps. A lovely film was made of the story with a significant extra bit at the end for drama, so when the book ended without it I was disappointed at first. In fact, the book is better for the lack of drama, retaining its gentle tone throughout and giving a realistic sense of the mundane everyday life of occupation.

Sangharakshita: The Boy, the Monk, the Man
by Nagabodhi

"Sangharakshita was a Buddhist monk, a writer, a poet, and the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community – a pioneering worldwide Buddhist movement. He was also an audacious reformer, and for some a deeply controversial figure."

The final piece (I hope) of my deep immersion into the life of this man, this is a biography that was published very recently - if it had come out six months earlier it would have removed the necessity of reading those four long volumes of memoir. It fills in some of the missing detail between 1957 and 1967 and also continues up to Sangharakshita's death, and very usefully in the last couple of chapters provides some real insight into his personality, which helps to fill out my 'research project'. I've been writing it for presentation in my study group, and if it goes down well there I'll take it to the local group too.

White Noise
by Don DeLillo

"Jack is head of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. His colleague Murray runs a seminar on car crashes. DeLillo exposes our common obsessions with mortality and delineates Jack and his wife Babette's touching relationship and their biggest fear - who will die first?"

Another from the Classics list, more modern this time, and for a change there's a semblance of a story in there. The people who feature are not types I recognise, though, not in the way they speak, or behave, or relate to one another. I didn't care about the people or the story, despite the quote on the cover from the Observer suggesting he is America's greatest living writer. I'm starting to doubt that there are any living writers on the Classics list who can produce a story that engages me.