What I've been reading

Orlando
by Virginia Woolf

narrated by Clare Corbett

"As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed."

I didn't immediately make the connection between this book and the one I read recently about the man who aged fifteen times more slowly than normal (How to Stop Time). The other carries a more human emotional story, and this one has more magical realism (and includes a sex change) but neither makes the most of the opportunity. I enjoyed the comparison between the experience of the male and female Orlando, but Virginia Woolf writes in too literary a style and I didn't get caught up in the story at all.

London Fields
by Martin Amis

"The murderee is Nicola Six, a 'black hole' of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?"

I didn't like Martin Amis after the last book I read of his, and this has just confirmed that opinion, even though he used quite an interesting concept to frame the story, whereby the author of the book comments on and interacts with his fictional characters. I really don't need to read any more of his writing, though. The characters are uniformly horrible and the plot, such as it was, didn't make up for that deficit. Unpleasant.

Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie

narrated by Jennifer Van Dyke

"Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. She is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist."

Considering that this book is a Pulitzer Prize winner it was a huge disappointment - maybe there weren't many contenders that year. It wasn't bad, just nothing special, and it certainly wasn't the author's fault that the narrator doesn't know how to pronounce Glyndebourne and puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable of Camden Town.

Humankind: A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregman

"Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good."

More than one person has recommended this book, especially when they've found out why I'm avoiding the news. It contains stories we know about - the Milgram shock experiment, the New York murder in full view of the residents of the block, the (fictional) Lord of the Flies - which all tend to suggest that humans are cruel by nature. The author's assertion is that deeper research into these reports, and other contradictory examples, uncover research or reporting flaws great enough to change the conclusion. By coincidence, the assertion that civilian morale is lessened by bombing (which I first discovered on my recent trip to the International Bomber Command Centre) is another example he gives of false reporting. And with other, clear-cut cases of human cruelty (the Holocaust, war in general) the fault lies with society and conditions rather than the nature of humanity. So, if he is to be believed, things are not as bleak as they seem. The trouble is that society and conditions continue to do their work, and ongoing and perhaps increasing bleakness can be expected. so I am not convinced by the book's argument.

The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot that could have dire international consequences."

This was in my free podcast feed, so why not listen again? It's shorter than I remember it, and so evocative of the attitudes and mores of the time. But there's a definite need for suspension of disbelief - a mining engineer happens to be shut in a room with a load of dynamite? A coastguard happens to know all the places along the coast that might have steps down to the water? Never mind, it's worth a read.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari

"As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive."

This was an interesting and thought-provoking summary of what is going on in the world, and what it might mean for humanity. It's probably as close to philosophy as I comfortably get. He is most famous for his first book, Sapiens, but, as good as this book was, I'm not sure I need any more.