More Adventures in Reading
Readers may know that I am an enthusiastic consumer of books, and that I like to haunt used-book stores. These are obviously complementary activities, and I hit The Book Addict before Christmas and scored a couple of promising novels. However, before I started in on them, Christmas arrived and my sweetheart gave me two fabulous books by Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is a military historian, and although I have peeked at his blog from time to time, I had not read any of his books. These were titled The Second World Wars and A War Like No Other, and the s at the end of that first title is not a typo. I have read a lot about WWII, but this is not a typical chronological history. Hanson picks particular aspects of the conflict, and lays out the decisions made by the various combatants in that domain, pointing out mistakes, and how their choices led to bad – or in some cases good – outcomes. It is very analytical, and quite fascinating. The second book is structured in much the same way, but it is about a war – The Peloponnesian War – about which I knew almost nothing. It was a conflict between Athens (and its allies) and Sparta (and its allies) that consumed some 27 years of the 5th century BC in the eastern Mediterranean.
Because I started out reading that second book as a newbie, I got less out of it than I did the first, but it was nonetheless very interesting, and has prompted me to look for more books about that particular conflict whenever I next need new reading material. I have learned that Hanson, who is in his 80s now, is not well, so I don’t imagine he will be writing anything new, but he has written much in the past, so his previous work is also on my lookout list.
I read often and pretty fast, but it took a while for me to get through those 800+ pages of military history, after which I settled down to the two books I had picked up at The Book Addict. They are really what this post is about. They are The Red Queen, by Margaret Drabble, and The Voyages of Somebody the Sailor by John Barth. I grabbed the Drabble book off the shelf as soon as I saw it for the same reason I grabbed the novel by Doris Lessing some months back. Drabble is often mentioned in positive terms in my Times Literary Supplement and has reviewed some books by others in that periodical. After finishing her novel I did some digging; I learned that she’s a Brit who published her first novel in the 1960s and is now into her 80s, and that she has declared she will write no more fiction.
I wanted to read for myself what all the fuss was about, and I was not disappointed. The Red Queen is an unusual novel, as it has two parts; the first set in late 18th century Korea, and the second set in contemporary times in Europe and Korea, with a different female protagonist in each segment.
I was rather quickly captivated by part one, which involves a long-dead Korean woman telling the story (yes, from beyond the grave) of how she came to be Crown Princess and the trials and tribulations she endured over her long life. Ms. Drabble can write. By all the outwards signs, this is a ‘chick novel’ and I should not like it, but – I very much did. The second part put me off at first, I am sure partly because I wanted the part one story that I had been so enjoying to continue, but Ms Drabble’s writing drew me in again, eventually. The novel was published in 2004, so rather late in her career, but early enough that the 21st century’s worst tendencies are nowhere to be seen.
The Red Queen is, in my humble opinion, a very good book, and Ms Drabble’s other novels are now also on my lookout list.
Having finished it, I am now into the second novel, which I picked up purely on spec. If I have ever heard of John Barth I don’t recall it. I bought this novel from The Book Addict because I found the title intriguing. We’ve all been told about or read the stories of Sinbad the Sailor’s many voyages, so I wondered – what is this all about? Mind you, it also cost like $6, so buying it was not a big gamble.
I am just getting into The Voyages, but I like it already. It also occurs in two different time frames and places, about two different, but (supernaturally) connected sets of people. I had no idea the two novels shared this feature when I bought them. Serendipity. Barth’s writing style is very different from Drabble’s, to be sure. In fact it reminds me a bit of that of Jonathan Lethem, whose novels Gun, With Occasional Music and Motherless Brooklyn I very much enjoyed, and which still sit on my shelves. Voyages was published in 1991, more than a decade before Drabble’s novel. It strikes me as being very autobiographical, but I am only 60 pages in, so that is highly speculative.
I have come to realize that one of the great joys of retirement is having all this time to read. And, of course, to wander around in used book stores.
The only downside is that once again I am out of shelf space here at home. My solution will be to comb through my holdings, and pick out a boxful of books to donate to the Book Addict for them to re-sell to others. No school board trustee or bureaucrat am I. That will give me room for more new volumes, until the next winnowing is needed.