Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 6

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. This time I am looking at newly purchased books. I have bought a lot of books recently and these are just a few of them. Two of them I bought from Daedalus at a discount, but they still were not cheap. Two have only been recently published and they were bought from a local bookseller, Chaucer's Books, with sidewalk pickup. We have done two orders that way since the stores have been closed.


The first book is ...
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, originally published in 1950.

I don't know much about this book except that it is set (at least in part) in Australia. I read On the Beach in 2019; it was on my Classics Club list. I liked that book very much so I asked for recommendations for other books. This was one that was recommended by several bloggers.

Per the back of the book, the heroine is Jean Paget, and the book starts out in Malaysia during World War II and ends up in the Australian outback.

Next is...
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, published this year.

I bought this book because I enjoyed Station Eleven so much, and I read good things about this book. 

The Glass Hotel focuses on two people, a female bartender named Vincent and Paul Alkaitis, who is running an international Ponzi scheme. The financier is based on Bernie Madoff, but other than that the story is entirely fictional. It is not apocalyptic fiction like Station Eleven. But I think the writing style is similar.

The next two books are spy fiction...

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming, published in 2017

I consider Charles Cumming to be a promising new spy fiction writer (to add to my list of favorites). But the jury is still out. He has published nine novels, starting with A Spy by Nature in 2001, but I did not read any of his books before 2011, when I read The Trinity Six (which was just OK in my opinion). But that might have just been due to my lack of knowledge of the Cambridge spies. Now I know a little more about the subject.

Then, in 2018 I read A Spy by Nature (Alec Milius #1) and in 2019 I read A Foreign Country (Thomas Kell #1). I liked both of those novels and this month I read Thomas Kell #2, A Colder War, and was also impressed with it. Thus I purchased A Divided Spy, to continue reading about Thomas Kell.

Cumming is a Scottish author, and his character in this series is an MI6 agent who is on extended leave with pay due to an incident still under investigation. He is occasionally called in for special assignments.

The next spy fiction author I am featuring is from the US.

The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer, published this year.

Olen Steinhauer is already on my list of favorite spy fiction authors. He has published 12 novels and I have read 10 of them and I liked them all. His first five novels were historical novels (the Yalta Boulevard series set in a fictional Eastern bloc country) and not strictly spy fiction but there were some espionage elements.

The Last Tourist is the 4th book in the Milo Weaver series. Weaver is in the CIA; in the first book he is in the "Tourist" division, a group that does dirty work for the CIA. I loved that series so of course I have to read this book. Soon, I hope.

Reading Summary for May 2019

As I look at the books I read in May, I am surprised to find that out of ten books, only four of them were crime fiction novels. Another one was mystery reference, and most of the stories in Patti Abbott's Monkey Justice fall in the realm of crime fiction and noir.

In addition to books related to crime fiction, I read one non-fiction book about books provided to US soldiers during World War II, a wonderful book about Canadian books by Brian Busby, and two post-apocalyptic novels.

It was a very good month of reading.

Mystery reference

Euro Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to European Crime Fiction, Film & TV (2014)
by Barry Forshaw

The book covers crime fiction books written by European authors, set in their own countries (in most cases). Most of the coverage is for current fiction. There are two longer chapters on Italy and France. Other countries included are Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, and Romania. Although Scandinavian crime fiction has been covered in depth in two other books by the author, there is a chapter on those countries regarding more recent fiction from that area. Films and TV for each area are also noted. No book of this type will satisfy every reader, but since I enjoy reading any kind of book on mystery reference, it suited me.

Nonfiction / History

When Books Went to War (2014) by Molly Guptill Manning

This book is perfect for someone like me who likes to read about World War II and likes to read about books. The emphasis was on the process of getting the books to the soldiers and about the positive effect the books had on the soldiers, but there were interesting facts about many of the books also. I was very surprised at the types of books that got a lot of attention from the soldiers.

Nonfiction / Books about Books

The Dusty Bookcase: A Journey Through Canada's Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing (2017) by Brian Busby

The subtitle gives a pretty good summary of this book. Brian Busby blogs on this same topic at The Dusty Bookcase, and the book gathers information from his posts over the years. I read this book straight through, over a few weeks, and I will dip into it again and again. Full of interesting tidbits and in-depth information, and very entertaining.

Post-apocalyptic Fiction

On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute

A post-apocalyptic novel that I enjoyed immensely. Also adapted in a film starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. See my thoughts here.

The Wolves of Winter (2018) by Tyrell Johnson

I found this book via Judith's blog, Reader in the Wilderness. I do like post-apocalyptic novels, and the setting was intriguing... the Canadian Yukon. The story focuses on a family group that has been in the Yukon for seven years. The protagonist and narrator is a young woman who was 16 when they moved up to that area. This was the author's debut novel, and I liked it a lot. I would definitely try another book by this author.

Crime Fiction

Spook Street (2017) by Mick Herron

This is the fourth book in the Slough House series about spies who have been demoted due to some disgrace or screw up in their jobs. I loved this book and I will be reading the next in the series, London Rules, sometime in June.

The Iron Gates (1945) by Margaret Millar

Margaret Millar's novels focus on the psychological aspects of crime, and have interesting but strange characters. This one is set in Toronto and features Inspector Sands. See my thoughts here.

A Private Venus (1966) by Giorgio Scerbanenco

This is such an interesting story but hard to describe. The protagonist is a medical doctor, Duca Lamberti, who was imprisoned for several years, and can no longer practice medicine. His first job after release from prison is to guard the son of a wealthy man and cure him of his disease, alcoholism. He soon discovers that his drinking problem is caused by a traumatic event in his recent past; Lamberti begins to look into that problem.

The Dogs of Riga (1992) by Henning Mankell

I read the first book in the Kurt Wallander series in 2011. I hope it doesn't take me another 8 years to get to the third book, The White Lioness. In this book, Wallander goes to Latvia to follow up on an investigation that started in Sweden, when two dead Latvian men washed up on the shore in a raft. I enjoyed the story and I liked reading about Sweden and Latvia in 1991.

Monkey Justice (2019) by Patricia Abbott

Monkey Justice was published earlier (2011) in e-book format by Snubnose Press. Now Down and Out Press has published the stories again in a new e-book and in trade paperback.  The book has 23 of Abbott's earlier stories; many fit within the crime fiction genre and most of them are on the dark side. I am glad to see more of Abbott's stories available in book form (again).

On the Beach: Nevil Shute

About On the Beach, from the back of my paperback edition:

Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Commander Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

I enjoy reading apocalyptic fiction. There are many different takes on that genre and I enjoy all of them. This one was especially interesting because of when it was written, at a time when the fears of the cold war were prevalent. I was a child when it was written and a teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't have specific memories of the tensions of that time, just general impressions.

The story centers around several men who are assigned to the last functioning American nuclear submarine, the USS Scorpion: the captain, Dwight Towers; the Australian liaison officer, Peter Holmes; and an Australian scientist, John Osborne, assigned to monitor and research the radiation levels. The men are sent out on cruises to check out areas around the United States and further to the north. The novel tells us about these trips but also about their lives when they return to Melbourne, where the submarine is based.


Particular attention is paid to Dwight Towers and his friendship with Moira Davidson, a friend of Peter Holmes and his wife Mary. Moira is in her early twenties and is bitter about missing the experience of marriage and having children and the opportunity to see more of the world. Dwight had a wife and two children in the US and knows that he will never see them again, but sometimes his actions belie this, as he looks for gifts for them.

There is a focus on the somewhat mundane, daily activities of the characters as they continue on with their lives as if they will be around later when the garden that they are planting has bloomed. It may be surprising to think that people would continue in their normal lives, but I think it emphasizes that sometimes it is the small things we do in life that are most important.

The book is a look at how people might handle this impending doom and carry on their daily lives until the end. I like that the story is told simply, without a lot of details about what has happened on other continents. I also liked the combination of some technological aspects of how the situation was addressed, versus the daily lives of the people affected. Some people knew that the end would come but chose to live as they had before. Others were in denial. And a few followed up on dreams that they had, while still carrying on in their jobs.

Reading this story did not affect me emotionally as much as I expected. I read it as one look at what could happen, and it made me think afterwards about how a family with younger children would handle the approaching end of life. It does address families and individuals at different stages of life, taking a deeper look at people in their 20s, 30s, or 40s and what they would miss because of this disaster. I found it more thought-provoking than sad.

In reading about this book and the author, I discovered that Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer and that some of his books used that knowledge as a part of the story. I will be looking for some more of his books to read. Suggestions are welcome.

See these reviews, at Pining for the West, Brona's Books, and My Reader's Block.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Vintage International, 2010 (orig. pub. 1957)
Length:       312 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      Melbourne, Australia
Genre:       Apocalyptic Fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Dry to Bluffing Churchill

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is The Dry by Jane Harper. I know very little about this book except that it is a crime fiction book that was incredibly successful for a debut novel. And it is set in Australia.




My first link is to another book set in Australia, On the Beach by Nevil Shute. I just finished reading that book last night, and it was a fantastic read. This is a post-apocalypse story, a sub-genre I do enjoy reading now and then. The book was published in 1957 and was set just a few years later than that.

My next book in the chain is another apocalyptic story, but this time with a contemporary  setting. The Last Policeman is the story of a policeman, Detective Hank Palace, pursuing a homicide case in a pre-apocalyptic world. It has been confirmed that an asteroid heading towards earth and human life on earth will end. In a world where many people are abandoning their jobs or changing their entire lives, Hank is stubbornly investigating an incident that every one else thinks is suicide.

That book leads me to another book with a similar title.  Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective by Leslie Thomas is about an alcoholic, bumbling detective, who is assigned a cold case that he pursues with determination. Davies lives in a boarding house, where his best friend Mod also has a room. Davies' wife also lives there but they are in different rooms. Davies has a dog (large, old and cranky), that lives in the back seat of his car. It is a very weird and humorous story, published in 1976.

There are many other mystery series that feature a detective and his dog, but I have read none of them. However, in Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, Jackson Brodie rescues a dog from a man who is abusing him. I read this one back in 2011 and don't remember a lot of the story, but there are several threads that come together in the end.

My next book is by the same author: Life after Life. This book, published in 2013, is not a mystery, and it has an unusual structure. Ursula, the heroine, lives her life over and over. Sort of like the plot of the film Groundhog Day, but not. Ursula is born in 1910 and the book continues to some point in the 1960s; thus, the reader experiences the Blitz and Germany under Hitler.

My final book in the chain is Bluffing Mr. Churchill by John Lawton, set in 1941 London during the Blitz. This fourth book in the Inspector Frederick Troy series combines espionage and World War II. Published as Riptide in the UK.

So my chain took me from Australia to London, England during World War II, by way of two post-apocalyptic novels. And two books in the chain were not crime fiction, so a little variety.

Next month the starting book for the chain will be Murmur By Will Eaves.