Readiscovery

What I've read and discovered

  • The Ascent of Money and Chiamerica

    The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson The next time anyone blames Wall Street and the US Federal Reserve for the global economic downturn, throw the book at him. Not just any book but Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money. This excellent, immensely readable history of banking and finance published last year not only saw

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  • Jane Austen: Contemporary as you please

    Sunday Times exaggerates when it says: “Jane Austen is not just a novelist but a cultural ideal. Her books teach us what it means to be civilised.” The elaborate courtesies and leisurely lives of her characters today have all the charm of a period drama. But Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817)

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  • A writer in the White House

    Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama It was such a pleasure reading Dreams From My Father. It doesn’t read like a book written by a politician at all. Barack Obama has the novelist’s touch. How can you put down a book with passages like this? Three o’clock in the morning. The moon-washed streets empty,

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  • Le Carre’s Most Wanted Man

    A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre John Le Carre hates the “war on terror” and sympathizes with its victims. But he has let his feelings get the better of his art in A Most Wanted Man, for sympathy alone cannot animate the title character. Issa Karpov doesn’t come to life like George Smiley.

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  • James Lee Burke, poet of crime fiction

    James Lee Burke is a poet of hardboiled crime fiction. His violent thrillers are filled with twisted characters, whip-smart dialogue and great descriptions of nature. He loves nature with the same intensity that his hero, reformed alcoholic and devoted family man Dave Robicheaux, and his buddy, boozy, womanizing Clete Purcel, are haunted by their nightmares

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  • Len Deighton and John Le Carre

    Len Deighton turned 80 last week, I just discovered from the Guardian. He was born on February 18, 1929, according to Wikipedia.(Telegraph photo.) Honestly I didn’t even know he was still around, for I haven’t seen any new book by him for a long time. His last thriller was Charity, published in 1996. That’s sad

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  • The Widows of Eastwick

    The Widows of Eastwick is a reminder of the extraordinary talent of John Updike. He died last month of cancer at the age of 76. This is his last book, published last year. But this doesn’t read like the work of an old man. It has all the zest for life and interest in sex

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  • Billy Collins’ witty Obituaries

    Perhaps the best known poem on old age written in the last 50 years is Philip Larkin’s The Old Fools, which appeared in High Windows, published in 1973. It rails against old age, beginning with the verse: What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose

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  • Billy Collins on his old typewriter

    I am reading the poems of Billy Collins for the first time. And what can I say? Imagine Keats living into middle age, developing a dry wit and writing poems about domestic life without rhymes – but still showing flashes of his youthful romanticism. That’s Billy Collins. Collins, who was the US Poet Laureate from

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  • Auden on moon landing

    I just came across this poem by Auden and liked it so much I wanted to share it here. Many of his poems are popular favourites and found in anthologies. For example, In Memory of WB Yeats, September 1939, Refugee Blues, The Unknown Citizen, If I Could Tell You, Look Stranger, and Lay Your Sleeping

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