After Gatsby put me off reading ‘classic’ fiction, indeed fiction in general, I’ve decided to go on a non-fiction rampage. I maintain an Amazon wishlist of non-fiction books that I’d like to read, should time permit, that I’ve seen mentioned in one of the hundreds of news feeds I superficially scan every day in Google Reader, and as I’m too lazy to scroll down the list, I ended up just reading the topmost additions, which happened to be the following:

Manhunt: From 9/11 to Abbottabad – the Ten-Year Search for Osama bin Laden – Peter Bergen

These kinds of books play right in to my still-present boyhood fantasy of being some kind of spy or secret agent (though, if I had the choice, I’d still prefer to be an astronaut). It goes in to great detail about the movements of bin Laden pre- and post-9/11 and the herculean intelligence efforts that went into hunting him down. A worthwhile read, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the Century – Charles Ferguson

An epic treatise on how everything went to shit in the financial crisis of 2007/2008. If you liked the documentary of the same name, but lamented the lack of a thousand more examples of really shitty people and practices, and simply wanted more financial acronyms, then this is the book for you. Read it if you want to get a well-informed insight, or if you just want to get plain old angry at banking shysters fucking up the world.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Wonders of the World) – Llewelyn Morgan

For some strange reason, I’ve been mildly obsessed with the Buddhas of Bamiyan (and the Minaret of Jam, since seeing it on a Dan Cruickshank show) since they were destroyed in 2001, so this book was an obvious choice. Morgan does a pretty good job at recounting the history of the area, why Bamiyan was so important in years gone by, and why two Buddhist icons were allowed to exist for so long in the middle of a country controlled by the Taliban. If I had the chance/balls/time/money (choose three), I’d love to go to Afghanistan and see all this first hand – Morgan paints an evocative picture that makes it difficult to not want to. However, having none of those four means I’m content with his book instead.

Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science – Jim Al-Khalili

Strangely, this book was recommended to me by the author of the previous book, Llewelyn Morgan, in a brief Twitter exchange. And what a recommendation, though not for everyone, I appreciate. A crazy-detailed history of Arabic (and not-specifically-Arabian – a distinction Al-Khalili explains and encompasses in his history) scientific advancements over a several hundred year period. He seems to be attempting to put right an oft-quoted scientific timeline of Greek science -> Dark Ages -> Renaissance by illustrating how much further Arabic scientists and philosophers advanced the scientific cause in those apparent Dark Ages. The key players, al-Khwārizmī, al-Bīrūnī et al., are portrayed as peers, or even superceders in terms of actual advancements made, of their Greek and Renaissance cousins. Again, a fascinating read, but provides the greatest return to fans of Arab history, science history or history history (choose two).

So that was my non-fiction run to end the year, all bar Jake Humphrey’s The Inside Track, which was a simple concession to my twin love of Formula 1 and books that can be lazily read with absolutely no thought or understanding required. Guilty as charged.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’ve deleted and rewritten this ‘review’ a couple of times now. In its previous incarnations, I’d waxed lyrical about classic novels and context, and whether Gatsby was sufficiently universally themed to transcend my asynchronous reading. I’d mused on the comparison of new vs. old money that Fitzgerald describes, on Gatsby’s accrual of wealth via shady means, on love, on revenge, until I suddenly got a whiff of what I was writing, and erased it permanently. What an ass! I was attempting to write a review in the manner of how I thought I ought to be writing a review of The Great Gatsby, when it suddenly struck me that I didn’t give a shit about all that nonsense. It occurred to me that I thought that the book was only, wait for it, OK, and that I ought to write that instead.

Now me labelling something as simply ‘OK’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I was lucky enough to find myself in Rome a while back and, searching for an amazing coffee (feel free to insert your own ‘When in Rome…’ gag here), we came across a little cafe near the Pantheon called Tazza d’Oro, which many of the guidebooks labelled as “the best espresso in Italy”, and other similarly ridiculous hyperboles. On a high after experiencing probably my favourite thing in Rome, maybe even the world, the Pantheon, we wandered around the corner and excitedly took a table at the cafe. Well, whilst we both took a table, I was the only one who did it excitedly; Kath hates coffee, so I was flying solo in my coffee giddiness. I ordered the obligatory, and awaited its arrival with bated breath. What was it going to be like? How different from the shit I got served in Starbucks back home could it be? Would it make me piss unicorn tears and shit rainbows, like I hoped? Well, the coffee arrived, looking so very conventional in its little china espresso cup. Lulling me in to a false sense of security, I assumed. Not wanting to reveal its splendiferous hand too early, I guessed. With a trembling hand (not really), I raised that little cup to my lips and, in the split second before tasting it, I inhaled deeply to get a spoiler of what wonderment I was just about to taste. It smelled like… coffee. Yup, coffee. OK, maybe not quite as pungent as the shit you get in Starbucks, but it didn’t smell like god’s farts. Which I assume are awesome.

The tasting soon followed. It tasted like… coffee. Yup, coffee. OK, maybe not quite as bitter and after-tastey as the shit you get in Starbucks, but it didn’t taste of god’s… well, you get the picture. It tasted like a really good espresso. But, crucially, it didn’t taste like I imagined the best espresso in Italy should taste. Oh, it was probably the best espresso I tasted that holiday, and better than any espresso you can get in high street coffee shops (though James would argue that Laynes has the best espresso around, and I’m quite a fan of Opposite), but there was no gustatory fanfare and ticker-tape parade, no choir of angels exalting this taste sensation. Kath eagerly (not really) asked me how the coffee was. “OK,” I replied. Which it was. It wasn’t the greatest espresso I could imagine, so it couldn’t be described as “amazing”, or “mind-blowing”, so I was left with “OK” when ascribing it a rating.

So now that I’ve calibrated my review-o-meter for you, back to The Great Gatsby. It was OK. For a book that’s been described as “the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century,” (thanks, Wikipedia), I was expecting fireworks and rainbows and “You’re The Best” playing in my head constantly whilst reading it. Nothing of the sort, unfortunately. I’m sure the old money/new money conflict is as pertinent today as it was then, but I didn’t really care. Much is made of the hedonistic and shallow nature of Gatsby’s partygoers, and maybe that was revelatory back in the ’20s, but ten minutes of any shit-bag celebrity reality TV show will tell you the same. Sure, Gatsby’s an enigma, and I was interested in the onion-like peeling away of his many layers, from confident and mysterious socialite to insecure and unhappy, to a love-struck puppy, but that’s a relatively well-told story, and this version didn’t tell me anything new. (Also, for some reason I couldn’t get the image of Terry-Thomas out of my mind when thinking about Gatsby, whose massive gap-between-the-teeth is quite off-putting when you’re trying to concentrate.)

I guess this is always a problem I’m going to encounter when reading old books, or watching old films. Without the ability to disregard all subsequent derivate works of art, the originals that inspired will never actually seem original. It’s a weird anachronism where the more recent interpretations become the gold standard against which the originals have to be measured. Maybe I’m just too lazy to try and appreciate the value and the original inspiration contained in the classics but hey, there’s only so many hours in the day, and I’m far to idle and apathetic to delve any deeper. So sue me.

The Sign of the Four – Arthur Conan Doyle

If you follow the link above to the Amazon page where you can buy this book in its Penguin Classic format, you’ll notice that book is listed under the title ‘The Sign of Four’. This should tell you all you need to know about this book. That the title can’t be universally agreed upon would usually be a good indicator that there’s no particular affection for it. The Amazon reviews, however, imply otherwise. Strange.

In my unrefined view, it’s a by-the-numbers detective story, with a healthy dollop of plot over-complication, and just a soupçon of Basil Exposition-esque thirty-pages-too-many at the end. Yes, it introduces the important character of Mary Morstan, Watson’s future wife, and yes, we get further example of Holmes’ brilliant deduction, but I had trouble maintaining interest for the entirety of the novel. And was it only me who was disappointed by the seeming cop-out of using a dog to do some detective heavy-lifting, half way through? Whilst Holmes professes that there are multiple ways to track the suspect in question, and the dog just happens to be the quickest, we’re never told what these other ways are, and I came away feeling a little short-changed.

And yes, I’ll say it, I found this book a bit boring. With no uncertainty in Holmes’ analysis, the process is very linear. There’s no trial and error; it’s always A to B to C and there’s the bad guy. I realise that’s the essence of Holmes, but it can make for unexciting reading.

But anyway, the Amazon reviewers all love it, so I’m obviously in the wrong. One positive I have taken away from the two novels so far is the relationship between Holmes and Watson. My main education in Holmes thus far has been the BBC show, and the Guy Ritchie movies. In the former, Holmes comes across as quite the dick most of the time, especially in his interactions with Watson. In the latter, the relationship is played with a more ‘buddy cop’ vibe. It’s pleasing to find the novels portraying the relationship as somewhere between those two – Holmes is a master at his craft and doesn’t suffer fools gladly (indeed, he treats substandard detectives somewhat mockingly), but he doesn’t seem to extend that douchebag behaviour to Watson. He never seems to get exasperated at Watson for not following the seemingly logical set of steps he took to reach a particular conclusion, and sometimes takes time to explain his reasoning (to us, in reality, via the medium of Watson). Additionally, there are knowing glances and in-comments between the two protagonists that Guy Ritchie has seemingly latched on to and exaggerated to form the basis of the relationship between his Holmes and Watson, no doubt to play to the strengths of his actors. Maybe.

Anyway, I think I’m going to have to tap the short stories next in my Holmes mission, as I can’t endure any more long-form disappointment right now. Onward and upward…

A Study In Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle

I suspect like many people who are currently working their way through The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, my recent interest in Sherlock Holmes has partially come about as a result of the two Guy Ritchie Holmes movies, but mainly due to the Stephen Moffat/Mark Gatiss modern interpretation, Sherlock. So good is the Moffat/Gatiss Sherlock, especially series two, that I was driven straight to The Complete Stories to find out the origin story, if you will.

And boy, what a challenge. OK, so I’m in no way comparing my mission of devouring the Conan Doyle back catalogue as in any shape, way or form as monumental (for there is no better word) as my BFaM Matt’s The King Long Read epic, but still, The Complete Stories clock in at 1408 pages of relatively small print. Well, it’s a mission for me, at least.

So I start at the very beginning, which many consider a pretty average place to start, all things considered. The Holmes canon consists of four novels and 56 short stories. Chronologically, there’s two novels to start, then the other two interspersed amongst all the short stories. The book I’m reading (both hardback and Kindle – who says men can’t multitask?) has the novels up front, then the short stories afterwards. This is disappointing, as the consensus (including The Complete Stories editors’ notes) seems to be that the novels (at least the first two) are a bit crappy, and Conan Doyle only hits his stride with the short stories, defining the Holmes we know of today.

A Study In Scarlet is first up, then. It’s the origin story of Watson meeting Holmes: the characters are introduced and developed, detective and logic skills are thrown in, and personality quirks and idiosyncrasies quickly become entrenched; all this set against the backdrop of a particularly puzzling crime. And so it passes that clues are discovered, reasoning and deduction occurs, false leads are pursued (though mostly by the Scotland Yard detective buffoons who Holmes so likes to mock), all of which leads to the miraculous apprehension of the perp at the end of part one. Miraculous is the right word, as Holmes’ arrest of said criminal occurs out of the blue, with no real prior reference to him. Fortunately, part two of the book takes us 35 years prior to the setting of the story, to the frontiers of the West in America, a setting in to which Mormon frontiersmen are introduced, along with non-believers, forbidden love, and revenge, and fleshes the back story out quite nicely.

The weaving of the two parts of the story into a coherent whole is quite neat – at first the disjoint between the two seemed jarring, but I got on board with it quite quickly, and grew to enjoy it. I think I suffer from being too forgiving when reading, as I really quite enjoyed this. As an introduction in to the Holmes canon, consider me hooked. If the short stories are, as alleged, much better than this, I await them eagerly.

Pantheon – Sam Bourne

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a fan of trashy, Dan Brown-style, fiction. Anything with a slightly preposterous plot, involving a murder and/or a conspiracy and I’m in. When I first heard about Sam Bourne, he was sold as “the new Dan Brown!”, or “better than Dan Brown!” Tragically, this was enough to get my attention.

It was only after I picked up his first book that I realised Sam Bourne was the pseudonym of Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. Interesting. Whilst superficially his first four books are very much in the Dan Brown vein (albeit far better written), it was book number three, The Final Reckoning, that made me pay more attention to him. The basic premise of the book, that of a team of avenging Holocaust survivors traveling the world murdering Nazis, is apparently based in fact. This instantly renders the book, and the author, more interesting to me. Fact is always stranger than fiction, and fiction based on fact is surely the strangest of them all.

And so Bourne’s fifth book, Pantheon, appealed to me in the same light. The MacGuffin, a man travelling to America during World War II to search for his family, leads to a larger plot that, again, is based in fact, and makes for fascinating reading, of both the book, and the inevitable Wikipedia trawl afterwards. Sure, the fast-paced page-turning parts of the book are familiar, bordering on formulaic, but I don’t mind that when they’re building towards a bigger picture. It’s the stuff that’s rooted in truth that’s the most fascinating and unsettling.

So yeah, I liked this book. It’s contrived in places and ends poorly, but for a page-turner, it’s perfectly acceptable.