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I've collected most of Victor Canning's spy novels over the last while. I've heard good things about them. I really must give them a read. It's hard to find out much about Canning. I understand that he very rarely ever gave interviews.
Love it, but reading it at a snail's pace.
You'll be right on time to read OHMSS over Christmas.
You're in for a treat!
The Infernal Machine and Other Plays (1964) by Jean Cocteau. Myth meets modernity and surrealism in six plays by an exquisite magician and master of playful enchantment.
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (1948) by Richard
Hofstadter. "How did we get here?" post-election reading: a collection of stringent political profiles written with style.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (1964) by Richard Hofstadter. More post-election insight into popular undercurrents, relevant for reasons that don't require explanation. The paranoid style has only metastasized since publication.
Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert. The maddeningly detailed novelization of a movie that never was, about the gory Mercenary Revolt in ancient Carthage. Climaxed by the unforgettable scene of child-sacrifice to Moloch.
Richard I (1999) by John Gillingham. Convincing rehabilitation of an English King-Angevin Emperor once thought great by medieval standards. Well supplemented by The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (2010) by Thomas Asbridge.
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (1977/2006) by Alistair Horne. A long, impartial, and unsettling account of what a great modern struggle for liberation took out of both sides. Read prior to visiting Algeria.
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968) by Norman Mailer. Another election-time read, the story of two political conventions in a horrible year. As kooky as it's insightful, as aggravating as it's gripping. Maybe it takes a loon to understand American politics.
Watergate: A New History (2022) by Garrett M. Graff. The most recent and most comprehensive one-stop account of the scandal that was the tip of an iceberg of criminality. What happens when a resentful, cunning President thinks himself above the law.
Always Unreliable (Unreliable Memoirs, 1980; Falling Towards England, 1985; and May Week Was in June, 1990) by Clive James. Australian boyhood, immigration to England and Cambridge days, told in invigorating, inimitable style, mixing high wit and low humor.
King Solomon's Mines (1885) by Rider H. Haggard. Surprisingly well-written, to the point of elevating corn into something almost mythic; potent, old-fashioned storytelling at the service of gonzo material. Even the colonialism is more nuanced than expected.
Currently reading Buster A Dog by George Pelecanos. And continuing with Mozart and his Operas by David Cairns, because it's his birthday tomorrow.