Books I read in 2010 -- part 2

On Literature, Umberto Eco
Pretty much what you'd expect. The James Joyce essay was good, had to skip the one about Sylvie because I am yet to read it once, let alone be in a position to "re-read it before you continue with this essay" as Eco recommends.


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Finished this on a plane back from Singapore.
Very good, which is sad because with a bit more work it could have been a Great Book.
However, more edits were not on the cards for obvious reasons, so it's stuck with a grand finale preceded by a first half more info-dump heavy than anything I've seen since Hitler's Peace.

It actually made me think it would be a good, or at least unusual, alternative way to present a mystery -- print the second half as a novel, but replace the first half with a dossier of character profiles and evidence sources for the readers to sift through themselves.
This is almost what Larsson did, but the presentation would be more fun.


Seven Up by Janet Evanovich *
Absolute rubbish. I don't know why I bothered going all the way to the end, although there was one good joke about Art Garfunkel. At least it was free.


Trullion: Alastor 2262 by Jack Vance
I tore through  this in just a couple of days. It's classic Vance, with somewhat better characterisation than he often manages. Luckily I didn't bother reading the blurb before buying it from the second hand shop, because although everything it says is technically true, it bears little resemblance to the actual story.

It's a wry but not comic mystery story, about a guy who comes back to his idyllic home planet to find his father dead, his older brother missing and part of the family land sold off by his twin brother, who has joined a weird cult dedicated to achieving things (the society of Trullion reckons idleness is the best path as far as possible).
To try and reclaim the land he needs lot, and ends up playing professional 'hussade', a combat game played on a grid of paths suspended over a water tank into which one shoves the opposing team -- the aim of the game (and this is the bit that really proves it was written in the 70s) is to reach the platform where the opposing team's lovely female mascot stands and pull a ring that makes all her clothes fall off. This would be an excellent variant game of Blood Bowl.
Also, there are space pirates. 


A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong * 
A worthy but dull detective novel set in 1990s Shanghai. The interesting thing about it was how I was reading for a while thinking the translator wasn't very good because many turns of phrase really need the reader to know Chinese to follow them clearly. But when I checked the imprint page I realised there wasn't one -- Qiu is a non-native author in English.
I'm not knocking this as a concept, of course. Nabokov and Conrad are the exemplars here. But Qiu needs more help from his editors. The book is full of malapropisms. On occasion there are bits of language that have the sound of a translated Chinese aphorism or catchphrase, but aren't -- I can't decide if this is Qiu doing it on purpose, or if the editor assumes it's a calque and leaves it alone.
Either way, the book is poorly written, didactic and - worst of all - achingly dull in its plot and characterisation.


Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser 
Not bad. Basically what the Bond novels would be like if they'd been written by a decent author.


The Man Who Saved Britain by Simon Winder * 
Observer review here


Life Class by Pat Barker *
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander *
Special Assignment by Boris Akunin *
The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl *




.... and a whole bunch of others. I forget.