A long time ago I was reading a biography about Richard Burton called ‘Rich’ by Melvyn Bragg. The book used Burton’s own diaries and mentioned, amongst other things, Burton’s love of books. When Burton went on holiday he looked forward with delight to the contents of his ‘book bag’. I know it’s a pretty tenuous link but one thing I have in common with Richard Burton is a love of books and when I go on holiday, one of the delights of lying under a warm sun on my sun bed is a good, undisturbed read. I read a lot at home and on my lunch breaks at work but it’s a few minutes here and a few minutes there and whenever I get interrupted it kind of breaks the flow. Some books, as we all know, are just made for a really long, uninterrupted read so here are the books I took on holiday with me recently, all sourced from either the internet or secondhand bookshops.
Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger
This book was a Christmas gift from Liz. She knows I’m a big film fan and I do love reading about the background to films and how they are made. Arnold is from Austria and he tells us a little of his life there but mainly focuses on his desire to be a great bodybuilder and to eventually go to America. There is a lot of talk about the process of competitive bodybuilding and the different muscles, muscle definition, reps and squats and all that stuff. Arnold eventually wins various competitions and is wondering how he can compete in the USA when he gets an invitation to do just that. The bodybuilding industry is a close knit one and there seem to be various people welcoming him to California, helping him to find a place to stay and so on. He wins more competitions and makes a little money. He starts a mail order business selling magazines and pamphlets about himself and his body building techniques. He brings one of his Austrian friends over and the two begin a bricklaying and home improvement business. His big break is getting a film part as Hercules and even though the production eventually goes bust it seems to give him a taste of the film business and he wants more. He plays Conan the Barbarian in the film version of a comic book hero and pretty soon he plays the Terminator and goes on to success after success, even becoming governor of California.
I’m not sure I actually came away liking Arnold. I know this is an autobiography but it’s a very me, me, me book and Arnold is constantly bigging himself up. The final chapters about his political career are perhaps the most interesting. He had thought about running for governor but senior republicans seemed to have been more interested in another candidate. However, when Gray Davis was elected in 2000, there seems to have been something of a backlash and there is a curious precedent in Californian politics. The public can demand a recall, a new election in which the public either go for the elected governor or someone new. Arnold entered into the recall and won. He seems to have been in an odd position politically. He was a Republican but had married into the Kennedy family who are Democrats but his success as a politician seems to have come from holding the centre ground in California and bringing Republicans and Democrats and getting them to work together.
At the end of the book Arnold gives us his personal philosophy and his rules for success.
Verdict: I’m not sure whether Arnold wrote this book just to give us his story or to further promote himself but if I had to choose, I’d probably say the latter. Having said that, Mr Schwarzenegger is a man who gets things done and has a positive attitude. Perhaps I should take another look at his rules for success.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
This is not a book I brought on holiday but one I found on the shelves of our rented villa in Lanzarote. I started reading it when I got a little bored with Arnold Schwarzenegger and liked it so much I just carried on to the end. It is a real pleasure to read something by a master wordsmith and I enjoyed every minute even though I had read this novel years ago. Young Pip, apprenticed to be a blacksmith, is invited to the home of an eccentric rich woman, Miss Havisham, purely for her amusement. Later in his young life he finds he has ‘great expectations’ and is to inherit a remarkable property. He is taken to London to be brought up as a gentleman and although he is told that his benefactor has asked to remain a secret, he naturally assumes it is Miss Havisham. At the beginning of the book, Pip encounters Magwitch, an escaped convict on the marshes near his home. He compels Pip to bring him some food and a file. He is captured and transported to Australia and later we find, much to Mr Pip’s shock and amazement that Magwitch is the mysterious benefactor.
The book is rightfully one of Dickens’ best loved stories and is a wonderful read. I’ve always thought it had a rather ambiguous ending and in fact in my edition back home, it is one of those with various notes and background information, I am advised that Dickens felt that it was important to assure the reader that Pip had a future with Estella, the spoilt adopted daughter of Miss Havisham and so changed the ending slightly. Pip of course did want a future with Estella but I still feel the book leaves a happy ending slightly uncertain.
Verdict: An absolute classic from a master storyteller.
A Mad world, My Masters by John Simpson
This is a collection of globe trotting stories from John Simpson who has travelled the world as a journalist for the BBC. These though are travel stories with a difference, for instance in the first chapter he talks about airports, not the airports that I generally use, tourist destinations like Spain and Greece. The ones Mr Simpson mentions are airports in war torn Angola and Bosnia, and places like Kabul in Afghanistan and other places where he has had his passport and papers routinely torn up or thrown into a river by laughing revolutionaries and mercenaries. He tells us about headlong dashes to catch flights, including one somewhere in eastern Europe where he was in such a mess after weeks living rough the stewardess was reluctant to let him on board, especially as he had a first class seat. His fellow passenger in the next seat asked to be moved. Luckily John wasn’t flying on a budget airline like the ones I travel with.
On one occasion in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen, a bearded man appears dressed in white robes. He tries to get the Mujahadeen to murder Simpson for $500. It later turned out that the man was Bin Laden. Simpson talks nonchalantly about many other encounters with revolutionaries such as Arkan, the Bosnian warlord. There are other chapters on dictators that he has met and other sometimes ordinary people who have impressed him, like the simple village priest trying to make life safer for his fellow villagers in Colombia, one of the great drug producing countries of the world.
Most of his stories are hugely fascinating although the more interesting ones are about people, either the ones he has interviewed or the ones who work with him, his fellow journalists and sound-men, cameramen and so on. Most of this book is about the days when a BBC crew consisted of a cameraman, a sound-man, a producer and sometimes even others. Today, Simpson’s crew would consist of him and one other doing the filming and editing. There are some TV journalists today that even have to film and edit themselves.
The last part of the book where the author talks about his love for middle eastern rugs and antiques and the process of bartering that goes with buying those things was perhaps not my cup of tea. Verdict: A patchy read with some very fascinating chapters as well as some not so interesting ones. Generally, though, this was indeed an excellent read.
The Firm by John Grisham
There is a process by which I choose books to take with me on holiday. I like to think it’s a thoughtful process combining different genres of books, some novels, maybe the odd classic, and some biographies and autobiographies. What actually happens is that the day before our trip I’ll just grab something near to hand that I know I haven’t read yet and shove it in my suitcase. Anyway, that’s how I ended up with the books you see above. Last year I read The Rainmaker by John Grisham and I thought it was a pretty good read. I must have mentioned that to Liz so she filed that away and got me a stack of Grisham novels for my last birthday. The Firm isn’t a bad read and in my case it was a nice change of pace after reading Dickens and John Simpson’s globetrotting memories. It’s a good story but like a lot of Grisham’s works, its more plot driven than character driven. The characters are sort of bland templates that I’ve recognised in a lot of his novels and so far I’ve only read three. Anyway, characters aside, this is a really original story about a young guy who graduates from law school and gets head hunted into a firm he has never heard of but which offers tremendous financial benefits, a brand new BMW, and an ultra cheap mortgage as well as other financial bonuses. The downside as he comes to learn later is that the firm is just a cover operation to launder money for a big mafia crime family and the FBI wants our hero James McDeere, to help them.
Verdict: Highly enjoyable and a great holiday read but nothing more, although that didn’t stop the book from becoming a best seller as well as a hit film in the 1990’s.
The Woman in The Window by AJ Finn
I’m not sure I would normally have picked up this book if I hadn’t run out of books to read. I saw this on the shelf in our rented villa and Liz had read it and mentioned about numerous references to old black and white films which were right down my alley, apparently.
Anyway, I thought I’d give it a go and I’m very happy that I did. It’s about a woman called Anna Fox suffering from agoraphobia who cannot venture outside her house. She is in effect almost imprisoned there but spends her time playing online chess, seeing two therapists, one physical and one psychological as well as taking medication and drinking a whole lot of Merlot. She also spends a lot of time watching old films on TV and DVD as well as watching her neighbours.
She hears a terrible scream one night although no one else seems to hear it. She questions her tenant who lives in her basement but at the time in question he was doing some work while wearing earphones.
She meets Jane Russell from across the road, not the Jane Russell from the films but a pleasant lady whom she invites in and has a glass of wine with. Later through the windows of Jane’s house, she sees her get stabbed. Anna calls the police and tries to go across to the house but she cannot get over the road due to her agoraphobia and she ends up in the park where she is found by paramedics.
When she surfaces, we find that no one believes her story and also that Jane Russell is still alive, except, she’s a different Jane Russell to the one Anna saw murdered.
The tension builds nicely in this thriller and a number of shocks are dropped in front of the reader along the way as we find out what has caused the agoraphobia and what really happened over the road.
This was also made into a film starring Amy Adams as Anna Fox although I’ve yet to see it.
Verdict: Great read, so much so that when we left the villa, I had to take it with me to finish on the plane home. To be fair I did leave behind The Firm to replace it.
Peter Sellers by Alexander Walker
Bill Clinton: An American Journey by Nigel Hamilton
An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
A long time ago I picked up A Right Royal Bastard somewhere in a charity shop. I have a feeling it was whilst walking round Skipton a few months ago but anyway, I didn’t know much about Sarah Miles except that she was a film actress and had appeared in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and also Ryan’s Daughter, that latter film being one of director David Lean’s less appealing films. Apparently, as Sarah reveals in Serves Me Right, Lean was so upset by the bad reviews he didn’t make another film until A Passage to India, many years later.
I wrote in an earlier post about being a fan of the 
I always find it interesting just how I seem to hook up with a particular book. In this case I had an email from the ITV Hub telling me about a great new series of Manhunt and how I could watch the previous one on the ITV hub. Now what criteria ITV uses to send me an email like that I don’t know because not only had I never watched Manhunt, I’d never even heard of it. Looking at the ITV website I found that Manhunt was a three part thriller based on the real life case of killer Levi Bellfield. Having nothing more interesting lined up to watch that evening, Liz and I settled down to watch and actually got pretty interested, so much so that I immediately went to Abebooks and ordered a copy of the book that the series had been based on. It had been written, in fact written quite well by former Chief Inspector Colin Sutton who was in charge of the real life investigation of a young French student murdered in Twickenham, London.
page is for writers to talk about stuff, you know, publishing, agents, even actual writing but writers being a self-indulgent selfish lot, they usually just post links to their new books. Being similarly selfish I tend to add links to my new blog posts but on this occasion, I noticed something different, someone had asked a question. What are your 5 favourite books of all time?
Lost Horizon
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
A Right Royal Bastard by Sarah Miles.
Alan Turing: The Enigma.
Khrushchev Remembers.
To start with it tells the story of McCartney in deep focus, taking the reader through McCartney’s younger years, his friendship on the school bus with the younger George Harrison and finally meeting the older John Lennon at a village fête in Woolton. Those few years age difference was a big thing to the budding teenage musicians but together they were the nucleus of the Beatles. There were other members, other guitarists and other drummers but when in their late teens they got the chance to play a regular spot in Hamburg, Germany, they needed a drummer and they chose Pete Best, another local lad but a quieter lad who perhaps did not really fit in on a social level with the other three. The Beatles were not well thought of by fellow Liverpool musicians but after long months playing 6 hours a day at a Hamburg night club they gradually became a better and tighter knit musical group.
Not so long ago I read a blog post on the lines of 100 books to read before you die and as now I’m in my sixties I thought I’d better get a move on and read some more. I’m not sure if this book was on the list but I’m sure its author, Graham Greene was. Greene wrote the screenplay for ‘the Third Man’ and later the novel which I’ve always admired so I was very happy indeed to find this book in my Christmas box not so many weeks ago.
One of my all time favourite books was Dickens’ David Copperfield but sadly there are only two of Dickens books I have ever been able to get to grips with, one is the aforementioned Copperfield and the other is this one, Great Expectations. It’s a long time since I have read this book so I was very pleased to find it on the bookshelf of our rented villa rubbing shoulders with books by David Baldacci and Sophie Kinsella.
This book has been an absolute delight, in fact the perfect holiday read. The author tells the story of Niven’s life, pretty much as Niven himself set it down in his best selling autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon. However in this version the author tries to fill in the bits Niven left out of his book and correct many inaccuracies. Niven was notorious for embellishing the truth and the character of ‘Nessie’ to whom Niven lost his virginity in his book was, this author claims, pure fiction. Personally, I find that hard to believe even though no corroboration could be found with David’s many friends and those interviewed for this biography. Nessie seemed to be just such a fundamental part of his life I just don’t see how he could have invented her.
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborelli.
My Turn by Norman Wisdom.
Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown.
re’s nothing I love more than a good book and as usual, here’s a quick round-up of the books I’ve taken on holiday to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. As I’m flying I’ve not brought any hardbacks, just four paperbacks. All my books are usually sourced from the Internet or second-hand book shops but the ones below, with one exception, were gifts.
The writer has no time for music journalists who waxed less than lyrical about later Beatles’ records released in the last thirty odd years, things like The Beatles at the BBC released in 1994 or the Beatles Anthology. Reviewers who gave those records a poor reception get short shift indeed and the reader is quickly reminded of their chart topping sales. In their defence though pop music journalists tend to look forward to new music, not back to the old. More scorn is saved for Albert Goldman who wrote the book The Lives of John Lennon. Personally I thought that was rather a good book; it’s certainly more compelling than this one although it tends to focus on Lennon in a negative way whereas this book is very generous towards Lennon. It’s the book of a Lennon fan and focuses on the events in Lennon’s life in a very positive way.
Subtitled A Lonely Life, this is a biography of Elvis Presley by another music journalist, Ray Coleman. Elvis became the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll who inspired Lennon, McCartney and a whole host of others to become musicians and pop stars. I’ve read quite a few biographies of Elvis, all much thicker than this one but this is a great holiday read being both interesting and informative. The foreword to the book was particularly insightful regarding the impact Elvis had on other musicians. The author recounts two phone calls, one to Bob Dylan and one to John Lennon where he happened to mention that he had been to Elvis’ 1968 comeback concert. Both those highly regarded stars bombarded Coleman with a series of questions about Elvis showing that despite their own success and achievements, they were still at heart Elvis fans.
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy.
A Daughter’s Tale by Mary Soames.
As you will probably have gathered if you have read more than a few of my posts, I really do love books. There is nothing better than curling up with a good book anywhere, on a bus or train, in a chair, on a sun lounger, anywhere in fact. Books are a tonic for the brain. An education and a cerebral treat, both at the same time. Books enable the reader to travel not only geographically but in time too. Take one of my interests for instance. Classic cinema. Books like David Niven’s Bring on the Empty Horses has taken me on a journey to Hollywood and back to the golden years of classic cinema, the 1930s and 40s. Niven has told me about the Brown Derby, Romanov’s, Schwab’s drug store and Summit drive and a hundred other places I have never visited. But lets not stop there, let’s go even further. Marcus Aurelius’ book Meditations was written by a great emperor of Rome who died in the year 180AD, so his book is at least 1837 years old. Just imagine, the thoughts of a man who lived nearly 2000 years ago, travelling intact to me, the reader, in the year 2017.
I’m just not into busy, rushed holidays. I prefer the quiet, relaxing type; the ones that involve sunny days, swimming pools and plenty of leisure time to read books. I read at home too but that is a different sort of reading; a few minutes here, a few minutes there. I’ll read on my lunch break at work in between eating my sandwiches and drinking tea but the best way to read, the way to really get into a book is a long uninterrupted read while you lie on your sun lounger with the pool handy nearby for when it gets a little too hot. A quick dip then you are back to the thoughts of your chosen author.
I bought this book originally on the 3rd March, 1987. I know that for a fact because back then I used to write the date on all my book and record purchases. I have read it a number of times and it is a fascinating read. It ticks all my personal boxes of history and modern mysteries. Why, you might ask would anyone want to murder the Pope? Good question and the answer, according to the author is the Vatican Bank. The Vatican, thanks to Mussolini, is a separate independent state and so the Vatican bank, registered in the Vatican state is not answerable to the banking laws and inspectors of Italy. This idea appealed to various unscrupulous individuals, notably Licio Gelli – the head of an illegal and secret masonic organisation known as P2, Roberto Calvi – a banker with ties to P2 and the Mafia, and Michele Sindona, another criminal. Together they engineered the movement of various shares and monies, using the Vatican bank. A man called Albino Luciano, the bishop of Venice, became aware gradually of various wrongdoings in the bank and was particularly dismayed by the action, or inaction of Bishop Paul Marchinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank. In 1978, after the death of Pope Paul VI, Luciano was elected Pope. He was a man dedicated to the ideas of Jesus, a simple carpenter from Nazareth and he wanted the church to follow his example. He did not want a church that had a multi million dollar profit in stocks and shares, he wanted a poor church, a church that properly reflected the feelings of its founder. When he was elected the new Pope, Luciano’s ideas and those of the aforementioned individuals were on a collision course. David Yallop’s investigation is intensive and revealing and I came away from the book feeling an intense sadness that a good and decent man, a man who would have been a great Pope and spiritual leader had been stolen from us by the greed of a few men.
My Dark Places by James Elroy.
Letters from an unknown author! 