Books of August
13 October, 2024I started but did not finish a friend's copy of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791) which frankly made me far too angry.
On a very different track, I did finish Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent. Absolutely fine debut fiction novel from the world's leading lexicographer. A girl goes missing, a man is murdered. Can solving puzzles straight out of the GCHQ Puzzlebook solve these crimes? You betcha.
The Man who fell to earth by Walter Tevis is about loneliness, isolation, and drinking gin. Really good, although morose. I first saw this as a film when I was in my mid teens, the 1970s version with David Bowie as the lead. Astonishing to me is that this is written by the same author who wrote The Queen's Gambit, which was dramatized on Netflix a few years ago. That too is a tale of isolation and the desperate need to make human connections in amongst a larger challenge. Tevis also wrote The Color of Money which became the film with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. A pretty good output!