Books old and new that really fit the bill
What helped get me through 2021 was books, bourbon and binge-watching videos. The 1973 film “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” starring Robert Mitchum is about a smalltime Boston crook who gets jammed up. It inspired me to read the novel by George V. Higgins that the film is based on. It’s the kind of book you read out loud since the dialogue is so authentic. Imagine an Aaron Sorkin script with a Boston accent.
Since travel was even more onerous during the pandemic, reading about other places was the safest mode of travel. James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room” is set in the ribald streets, apartments and nightclubs of Paris as a young man explores his morality and sexuality.
Art museums were restricted during the pandemic, so I perused a few art books. One I came across was a biography of “Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open” by Phoebe Hoban.
And yes, he is the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Lucian was famous for his portraits, nude paintings of celebrities and nude paintings of his own daughters.
With the firehose of news about the stock market, IT and cybersecurity, I read the “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” by Michael Lewis. It is the story of how Wall Street and banks used high frequency trading of stocks to game the economic system to get an advantage over pension funds and small investors. I was shocked they would do such a thing since they are such paragons of virtue.
I committed myself to reading the “Rabbit Angstrom” novels by John Updike. Rabbit peaks as a basketball star in high school. His life is a roller coaster ride of failures, disasters, death, infidelity, intermixed with success, the highs, the lows and something approaching redemption. After reading these novels, I need some Dramamine.
I read two books that provide insight into the human heart and mind. “War: How Conflicts Shaped Us,” by Margaret MacMillan, is a study of how humanity seems to be hard-wired for conflict and that few, if any, societies are immune. Kind of depressing but illuminating. Along those same lines is “The Memory Monster” by Yishai Sarid, a story about a historian who lectures tour groups on Nazi methods of torture in the concentration camps and it eventually drives him over the edge.
Then there is John Le Carré. His novel “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is the gold standard for spy novels. And a darn good movie starring Richard Burton. While other authors of that genre usually put the adventure and ideology at the forefront, Le
Carré shows the human toll exacted by espionage and the organizations that are meant to protect countries. In the coming year, I plan to read his last novel, “Silverview.”
Speaking of 2022, I plan to read Michael Connelly’s latest on Harry Bosch, “The Dark Hours,” and “Until the End of Time,” by Brian Greene, to find out what’s up with the universe.
Mike Stewart, Spring Valley