The Queue
Even having read A Spy by Nature it is difficult to wrap my mind around just how bad it was. The one positive to be gained from squandering my time reading such dreck is a renewed confidence in my eventual success as an author, for surely I can do better than that rubbish, can't I? A monkey with a massive head trauma, & a monkey that was particularly dimwitted even before the massive head trauma at that, could write a better book than A Spy by Nature. Dame Stella Rimington's hackwork has been redeemed to a some small extent, if only because now I know there is even worse contemporary British spy fiction being churned out.
I am now № 24 in the queue for Carte Blanche.
Recently
Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau
John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
Charles Cumming, A Spy by Nature
Currently
John le Carré, Smiley's People
Presently
Robert M. Soderstrom, The Big House: Fielding H. Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium
John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps
Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of M.I.6: 1909-1949
William F. Buckley, Jr., Saving the Queen
...
Jeffery Deaver, Carte Blanche
2 comments:
Every time you mention Carte Blanche, I go back to my library and see it sitting on the shelf; just waiting to he picked up and checked out. It has been sitting in the same spot for weeks. I'm sorry, Mike. Come to St. Louis and I'll let you borrow it on my account.
That's very kind of you, Guy, but there is no need, truly; I am content to wait. I wonder if those in my locale are particular fans of James Bond novels or particular fans of Jeffery Deaver novels, & which particularity has created such demand. Or perhaps we are just gluttons for punishment, fools who failed to learn the lesson of the atrocious previous 007 novel, Devil May Care; the denizens of Saint Louis might be a more wary lot—once bitten, twice shy.
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