Nevil Shute

As my two or three readers may have noticed, I’m way behind in my book posts. I don’t, in real life, go months without reading and then read a dozen books in a week or so. For this blog post, that delay has interacted with world events to make it much different that I would have been had I done it in a more timely manner.

I read “On The Beach” while on vacation last Fall in, mostly, Austria and Germany. Flying across oceans, crossing borders, enjoying crowded beer halls, and living in hotels was commonplace. Fun, as always, but unremarkable. Now all those things seem like fantasies because as I write this the world is in the grip of the Coronavirus pandemic. You sense “it” getting closer, just like the “it” in this book…

“On the Beach” is about the last survivors of a nuclear war. They’re in Australia and seasonal weather patterns are bringing the radiation that’s already killed most of the people in the world who weren’t killed in the blasts closer and closer. There are some shortages, but life goes on pretty normally except for the fact that everyone knows all human life will soon cease.

The heart of the story is how people – including the crew of a US submarine that goes to America’s coast to see if anyone survives there – react to the approaching doom.

It’s a very good book, better and deeper, as far as I can recall, then the movie that was made from it.

And no, I don’t mean to suggest that Coronavirus is going to kill everyone, but let’s just say the book resonates right now.

(“On the Beach” is available for free online, but it’s only legal in Canada (wink, wink).)

Charlie Lovett

This is an entertaining murder mystery, historical novel, and tragic love story that takes place both in the present day and in Shakespeare’s time.

John le Carré

If you like le Carré’s gritty spy world, you’ll love it.

I can’t say it much better than “MAB” in an Amazon review: “The man is 88, and he hasn’t yet written a bad sentence.”

Christian Cameron

This is number three in a series and, like the others, a very good, convincing historical novel.

Alexander Fullerton

The Nick Everard series jumps forward to WW II in this naval adventure.

Alan Furst

I like this series of novels so much that I space them out. This one is about French, Russian, German, and Polish spies working in Warsaw in 1937 and is full of character and atmosphere.

Nevil Shute

This novel about a stereotypically eccentric English “boffin” was made into the Jimmy Stewart movie “No Highway in the Sky”. The plot revolves around metal fatigue but the resulting story is more interesting – and more character-focussed – than that would suggest.

James Joyce

I don’t usually read short stories, but I enjoyed the moving human tales in this collection.

Charlie Lovett

I enjoyed this story about a reserved English college professor who is dedicated to a cathedral library and, while searching for a missing manuscript and the Holy Grail, finds love and a degree of faith.

Edward Rutherfurd

This book, along with “Princes of Ireland” is typical Rutherfurd: one location and stories about a set of loosely-connected characters through centuries of history. In this case the place is Dublin and the period starts with the last pre-Christian years and extends into the Irish Civil War.

I liked “Princes” a little better. “Rebels” started to drag a bit. They were both good, but not quite as enjoyable as some Rutherfurd’s other novels.