It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible

Monthly Archives: January 2009


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Nicholas Monsarrat

I remember reading Monsarrat’s classic novel of Atlantic convoys during WWII, The Cruel Sea, at school, and enjoying it very much. But it wasn’t until a couple of decades later that I came across his Master Mariner series – Running Proud and Darken Ship.

It was when I was living in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. I’d joined the Daly Community Library within a fortnight of arriving – Abu Dhabi was at that time short of good book shops. And over the next eight years, I worked my way through that library. It had a poor science fiction selection, so I ended up reading a lot of mainstream fiction by authors I’d never tried before. I suspect I picked Running Proud because I remembered The Cruel Sea as being good. Running Proud, however, wasn’t good; it was excellent. Sadly, Monsarrat died before he could finish the second book, Darken Ship, and it consists only of the opening chapters and scattered notes. Despite this, the two-book series became a favourite.

So I started buying and reading more of Monsarrat’s fiction. He’s perhaps best described as a solid writer who had moments of excellence. Many of his novels are very much of their time – workmanlike 1950s and 1960s thrillers. But several of them are interesting: such as the science-fictional The Time Before This, in which a man visiting the frozen north of Canada is told of a cave containing artefacts from a civilisation which preceded humanity. Or Smith And Jones, which initially reads as a straightforward spy thriller but becomes something entirely different on the last page.

Anyway, here are the Monsarrat books I own. My collection is not complete – there are about half a dozen titles I don’t have. Most are first editions, and one or two are even signed. My copy of The Cruel Sea is a reprint and a bit tatty – I should imagine first editions of it are really hard to find. But mine is a signed copy.

Castle Garac was, as far as I’m aware, published as a paperback original.

I don’t have this US edition, but I think I prefer the cover art to the Pan paperback. Both look a bit Mills & Boon-ish, but the novel is actually a thriller set in the south of France.

Several of Monsarrat’s books were made into films – The Cruel Sea, of course; but also The Story of Esther Costello (starring Joan Crawford), The Ship That Died of Shame (starring Richard Attenborough), and Something to Hide (starring Peter Finch).

Finally, Monsarrat’s two-volume autobiography.


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More Durrelliana

I haven’t added to my Durrell collection since I posted photos of it on this blog at the request of Jeff Vandermeer back in April of last year. But I did miss out a couple of items, so I thought I’d show them off.

First up, Down the Styx, published by Capricorn Press. The story is framed as a letter from Durrell to his Aunt Prudence, and describes the journey on which she will be taken by Charon… and which turns increasingly anatomical. It’s beautifully produced, as can be seen from the photos.

Here are three poetry collections…

… And a pair of plays.

Two poetry chapbooks – On the Suchness of the Old Boy and Nothing is Lost, Sweet Self. On the Suchness of the Old Boy was illustrated by Durrell’s daughter, Sappho, and she and her father have both signed the chapbook. Nothing is Lost, Sweet Self is actually a poem set to music by Wallace Southam. As you can see it’s signed by both Durrell and Southam.

Durrell’s first two novels, finally republished after 73 years by ELS Editions of the University of Victoria, Canada. I’ll be writing about Pied Piper of Lovers here soon.

I also have quite a few first editions by Anthony Burgess, and I might stick photos of them up here. And there’s my Nicholas Monsarrat collection too. Neither are as extensive, or contain as many rare items, as my Durrell collection, however.


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The 2009 Reading Challenge

This’ll be the third year I’ve done a reading challenge. I never intended them to be an ongoing annual thing. But they’ve been fun so far (well, mostly), so why not?

In 2007, I reread my favourite science fiction novels: Undercover Aliens, AE van Vogt; The Ophiuchi Hotline, John Varley; Stations of the Tide, Michael Swanwick; Where Time Winds Blow, Robert Holdstock; Soldier, Ask Not, Gordon R Dickson; Kairos, Gwyneth Jones; Against A Dark Background, Iain M Banks; Metrophage, Richard Kadrey; Coelestis, Paul Park; Dune, Frank Herbert; Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland; and Dhalgren, Samuel R Delany.

In 2008, I read (or tried to read) classic novels by authors I’d not read before: The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith; From Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway; Kim, Rudyard Kipling; A Question of Upbringing, Anthony Powell; Orlando, Virginia Woolf; Nostromo, Joseph Conrad; The Garden Party & Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield; My Family & Other Animals, Gerald Durrell; The Jewel in the Crown, Paul Scott; The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford; On The Road, Jack Kerouac; and The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand.

For 2009, I’m going to reread twelve science fiction classics. These are books I’ve not read for a long time – decades, in fact, in several cases. The list is a little idiosyncratic, for good reason. First, my taste in books is a little idiosyncratic. Second, I have very low opinions of some books which are considered sf classics, such as Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Third, some sf classics I’ve already reread in the past few years – for example, I reread Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun last year (see here), the aforementioned Dune in 2007 (see here), Bester’s The Stars My Destination a few years before that, and likewise Pohl’s Gateway… And finally, some on the list might only be considered minor classics, but I wanted to reread them anyway. So there.

The list goes like this (in order of year of publication):

I’ll not be reading them in the above order – I’ll just pick and choose what I feel like reading each month. Quite a few I’ll admit I’m looking forward to. One or two I suspect might prove a chore (that’ll be Stranger in a Strange Land and Second Stage Lensman, then). But you never know. And some might turn out to be less fun than I remember. But that’s the nature of these sort of things. And part of the fun, too. As before, each month I’ll write about the book I’ve read.