Books, again

Jacob I Have Loved: This won the Newberry Award, so I though I would read it. However, the novel represents post-war despair and modernist atheism, and posits that hope can be found through social action. Ick.

The Human Factor: another modernist novel. I promise to stop reading Cold War spy novels, either by Graham Greene (who wrote this one) or John Le Carre (who wrote The Spy Who Came In From the Cold--which I hated as well). These men are good writers. Greene is a masterful metaphor-ist, but they are so depressed by post-war modernist hopelessness that I just can't take it. According to them there is no light left in the world, anywhere, ever. Not only is the world going to hell in a handbasket, but it has already arrived. Ick. I need to find something hopeful to read. Where's the next Paolini novel already?

Cover Her Face: PD James writes good murder mysteries, as well as sci-fi-type novels like Children of Men, which was turned in a movie a year or so ago with Clive Owen.

Cry, the Beloved Country: a classic about apartheid life in South Africa. One of those books everyone should read at some point. Oprah agrees with me. I hate that.

London: a long historical novel about London, starting more than 200 years before Christ with the Celtic settlements and runs through to the Blitz of World War II. It's a long-un, but worth it if you are interested in London.