TOP 100 BOOK SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| A Team, but Watch How You Put It Andre Agassi’s new memoir, “Open,” is an unusual addition to the shelves of jock autobiography. feeds.nytimes.com |
Domestic Dysfunction In this quietly devastating domestic novel, a facade of household perfection conceals a dark secret. feeds.nytimes.com |
A classic jungle book for our times Lisa O'Kelly is captivated by Michael Morpugo's story of a boy and an elephantRunning Wild by Michael Morpurgo CrocodileTears by Anthony HorowitzThe Death Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean A-Z: The Best Children's Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah by Michael RosenThere are rich pickings for readers aged nine to 12 this Christmas. Michael Morpurgo is on top form with Running Wild (HarperCollins £12.99), a superb animal story, inspired both by The Jungle Book and William Blake's poem "The Tyger" and strongly influenced by the devastating tsunami of 2004, which provides the starting point for the action.Nine-year-old Will and his mother are on holiday in Indonesia, trying to get over the recent death of Will's father, when the wave strikes. The boy only escapes the wall of water because he happens to be on the back of an elephant which runs off into the jungle. As weeks and months pass, Will and the elephant encounter all manner of hazards: snakes, tigers, crocodiles, orang-utans and, most frightening of all, big game hunters who kill animals for money while also burning down the forest so they can grow palm trees to make palm oil.Like all Morpurgo, it breaks your heart but is utterly convincing and absorbing. The action sequences are gripping and Morpurgo is immensely skilful in the way he depicts the boy's relationship with the elephant, Oona, growing and deepening as they face each one of their trials. A new classic.There is plenty more action and adventure to be had in Crocodile Tears (Walker Books £14.99), the eighth novel in Anthony Horowitz's hugely successful Alex Rider series. Devotees will notice that it's a darker, more damaged and pensive Alex we encounter here, which is not surprising given everything that has happened to him in his career as a teenage spy.The plot centres on a dastardly scheme to extort billions of pounds by playing on the public's goodwill and it takes Alex once again all over the world, from chilly London to sweat-soaked southern India to the wide-open African bush, all the while wishing he could just lead the quiet life of a regular schoolboy. Horowitz has hinted this may be one of the last Alex Rider books. but he shows no sign here of running out of steam. Crocodile Tears is as fast-paced, tightly plotted and exciting as any of its predecessors.Chase stories are eternally popular with children and in essence that is what Geraldine McCaughrean gives us in The Death Defying Pepper Roux (OUP £12.99). The tale of a boy whose untimely death is predicted at birth by a superstitious aunt, this is a funny, charming and eccentric book. It kicks off on the day of Pepper's doom – his 14th birthday – and takes us on the run with him as he attempts to stay one step ahead of his fate.Poetry lovers will adore Michael Rosen's wonderful A-Z: The Best Children's Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah (Puffin £6.99). The former children's laureate has made a fabulous collection of poems by writers as diverse as Carol Ann Duffy, John Hegley, Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell and Benjamin Zephaniah. Thankfully, he has included a couple of his own poems, which, as he says at the start of this volume, are about "all kinds of things – but always important things – from chocolate cake to bathtime". LISA O'KELLYChildren and teenagersMichael MorpurgoMichael RosenLisa O'Kellyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Books of The Times: First Comes Love, Then Comes Fear of Marriage In Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, the strain is as palpable as the voice is cute, and the drama is virtually nonexistent. feeds.nytimes.com |
Robert B Parker obituary Prolific novelist and an important influence on American crime fictionThe late 1960s saw a Raymond Chandler revival in the US, and in 1973 Robert B Parker's novel The Godwulf Manuscript introduced Spenser, a modern version of Chandler's detective, Philip Marlowe. In addition to the literary reference behind his character's name, Parker, who has died aged 77, borrowed Chandler's first-person narration, wisecracking dialogue, and his detective's strong moral code. A flowering of neo-Chandler writing followed.Spenser operated in the criminal backwater of Boston, in Parker's home state of Massachusetts, rather than the favoured crime-fiction locations of New York and Los Angeles. Soon, writers such as Jonathan Valin, Loren Estleman and Michael Z Lewin were basing hard-boiled heroes in Cincinnati, Detroit and Indianapolis. Thirty-seven Spenser novels later – including one featuring a young Spenser, published for the juvenile market – Parker has been undoubtedly the most important influence on the American detective novel in the past three decades.Like Marlowe, Spenser was an investigator for a district attorney before political corruption drove him into private practice. We never learn Spenser's first name. Originally intended to be David, after Parker's older son, it was dropped entirely rather than offend the author's younger son, Daniel. Parker also dropped Marlowe's idealism for a tougher realism that is close to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade or to Ernest Hemingway, another strong influence.A number of times, Parker's heroes bring to mind Hemingway's story Up in Michigan, when they take young men (or women) into the wilderness to learn about life. His first non-Spenser novel, Wilderness (1979), like James Dickey's Deliverance, updates Hemingway's themes. Spenser is also a war veteran – tougher than Marlowe, more like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Unlike his predecessors, Spenser has a long-term partner, the psychiatrist Susan Silverman, and he can cook, as proficient with pesto as with a pistol. Spenser and Silverman's relationship, despite ups and downs including the pair living apart, reflected Parker's own marriage. Every one of his books was dedicated to his wife.Parker was well versed in his chosen genre's history, having written his PhD dissertation on Chandler, Hammett and Ross Macdonald. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, meeting his future wife, Joan, when they were just three. The two met again as students at Colby college, in Maine, and married in 1956, after Parker had returned from military service in Korea. He received an MA from Boston University in 1957, worked as a technical and advertising writer, and then turned to teaching, eventually becoming a professor of literature at Boston's Northeastern University, while completing his 1971 doctorate at Boston University.Parker's academic background shows up in his books, beyond naming his hero after the 16th-century poet. The relationship between Spenser and his black sidekick, Hawk, reflects the classic pairings of James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye and Chingachgook, or Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Jim. Several times in the series, Spenser mentions the historian Richard Slotkin, whose books on American myths of violence, such as Gunfighter Nation, obviously influenced Parker. Parker taught until 1978, and The Godwulf Manuscript was one of many books he set at universities or elite New England prep schools. Spenser delights in deflating pompous academics with his unexpected erudition. Parker told one interviewer: "I'd been in the infantry in Korea and met some pretty bad people, but many, maybe most of the people I met in university life were the worst people I'd ever met."Although his close contemporary George V Higgins delved more deeply into the dark sides of Boston, Parker's version quickly became the one through which America saw the Hub City. His fourth Spenser novel, Promised Land (1976), won the Edgar award for best mystery novel and led to a television series, Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich, which was first aired in 1985 and ran for three seasons. It also led to a series focusing on Spenser's sidekick, A Man Called Hawk. With Joan, Parker wrote for the TV series BL Stryker (1989-90), starring Burt Reynolds. They earned an Emmy nomination for one script. Urich returned as Spenser in four TV movies between 1993 and 1995, with Parker and his wife writing some of the scripts, while three more TV movies featured Joe Mantegna in the lead role.These TV projects did not distract Parker from his books – he became even more prolific. He completed Chandler's unfinished Marlowe novel, Poodle Springs (1989), and wrote a sequel to The Big Sleep called Perchance to Dream (1991). In 1997 he began a series featuring Jesse Stone, former baseball player and now police chief in Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone's tormented relationship with his ex-wife makes him the id to Spenser's ego. Two years later, Parker introduced Sunny Randall, a female detective created as an unrealised film vehicle for the actor Helen Hunt. During the nine novels of the Stone series and the six Randall books, the two meet and become lovers. Although his books became slighter as they appeared more frequently, Parker's ability to sketch in scenes and characters quickly, usually through dialogue, kept them entertaining.In 2002 Parker received the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America, and he was such an institution in Boston that there are popular tours of Spenser locations. In publicity photos he usually posed in a leather jacket, with a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. In his 2005 novel, Double Play, a detective is hired to protect the baseball player Jackie Robinson while he integrates the professional game – a young fan named Robert Parker features in the book.Like Hemingway, Parker considered writer's block to be an excuse for laziness. He died of a sudden heart attack at his desk, working on his customary five pages a day. He is survived by Joan and his two sons. A new Jesse Stone novel is due in February, the fourth in his western series follows in May, and two more Spenser novels are apparently with his publishers.• Robert Brown Parker, novelist, born 17 September 1932; died 18 January 2010Crime booksUnited StatesMichael Carlsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |