Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I've Just Finished Reading

Ben MacIntyre's A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, which I expected to enjoy and ended up adoring. Kim Philby was the head of the MI6's Soviet spy division, MI6's liaison to the Soviet spying operation within the CIA, and also at the same time a Soviet spy himself.

Basically he sunk all MI6's and the CIA's anti-Soviet operations for a decade, and no one noticed because his fellow spies, who were also his friends, simply couldn't believe that someone of their own class, who had attended the right schools and belonged to the right clubs, could possibly by a traitor.

(It occurs to me, to take this in an MCU direction for a moment, that SHIELD might have had a meritocratic version of this mindset: they couldn't see Hydra members in their midst because they believed that people who had the innate excellence to get into the SHIELD academy could not possibly betray them. Go bad in other ways, maybe. Betray SHIELD? But it's saving the world, and it's also super cool! Why would anyone do that?)

If part of an organization's draw is that it gives its members license to keep and revel in secrets, then it will inevitably attract members who want even deeper secrets: who are addicted to secrecy, whose addiction can only be fed by having a secret of their own, like being a double agent. That way they can fool even their fellow secret-keepers.

Philby's British BFF Nicholas Elliot managed to live a happy (if occasionally wistfully puzzled) life afterward, because he concluded that Philby had used his own best qualities, his sense of honor and fair play, to bamboozle him. But Philby's American BFF James Angleton, who had hitherto believed that his best qualities were his suspicious mind and razor-sharp intelligence, was totally destroyed by Philby's betrayal (because clearly he was neither suspicious nor sharp!) and spent the next decade purging to CIA to make sure that no one could ever hurt his ego like that again.

What I'm Reading Now

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I kind of feel that Gaiman really has one schtick, which blew me away when I first encountered it in Coraline, and has become progressively less engaging sense. (Of course it doesn't help with Neverwhere that I almost invariably prefer Gaiman's female characters to his male ones. He's like Philip Pullman that way.)

I'm also reading Jane Ridley's The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VIII, the Playboy Prince, because sartorias mentioned it and it sounded interested. And indeed, it is interesting! Although I think I would trust Ridley's analysis a little more if her dislike of Victoria and Albert were not quite so obvious. Maybe they deserve it, but it's hard to feel that Ridley's being fair when her feelings are so very clear.

What I Plan to Read Next

Gwen Raverat's Period Piece, a memoir of her childhood in Cambridge in the late nineteenth century. She was the daughter of a don and the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, so it ought to be interesting!

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should give Neil Gaiman another chance. I bounced off so many of his books in my twenties that his name has built up this plaque of disappointment, but I'm pretty sure that's less than 10% his fault. What would you say is his schtick?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Honestly, his work strikes me as a written version of Tim Burton's aesthetic: the images are striking and Gothic but rarely actually horrifying because they're stylized. The evil characters are usually human-shaped inhuman creatures with no particular depth to their motivations.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Hm. That makes it sound a little Not My Speed. Of his books, what would you say is the best? I'll tuck it away in the middle of my "read it sometime this year" list.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I liked Coraline best (it was, perhaps not coincidentally, the first one that I read), and it's has the added bonus of being fairly short.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

his name has built up this plaque of disappointment

That's such a perfect image of what you describe.

[silverusagi]

Gwen Raverat's Period Piece, a memoir of her childhood in Cambridge in the late nineteenth century.

Sounds interesting!

I have completely failed at reading more books this year. I think I've read, like, 12. FAIL. I still have a pile of unfinished ones that I must actually read before I start anything else. And it's not like they weren't interesting or I got bored, I just... stopped for some reason.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think you react to books the way I react to TV shows. I am forever starting new shows, and it seems interesting and fun, and then I stop watching and somehow never pick it up again. The momentum was lost, and that's apparently enough.

[silverusagi]

I used to react to books differently, though. I used to get through over a book a week. I just don't know what happened.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

"If part of an organization's draw is that it gives its members license to keep and revel in secrets, then it will inevitably attract members who want even deeper secrets: who are addicted to secrecy, whose addiction can only be fed by having a secret of their own, like being a double agent. That way they can fool even their fellow secret-keepers. "

That's very Le Carré. I've been meaning to read that, now I see your review I must get around to it!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

There's an afterword by Le Carre! It's actually mostly his interview notes from chatting with Nicholas Elliot, so kind of a letdown, but it shows that everyone in publishing read the book and went "Man, this is super Le Carre" as well.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Would you believe I've only ever read one thing by Neil Gaiman. Or no: I've read, two, sort of. I read through Coraline pretty quickly, but I think I skimmed the ending, so I don't count it as actually having read it. I read a longish short story of his called "Bitter Grounds" that I liked. (I feel like I may/probably have already told you this, though...)

I keep meaning to read The Graveyard Book.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think if Coraline didn't really appeal to you, then The Graveyard Book probably won't either. They aren't the same in plot or main characters, but the atmosphere seemed very similar to me.