Chris Leigh. Britain’s Railways from the Air (1987)

     Chris Leigh. Britain’s Railways from the Air (1987) Leigh has assembled a lovely collection of air photos, many taken in the 1920s and 30s, when aerial photography was difficult, to put it mildly. He reprints a photo showing the photographer hanging onto a large plate camera, while the pilot looks over his shoulder, prior to take off.
     Considering the relatively slow speed of the photo emulsions of the time, the inevitable shaking of the plane itself, and the difficulty of maintaining the aim of the camera, it’s amazing how clear the images are. Actually, even though this book was printed in the late 80s, printing technology was generally still not capable of transferring the film image to the page without a severe loss of detail and a compression of gray scale in the shadows and highlights. Or else the publisher assigned the printing to an older firm still using older technology, and so saved some money. In any case, Leigh often refers to things he must have seen when he examined the original prints or negatives, but which the reader cannot make out. It would be nice to see the book reprinted with current technology, or issued as an e-book with large image files scanned from the negatives.
     Even so, I enjoyed the book. One thing that struck me was the large number of allotments near the railway lines, some of them on a patch of ground between the tracks and an industrial site, and so on. Another thing is how empty much of rural England was before the second world war: the housing estates that now crowd round country towns and villages were almost entirely absent. Some of the railway installations were enormous: it’s difficult to realise how much land railway yards and junctions could take up. Nowadays, the tracks have been lifted from most of them, and the sites host shopping malls, light industries, or apartment blocks. *** (2010)

Tim Wilco. More Funny Things on the Way to Church (1983) & Bill Stott. The Crazy World of Gardening (1987)

     Tim Wilco. More Funny Things on the Way to Church (1983) Just what the title says, and all true, if the people who submitted these anecdotes are to be believed. A few real knee slappers, but mostly gentle chucklers or wry smilers. **½

     Bill Stott. The Crazy World of Gardening (1987) Again, just what the title says. The cartoons will prompt more or less pleasant memories in all gardeners. These two books are Christmas gifts from Fay, who knows I like to be amused. **½ (2010)

Two railway histories

     Glen W. Curnoe. The London & Port Stanley Railway 1915-1965 (1976) A compilation, not a book, but a good read for the railfan, and especially for the L&PS fan. Photos vary in quality, but are generally well-reproduced. Curnoe has assembled a useful and pleasing collection of pictures and reminiscences. Recommended for them as likes these kinds of books, and no doubt useful for anyone who intends to write thorough history of the line. **½

     John H. White. Early American Locomotives (1972) White has collected engravings and drawings illustrating the development of steam locomotives in North America from the beginnings to about the 1890s. Visually very nice, with brief but informative captions, and an introductory survey. I’ve looked through this book many times. It amounts to a demonstration of the engraver’s art and skill *** (2009)

Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003)

     Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003) McCall Smith has a deserved reputation as a story teller, but I find his tales more than a little lightweight. He writes for what was at one time a major market, mass magazines. In the 50s and 60s most magazines, even those focussing on niche interests, carried short fiction. Now, only women’s magazines provide a reliable market, and it’s no accident that McCall Smith has a higher status among women readers than among men. These short stories are pleasant entertainments, but no more. A couple disturb a surface that hides darkness, as in Bulawayo, a story of a wife’s decision to abandon her husband for a fling with a boy, but McCall Smith leaves it up to the reader to imagine that darkness. At his best, he displays the same kind of cool ruthlessness as Alice Munro: He just shows you what happens, and how poor or ill-considered choices, or mere accident, can cause catastrophe. This dispassionate view of human frailties lifts him a notch or two above the merely good. **½ (2009)

Linwood Barclay. Bad Guys (2005)

     Linwood Barclay. Bad Guys (2005) The narrator, a reporter for the city paper, which improves his income but not his level of anxiety, which remains high. Turns out it’s justified: Zack becomes entangled in a homicide, the Mob, crooked cops, a car with drugs in the door panels, and so on. The mobster collects Barbie dolls, so when Zack attacks the collection itself, he’s distracted enough to lose the firefight. All ends well, but it’s taken 40 TV-scene sized chapters to get there. Barclay wrote a column for the Toronto Star; this accounts for the ring of truth in the newsroom scenes. He has a sly sense of humour, he delivers dead-pan comments that take a second ro two to hit, and touches of parody and satire of the hard-boiled ‘tec story. Entertaining enough that I’ll read any other of Barclay’s books that I find. **½

David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997)

     David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997) Occasional pieces by a satirist who at his best rivals Swift, but too often is merely bad tempered. All these pieces deal with Christmas. “Santaland Diaries reports on Sedaris’s stint as a department store elf; his observations on the tyranny of sentimental expectations are astute and hilarious. “Based on a True Story” satirises the contemptuous and self-deluding attitudes of the self-styled creative people who want to make money with movies and TV shows supposedly about actual events. It uses Swift’s technique of impersonation of the satiric target, and succeeds as Swift’s “Modest Proposal” does: it makes us squirm as we half-recognise attitudes in ourselves uncomfortably close to those attacked. Sedaris has a reputation as a humorist, but humour is at most a side effect of his true talent, that of clear-eyed observation of the follies and vices that beset us all. ***

Faye Kellerman. Stone Kiss (2002)

     Faye Kellerman. Stone Kiss (2002) Decker is asked to help find the missing niece of his half-brother’s wife. But when he gets to New York, the family puts him off. He looks up an old nemesis, Chris Donatti, whom he sprung from jail because the evidence had been cooked, and who has become a major supplier of drugs and women. Donatti becomes a key figure in the denouement, and even more entangled with Decker and his family. This book is about the tangled messes of family, personal, and business relationships, not clarified by corrupt cops, religious scruples, and horrific family dysfunction. Donatti is a psychopath, which makes for tension and violence, but when his purposes coincide with Decker’s, he is an ally. He uses violence as a tool, with no particular pleasure.
     In fact, the book has a lot of violence. Kellerman is clearly angling for a wider audience. The result is a book that’s very TV. Even its elucidation of the sources of evil parrots that facile psycho-babble that makes so much American TV less than credible. The accounts of Jewish life are, as always, interesting, and I must take them at face value. In the books between the first two (I read the second one) and this one, Decker has discovered his birth family, which was Jewish, so he turns out to be Jewish after all. But he still has close ties to his adoptive family. Etc. These aspects of the narrative are more interesting than the violence, which feels more like a movie than real life. A minor disappointment, despite its swift narrative rhythm. ** (2008)