Peachy Reads

James Ivory makes beautiful films from beautiful books, so after seeing the Oscar-nominated movie, Call Me by Your Name , I was intrigued.  Would the sumptuous Italian setting get an E.M. Forster treatment like Room with a View ?  Were the characters as complex as those in The Remains of the Day ?  Was the social commentary as sharp as in Howard’s End ?   Well, the novel  Call Me by Your Name is basically a love story with plenty of young angst.  If it’s an ode to Italy you’re looking for (which I think I was), it really isn’t that.  There are many differences between the book and the movie, and as often is the case, many scenes from the book don’t make the cut, and an interesting character in the book is not in the movie at all. In fact, the seaside town in the book becomes a landlocked village in Lombardy in the cinematic version.  The trip at the end of the summer is to Rome in the book and not Bergamo as in the movie.  So...

Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park , died a decade ago, but his estate is still finding new   (actually old) manuscripts to publish.   This one has the tantalizing cover that might make the reader think it’s a prequel to his dinosaur saga, but it ends up being more of a western.   Which is okay. It follows a paleontological expedition to the untamed west in the late 1800s, when the new discovery and pursuit of the fossilized remains of dinosaurs coincided with the lawlessness of the Wild West.   There are shootouts, Indian raids, stagecoach chases, and the like.    The historical foundation is interesting, but I sort of understand why this manuscript remained at the back of the drawer.

Richard Mayhew leads a rather ordinary London life—humdrum job, average flat, and a   totally controlling fiancée...   It all turns topsy-turvy when a gravely wounded girl almost literally drops in front of him on his way to a restaurant and he is introduced to “London Below” and all its oddities. Readalike:   Rivers of London