{"id":6324,"date":"2025-12-01T21:50:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/?p=6324"},"modified":"2025-12-01T21:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:50:15","slug":"what-i-read-in-november-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/2025\/12\/01\/what-i-read-in-november-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Read In November"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mick Herron: Real Tigers<\/a>, Spook Street<\/a>, London Rules<\/a>, Joe Country<\/a>, Slough House<\/a>, Bad Actors<\/a>, Clown Town<\/a><\/em><\/strong> Following on from Slow Horses<\/em><\/a> and Dead Lions<\/em><\/a> (both reviewed last month<\/a>) these novels — which should be read (or listened to) in that order — follow the misfortunes of the variously damaged and inept spies exiled from MI5 to the sin bin that is Slough House, in the hope that they’ll quit and so won’t be able to claim redundancy pay. The presiding genius is the intellectually brilliant if personally revolting Jackson Lamb who, despite everything, always looks after ‘his Joes’. Although the Slow Horses are meant to be confined to their desks where they are engaged in pointless and Sisyphean tasks, they inevitably get caught up in wider plots and intrigues often involving the opportunist politician Peter Judd and the scheming head girl<\/del> spy Diana Taverner. The writing has its longueurs but the action makes up for it. The plots are clever but forgettable, but you’ll read this for the characters: the whole sequence (which might yet carry on) is less a series of stand-alone thrillers than a soap opera. People come and go. They die, and are occasionally resurrected. And so the world turns. I’m addicted.<\/p>\n

Ron Chernow: Alexander Hamilton<\/em><\/a><\/strong> I’d read this before but turned to it again after seeing the eponymous stage show by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who read the book and turned it into a musical theatre performance. You might have heard of it. And what a subject! If Alexander Hamilton’s story weren’t true you’d never have believed it: born into penniless illegitimacy in the tropical hellhole that was the slave-worked British West Indies, his early life was so obscure that nobody really knows when he was born (though it was most likely 1757). Misfortune stacked upon misfortune until, impressed by his early literary skills, people passed the hat round to send him to New York for a proper education. Once there he hit the ground running, and if his origins were unpropitious, after landfall he seemed to be in all the right places at all the right times. He fought in the American Revolution, became George Washington’s aide-de-camp, and the first Secretary to the Treasury in the infant United States. A genius for organisational structure and a monumental capacity for work, he defended the US Constitution in The Federalist Papers<\/em>; created the U. S. Treasury out of nothing, and with financial structures that were way ahead of their time, used debt-financing to turn thirteen bankrupt and fractious colonies into a united, prosperous and powerful nation. At the same time he fell prey to America’s first sex scandal (he was blackmailed after falling headfirst into a honey trap). He made enemies, too — the Civil War, and the polarisation in the United States today, can arguably be traced to the falling-out between the self-made and opinionated Hamilton, who favoured strong central government, and the aristocratic and more reserved Thomas Jefferson, who preferred a more devolved association of independent states. Hamilton was killed in his forties in a duel with longtime political rival Aaron Burr, which meant that, unlike all the other Founding Fathers, he wasn’t allowed to grow old and polish his legacy. But what a life he’d led before that. Chernow’s book is thoroughly researched but as stirring and juicily readable as Miranda’s musical has catchy tunes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mick Herron: Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules, Joe Country, Slough House, Bad Actors, Clown Town Following on from Slow Horses and Dead Lions (both reviewed last month) these novels — which should be read (or listened to) in that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6324"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6327,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324\/revisions\/6327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}