These authors have recently been introduced to me. I have read the first in the Erast Fandorin and David Audley series and have all the James Marwood historical thrillers ahead of me.
To digress, I have learnt something new this morning. The plural of series is series because, and this I didn’t know, it is a zero plural. I have been using them without knowing what they are called.
“Nouns that don’t change in their plural forms (called “zero plurals”) include “series,” “aircraft” and “species.” But most zero-plural words refer to animals, e.g., deer, moose, sheep, elk, walrus, antelope, fish, buffalo, salmon.”
Over the last nine years I have written about forgotten authors still very much worth reading but there’s another category drawn to my attention at lunch last week – “nobody reads Somerset Maugham”. As it happens I do and one other at lunch likewise. But there are authors I have read years ago and would not read today. My shelves are full of them as are second hand bookshops. JB Priestley, Henry James, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Ernest Hemingway and almost every sci-fi writer in the 50s and 60s except John Wyndham. That’s a sweeping generalisation and I wonder if I should read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. It might shine light on the global issues confronting us today. “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” (Susan Sontag)
The only TV programme I have watched recently is a two part documentary about Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Jonathan Rugman, Foreign Affairs correspondent at Channel 4 News, sets the scene.
“In January 2015, Abdullah, the 90-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, was dying in hospital. His half-brother, Salman, was about to become king – and Salman’s favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman, was preparing for power.
The prince, known simply by his initials MBS and then just 29 years old, had big plans for his kingdom, the biggest plans in its history; but he feared that plotters within his own Saudi royal family could eventually move against him. So at midnight one evening that month, he summoned a senior security official to the palace, determined to win his loyalty.
The official, Saad al-Jabri, was told to leave his mobile phone on a table outside. MBS did the same. The two men were now alone. The young prince was so fearful of palace spies that he pulled the socket out of the wall, disconnecting the only landline telephone.
According to Jabri, MBS then talked about how he would wake his kingdom up from its deep slumber, allowing it to take its rightful place on the global stage. By selling a stake in the state oil producer Aramco, the world’s most profitable company, he would begin to wean his economy off its dependency on oil. He would invest billions in Silicon Valley tech startups including the taxi firm, Uber. Then, by giving Saudi women the freedom to join the workforce, he would create six million new jobs.
Astonished, Jabri asked the prince about the extent of his ambition. “Have you heard of Alexander the Great?” came the simple reply.
MBS ended the conversation there. A midnight meeting that was scheduled to last half-an-hour had gone on for three. Jabri left the room to find several missed calls on his mobile from government colleagues worried about his long disappearance.” (BBC website)
“Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri is a former major-general, minister of state and long-time adviser to deposed Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia. He has been living in exile in Canada since May 2017.” (Wikipedia)