Cloak and Dollar: a History of American Secret Intelligence. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

My first comprehensive reading on the US intelligence world. The author's premise is fairly simple: the size of the US intelligence community is the result of generations of secret agents promoting themselves and their organisations. He starts with Pinkerton and traces self-promotion through Dulles and Casey up to the post-9/11 world.

A successful rebuttal of this work will show that the relentless increase in budget and growth of organizations has increased the number of intelligence non-events.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

This is a difficult book to write about. It is set in Victorian times, mostly in England and Italy. The characters are mostly Americans, but rich ones, who can afford to travel and live abroad and hobnob with the aristocracy. Yet the contact with the locals are given no attention.

The lady in question is Isabel Archer, who is started on this life by her aunt who brings her from Albany, and given a great shove forward by her uncle who leaves her a fortune. Being a beauty, Isabel is besieged by suitors, all of them eminently suitable, but she rejects them all, to marry Gilbert Osmond, an obscure collector of art. The marriage turns sour, and it turns out that Osmond collected her like a piece of art and was not prepared to let her have a mind of her own.

The novel is beautifully crafted, and each chapter seems to have style and colour of itself, as if the story is made of a number of separate panels — I suppose the motion picture idea of a scene would be an appropriate analogy.

One of the things that makes this a difficult book to write about, is that the art of conversation seems to be the atmosphere in which these people live, and I've never seen that in action.

The book begins with a very pleasant afternoon tea, and ends with a woman returning to an unraveling marriage. Despite the appealing beginning it is not a simple love story. It is in fact rather dark and seems to say that truth and honesty is no defence against calculating evil.

You wanted to look at life for yourself — but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!

Best Short Stories 1991 edited by Giles Gordon and David Hughes.

A collection of short stories 'from Britain and the Commonwealth.' All well crafted, though some of them lack a clear plot or seem pointless. I liked 'Magnets' by Colm O'Gaora best, as simple description of how a man spends the last hours of his wife's life with her. 'Eggs for the taking' by June Oldham is a chilling storie of an old lady's descent into senility and mental illness, and will be a good addition to a collection of horror stories.

Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

The subtitle of this newest edition is misleading: this is no "how to" or self-help book, but a readable summary of psychological research. A more accurate subtitle would be "how people achieve happiness."

I think anybody who has ever done anything well and is proud of it will recognize the descriptions of flow. What this book does is to attempt to show that flow can be achieved, and need not be an accidental occurrence. It is written in flowing prose, and progresses smoothly and swiftly from a theory of consciousness to the meaning of life. All of this is solid intellectual stuff, and not nearly as simple as it seems in this abstraction, which is what disqualifies it as a self-help book.

After I finished reading Flow I was filled with joy about the possibilities of life and an appreciation for its beauty. I hope it lasts.

The battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins.

Probably the definitive story of the Falklands war, written by one of the few war correspondents that accompanied the Task Force, and an experienced Whitehall journalist. Between them the run-up to the war and its execution is described fully. As usual in a Hastings book judgment is clear and ubiquitous, and shows not only the difference in quality between the opposing forces but also the strengths and weaknesses inside each force.

A very clear and understandable story of the war, and I recommend it as an introduction to the study of its history.

The single issue by Al Hsu

A book how Christians are to view and handle singleness. Full of good and solid Christian values, it is useful to all single people and the churches they belong to.

It is only in the chaper on 'Rethinking Romance' that mr Hsu mixes up lust and falling in love. While lust is a particular temptation for people in love, it is not the motivation for it; it is an irresistible force, sometimes damaging, sometimes beautiful. It might be avoided or slowed down, it might end or dissipate, but it cannot be stopped.

While this chapter says a lot about romance, and how unrealistic it is, and its alternatives, there is not a single reference in it to Song of Songs.

I recommend it to any Christians who find themselves unattached. Non-Christians will probably not understand much, but might get a feeling for the significance Christians attach to marriage.

Eats, shoots and leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation by Lynne Truss.

A nice little book that explains the rules and usage of punctuation, starting with the apostrophe and ending with a practical example of the importance a proper punctuation: the plagiarism of the British Government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction is obvious from the improper punctuation. Full of excellent humour, it does not shy away from telling about conflicts between different sets of rules.

Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function.