David Ulin review, here. The NY Times ran a review earlier in the week, and while I often get books at the library, and am currently making a list of those I will download onto my new Kindle whenever the heck Amazon can get it together to send it (I ordered it August 3; apparently, Amazon didn't have any ready to ship, but didn't think it was important to let me know that, but anyway...), I did make a trip today to Powell's to buy Freedom. Turns out, it's not out until August 31. I just wrote a review for How to Become a Scandal, and my editor let me know he was going to hold it, until the 29th issue of the paper, so as not to, you know, get readers psyched to buy it and then have it unavailable. I realize Franzen is a big, big name (I loved The Corrections, the only book where I have had the sensation, while reading, of running alongside the story, physically running), and that the window to capitalize on book releases grows smaller and smaller. But still, I was disappointed to have made the trip and not found it. I wanted to read it all day in our newly slated-over backyard (bye bye, grass!).
Today is one of those rare days where I do not need to be reading for work; where I can read just for pleasure, which of course make the work better. I have hundreds of books here on my book shelves... I can to choose... and I have just chosen Charles McCarry's Old Boys. I've read two of McCarry's books, the brilliant The Miernik Dossier, and The Last Supper, which I liked but did not love. I find this to be my reaction to the work of most espionage authors: some books strike as utterly original, others hew too close to the formula. Another favorite: Alan Furst's Kingdom of Shadows, whose protagonist, Nicholas Morath, quite got under my skin; I do think, in the worlds we build and keep in our minds, I have made a roomfor myself and Morath, in Paris 1939. I am, you see, Mary Day.
Let me know your favorite espionage books, and why.