The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

Having already seen (and loved) the movie, Ishiguro’s novel really had no surprises for me – but boy was it lovely…

From an historical point of view, Ishiguro does a remarkable job of highlighting how easy it is to be harsh on British appeasers in hindsight because of the consequences of their actions (personally, I think they were fools who thought they understood Hitler and his depravity, but they were also dealt a remarkably bad hand…). And, also, he describes how the patterns of international diplomacy (once the happy game of the chosen few who had moved in the same circles for centuries) changed between the wars as those positions became way more professionalized.

And as for Mr Stevens, much like Penny does with Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory (not the most cultural of references, I know), I wanted to hug him at times and try to explain things that are obscure to him (like banter…) in the simplest possible way.

Too bad that, yet again, I found myself thinking what those people would have voted for in the EU referendum…

Bagombo Snuff Box – Kurt Vonnegut

I don’t even know how I managed (or was it my wife that managed?) to get my hands on this collection of short stories, but I’m glad I did.

I was expecting science fiction, but what I got was a wide range of styles, with stories often about American suburban life (the joy!), and in which the American dream is, in one way or another, crushed time and again.

Vonnegut’s humour and irony are very much there, like in all his other works, and some of the stories (like The Package) would have given me a bit of faith in the future of mankind – too bad they were written 60 years ago and the world is still very much an awful place…