52 book challenge - July

So I'm back from London, the City that... has a lot of rain? It doesn't really have a snappy nickname, like The Big Apple or The City of Lights. Apparently, the most-used nickname is "The Big Smoke", which may or may not be very apt, as I couldn't really see any smoke through all the rain.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time in museums, and not a lot of time reading, so my book list didn't really grow that much during this particular holiday. I'll have to make that up during our camping trip to France in the coming weeks.
The standings are as follows:
24 The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
25 Starter for Ten - David Nicholls
26 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John le Carre
27 De Aanslag (The Assault) - Harry Mulisch

I am nearly finished with Speaking with the Angel, a short story collection by Nick Hornby, but I don't think I'll finish that this month. But, still, I'm more than halfway! And today's week number is 31, so I'm still just four books behind, which I can easily catch up on.
Some varied reading this month. The Talented Mr Ripley should probably be seen as a classic, as it is from 1955 and hasn't really been out of print since. I hadn't read any Ripley novels before and fell asleep during the film, but the story gripped me. I'm not really into crime novels, but this one had a nice psychological edge to it that made it interesting. Also, part of it takes place in Venice, which seems to be a favourite place for lots of literary characters these days (the protagonists of Us and The Discovery of Heaven also find themselves in Venice at some point).
Starter for Ten is something completely different, but one of my favourite books of those I've read so far this year. I'm a big fan of University Challenge and had already seen the film (with James McAvoy! And Benedict Cumberbatch! And they're so young!), so I was familiar with the plot, but Nicholls writing style is just the best. It is a very comical story, but has a very serious class-conscious undertone that comes out better in the novel.
Another novel I'd already seen the film of was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, my second John le Carre novel. Now I didn't really understand or follow the film properly, so I was counting on le Carre's beautiful writing style (as discovered in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold), and it was another gem. The first few chapters leave you utterly confused, as he starts in the middle of everything and doesn't explain who people are or where they are or what they are doing or why, but slowly you get to discover all the pieces and put them together. It's written like the puzzle George Smiley has to construct: who is the mole hiding in the British secret service? Somehow you do figure it out just slightly ahead of Smiley, so you can feel a bit smug about yourself even while you are wondering how you ever got there.
And finally I read one of the great Dutch classics, The Assault, by Harry Mulisch. I couldn't really get through his The Discovery of Heaven, but The Assault is much thinner and much better written. I won't give away too much, but it's about the Second World War and it's kind of another puzzle, only this time, the protagonist doesn't really want to solve it, he just sort of gets pulled in. Most of my classmates read this book in secondary school, but I was trying to be anti-snob by not reading any novels by Mulisch or his famous contemporaries. Which leaves me in the happy position of being able to discover and read them, and probably appreciate them better, now.

So, just one more week, and then we're off to the south of France to do some camping, and a looot of catch-up reading!