Bibliography, October 2017

BOTM: J. Morris, Spain (1964. Revised 1979)

C.S. Farrelly, The Shepherd's Calculus (2017)
M. Hudson, Managing without profit (2009)
U. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea  (2001)
D. Smith, Former People (2012)

Bit of a thin month, after September's triumphant march through the Booker shortlist (even if the judges didn't agree). For most of it, I thought I was going to give my third BOTM in a year to Ursula Le Guin, because it was a nice collection. Then I read Morris on Spain, the first half of which I loved. It's always fascinating reading about Spain because of the rapidity of the shifts of political perspective. This, written in the 1960s and revised in the 70s, is obviously dated, but all the more interesting for it. It's a brilliant evocation of the history and that period of emergence of modern Spain in those decades. It was particularly poignant to read against the backdrop of the current constitutional mess. And this quotation - about forgiveness - may be one of my lifetime favourites.

Bibliography, September 2017

BOTM: T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st century (2013)

P. Auster, 4 3 2 1 (2017)
E. Fridlund, History of Wolves (2017)

M. Hamid, Exit West (2017)
P. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean: 1204-1500 (1995)

F. Mozley, Elmet (2017)
G. Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo  (2017)
A. Smith, Autumn (2017)

I gave myself a few extra days to finish Auster so I could fit the whole Booker shortlist in one month, especially as - miracle of miracles - it's before the announcement of the winner. He seems to have written (very nicely; and in far too many words) Sliding Doors - it was a lot better than I'd feared and it's certainly my favourite Auster (this is easy; I hate pretty much everything else of his I've read). 

Overall, it was a pretty good Booker list, with only Ali Smith really not up to it - her Brexit stuff was extremely clumsy. Everyone says Lincoln in the Bardo is going to win, but I thought it was nowhere near as clever or profound as everyone else, and the citations seem to be trying to make the same point as GCSE History about unreliable evidence. I had a few issues with Hamid because the high concept sneaks up on you, but then I thought it was great. The start especially is very good. Mozley also sagged slightly in the middle, but was genuinely gripping and a rare evocation of a raw, less civilised, world, just occasionally poking through the cracks of ours. It wasn't cheery, but it was powerful. It was my favourite.

Ranked as below:

1. Mozley
2. Hamid
3. Auster
4. Saunders
5. Fridlund
6. Smith

Not one of them made BOTM. That was Piketty, which I loved. It's not the book I expected it to be at all. It's got hard, real data in. I've referred to it in endless conversations already and I expect to keep coming back to it. It has flaws - its policy solutions are weaker than the analysis - but the good bits (which is most of it) are very very good. The data should be essential reading for any wider discussion about inequality and wealth. It won't be.

Bibliography, August 2017

BOTM: A. Bennett, These Twain (1918)

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The Chalet girls in Camp (1932)
J.P. Bean, (ed.) Singing from the floor: a history of British folk clubs (2014)
D.L. Sayers, Five red herrings (1931)

Slim pickings this month because a) I was finishing the doctorate and b) I've started to read Piketty. I also called the winner last month - These Twain  is masterful. Arnold Bennnett is desperately unfashionable now, but I don't really know why. He's capable of drawing character and plot on the domestic stage with great skill and without melodrama. I spent much of Clayhanger and this volume waiting for the business to fail, but it doesn't. The action is elsewhere. There aren't quite as many lovely asides as in the first volume, but it's a brilliant anatomisation of a marriage. It's obviously dated in some ways, but only in a trivial way. There will be more Bennett to come. Honourable mention to Bean's oral history of British Folk. I don't really like oral history, but this really grew on me.

Bibliography, July 2017

BOTM: M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical me (1943)

A. Bennett, Hilda Lessways (1911)
J. Cash, Forever words (2016)
The Detection Club, The Floating Admiral (1931)
C. Hitchens, No one left to lie to (1999)
J. Williams, The Copper promise (2014)

This was a bit of struggle. I'm loving Bennett, but Hilda Lessways doesn't quite do it (spoiler: no problems with the follow up next month). Similarly, the idea of the Detection Club is so conceptually perfect the book, while fun, didn't quite live up to it. I even had issues with my chosen volume. Fisher's writing is lovely, but it did need an editor - there were moments of meandering. However, the good bits were very good.  And her account of Dijon and Burgundian cuisine manged to evoke nostalgia for a place I have never visited. I wonder if I can persuade A that we need a family holiday to eastern France.

Bibliography, June 2017

BOTM: R.D. Putnam, Bowling alone (2000)

F. Bacon, History of the reign of King Henry the seventh (1626)
P. Lively, Passing on (1989)
F. Mount, Tears of the Rajas (2015)

I've spent the last few years worrying about the decline of our great institutions (broadly defined). I feel that the many and variegated assaults on those community networks like the Church or the Masons or the Rotary or Working Mens' clubs are going to be disastrous when the demographics play through. I'd extend that to different kinds of institutions like the BBC and even the loss of institutional control in, inter alia, local government, education and major companies. I think it's relatively overlooked. You can't build a community without continuity and while I applaud the specific work that is brilliant, I think without the rootedness and the breadth that bigger organisations bring, we have a major social problem. Putnam basically argues a slice of this (about bottom up participation) much better, with graphs. It was great, though really really depressing.

Bibliography, May 2017

BOTM: R. Adams, Watership Down (1972)*

K. Jackson, Coles to Jerusalem (2016)
D. Morris, The washing of the spears (1965)
K. Raworth, Doughnut Economics (2017)
A. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956)

This is tricky. I liked a number of these a lot. I'm nervous that I gave BOTM not to the best of them, but to the one with the most niche interest. Raworth was brilliantly insightful, but frustratingly without traction on a number of issues. And while I thoroughly enjoyed Morris' account of the Zulu wars, it has dated and the narrative around the Battle of Isandlwana needs an editor. I freely admit that I loved Angus Wilson's most famous work in part because the plot centres about medieval historians and medieval history, but don't let that put you off. It's actually brilliant, and full of excellent one liners. It's of its time, obviously, but I think still remains highly relevant about family, work and politics. AND its central plot is about an archaeological discovery.

Edit: I had totally forgotten that I reread Watership Down this month. That was much better than all of them. I love Watership Down.

Bibliography, April 2017

BOTM: N. Mandela, Long walk to freedom (1994)

S. Cain, Quiet (2013)
R. Prawer Jhabvala, A new dominion  (1972)
I. Kadare, The siege  (1970)
L. Lee, Village Christmas (2015)
P. Lively, The photograph  (1987)
J. Welby, Dethroning mammon (2017)
S. Westerfeld, Leviathan (2009)

This was obvious, though the reasons weren't. It also benefited from some others promising much but delivering badly - Welby was particularly vapid. Now, Mandela's book is obviously famous for its story, but I also particularly liked the reflection and the character sketches he makes. It's also very well put together and makes a long book fly by, though in reality the bulk of the book only covers about 15 years. It's a very effective polemic (with an easy target), and you'd be foolish to take it as history, but it's none the worse for that. 

I only ask for the simplest of basics

George Orwell once wrote a lovely essay on the ideal pub, which succinctly laid out what he considered to be the ideal establishment. It's still pretty much bang on, though he seems to care more about china mugs than I do.

I was reminded of it a few weeks ago when, in lieu of actually going to a church away day, I wrote down what I thought we needed to do. I pretty much laid out what an ideal church looks like. Actually though, in the interests, of tact, brevity and pragmatism, I don't think I went far enough. So I have here. Much like Orwell's Moon under water, my ideal church simply does the basics right and is sensible.

It has services at a sensible time, which on a Sunday requires no one to be out of the house before 9:30, or still in church when it is really time for lunch. Information about those services, as well as specific seasonal services is available in plenty of places, including on a website. It is not evangelism to expect people to guess when the Ash Wednesday service is on if they were  not in church on the Sunday. Details of the people and the logistics are also widely shared.

Those logistics are practical, with provision for children that neither forces them to listen to a service they find tedious; nor - worse - forces the rest of the congregation to endure too many children. No exceptions are made to this rule, even on high and holy days. It is not considered essential, as it is for so many churches, for children to be especially bored and their neighbours excessively hostile in the service of Easter. Both children and adults alike are well served with cake after church. And, on days of liturgical celebration, wine.

The texts are in proper prose and include the Old Testament - because we are not Marcionites. Sermons are short, no more than ten minutes, done well, and may even have jokes. They cover the specifics of the texts read. Hymns are mostly traditional, though there is no shame in choosing those that reflect the congregation occasionally. They rarely include the infantilising modern songs that are popular with children but have no place in a grown up church. 

Liturgically, nothing too outlandish is attempted and all is done promptly. There is no Marian idolatry smuggled in through the back door of appropriate vestments, though vestments should be appropriate and reflect in no way any fashion of the last half century. In an ideal world, the language would be Cranmer's, but at the very least, the Lord's Prayer talks of trespassing, not Sin, and at no stage will there be any suggestion that the word disciple is synonymous with friend. Communion is taken in both kinds, and with red wine - no  affection around transubstantiation here. There is, of course, no pause for the Peace. Everyone knows that the right time to swap pleasantries with your neighbour is at the end of the service.

This mostly describes a Sunday morning, but my ideal church would have daily services, to which I would go rarely, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know they exist. When services are not being held the church is open, often for events. Some may be Christian in character, but by no means all. This is a public building, open, supportive and embedded in its community. Someone, though of course, not me, can always clear up.

I am not hopeful.

Bibliography, March 2017

BOTM: U.K. Le Guin, A wizard of Earthsea (1968)

E.M. Brent - Dyer, The chalet school and Jo (1931)
U.K. Le Guin, The tombs of Atuan (1971)
U.K. Le Guin, The farthest shore (1972)
U.K. Le Guin, Tehanu (1990)
C. Mieville, The iron council (2004)
B. Wigdortz, Success against the odds (2012)

Late, and somewhat one dimensional. About half my reading this year has been Ursula Le Guin. The first one was the best, though all were excellent, even with the very obvious shift of gears in Tehanu which tries to retrofit more feminism in the world of Earthsea. It pretty much works, but the world is best realised (and it is very well realised) in the first one.

Bibliography, February 2017

BOTM: N. Mahfouz, Palace Walk

E. David, Is there a nutmeg in the house?
D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom

I'm starting to doubt the value of my Book of the Month allocation. All too often, it's the one I'm obviously going to like best before I've even started. While there are some great passages in both David and Marquand, about bread and democracy respectively, I - like the Nobel prize committee - thought Mahfouz was outstanding. There is definitely a unfamiliarity dividend. One of the reasons why it's so compelling is because it is so alien, but it's a story very well told. The synopsis doesn't do it justice either, and its deceptively gentle for what is a powerful and shocking end. That said, it's also a book about Alexandria. I love books about Alexandria.

Bibliography, January 2017

BOTM: U.K. Le Guin, Rokannon's World

A.C. de Wiart, Happy Odyssey
G. Haigh, Stroke of genius (2016)
U.K. Le Guin, Planet of exile (1966)
U.K. Le Guin, City of illusions (1967)
P.K. Dick, Our friends from Frolix 8 (1970)

I expected this to be the memoirs of one of our most endearingly mad fighters, but while Happy Odyssey was absolutely splendid, I was captivated by Ursula Le Guin's early novels, which I read in a collected edition. I've bought Earthsea again after running into the sand on it twenty five years ago on the strength of it. The best was the first, I think, but they were all outstanding. Like all good science fiction, there is something enthralling about new worlds being drawn, and it's a marker of the quality here that they are done so deftly and quickly. They are gems.

Bibliography, 2016

A reminder:

Jan: G. Maxwell, The ring of bright water (1960)

Feb: H. Trevor-Roper, The hermit of Peking (1976)
Mar: R. George, The Big Necessity (2008)
Apr: R. Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929)
May: T. Capote, In cold blood  (1966)
Jun: E. David, An omelette and a glass of wine (1984)
Jul: P.K. Dick, Flow my tears the policeman said  (1974)
Aug: P. Frankopan, The Silk Roads (2015)
Sept: E.L. Carr, A month in the country (1980)
Oct: P. Beatty, The Sellout (2016)
Nov: H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze  (2016)
Dec: J. Rayner, The Ten (food) commandments (2016) 

It's been a terrible year. I've read 75 books, ten below my previous low. Two thirds were fiction, and half of that was SF/Fantasy - some of which were outstanding, but too much was comfort reading. I blame the doctorate.

Fiction has taken the brunt of this and, despite the weight of reading, mustered only three BOTMs,m one of which was pretty much by default. I read a lot better works of fiction than Flow my tears... this year, just nothing in July. So sparse are the fiction pickings that, for the first time, I feared my monthly ranking is inadequate to the task. I briefly wondered if the best novel I read this year was Kathryn Stockard's The Help, which lost to Maxwell in January. However, that isn't the case. And although comparisons between the two options I have here are invidious - it is hard to line up a novella about English villages and churches with a freewheeling satire on US race relations in LA - I would plump for Carr on England, above other contenders. It's a gem.

Non-fiction should be harder. The list above is packed with quality, and is probably one of the most consistent of any year, both the famous and the obscure. I'd give honourable mentions and strong recommendations about Maxwell, Trevor-Roper, Capote and Jeffreys, but my favourite was Graves. It was probably always going to be.

Bibliography, December 2016

BOTM: J.Rayner, The ten (food) commandments

W. Cooper, Scenes from provincial life (1950)

P.K. Dick, Maze of death* (1970)

P. Suskind, Perfume (1985)
S.S. Tepper, Singer from the Sea (2000)

L. Thomas, The Lives of a cell (1974)

Nothing really to see here. I was underwhelmed by Perfume and this was the worst Tepper I have read. Both were good, I simply expected more. As with Lewis Thomas' collection of essays, which are really designed to be digested slowly; they felt disjointed when read in a couple of sittings. Rayner, similarly short, was punchier, more coherent and a good read. He's also been reading the same books as me. (I note that despite him also being struck by Michael Pollan's assertion that KFC ran an ad campaign with the slogan Women's Liberation [from cooking], I can''t find it. Though this is close). Worth a read. It was a perfect Christmas present.