Bibliography, March 2023

BOTM: N. wa Thiong'o, A grain of wheat (1967)

L. Binet, HhhH (2010)
------ Civilisations (2019)
P. Carey, The fat man in history and other stories (1980)
G. Dangerfield, The strange death of liberal England (1936)
N. Gaiman, The Sandman: The Doll's House (1990)
------ The Sandman: Dream country (1991)
------ The Sandman: Brief lives (1994)
B. Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe (2001)

G. Heyer, An Infamous army (1937)
D. Landy, Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant #2) (2008)

J. Kenrick, Musical theatre: a history (2008)
R. Mabey, Wild cooking (2008)
S. Tharoor, Inglorious Empire (2017)

For about fifty pages, I thought Dangerfield's classic was going to be my favourite. That section is wickedly well written, sharp and bright. I loved it. The rest is good, and has lots of biting passages, but struggles to contain the narrative that he's writing and lacks tightness. It needed a better chronology, and I think it should have been shorter. It is still a classic.

Several others were excellent. I'm unconvinced by the French vogue for autofiction in general, but I thought Binet's book on Heydrich was very good. And he's right about Littell. I also really liked Evaristo's early work on on Roman London (though it isn't really). It's very good, funny, and poignant too. I have nothing to add to general comment on The Sandman which I obviously read because of the television adaptation, but is none the worse for it. I read about Musical theatre because I love it, and it did its job well too.

However, best of all was Thiong'o. I read it because I wanted to read more African literature (this is Kenyan), but I found it compelling. It does not have a string of memorable quotations, like Dangerfield, but it was compelling, both in structure and plot. The story of the British exit from Kenya is known, though not well known I fear, and this does it well. Where I think it did it excellently, was in the complexity and range of the responses to it. This was his penultimate book in English before he exclusively wrote in Gikuyu afterwards. I can't wait to read them.

Bibliography, February 2023

BOTM: W.M. Ormrod, The reign of Edward III (1990)

R. Adams, Horses of the North (1985)
R. Adams, A man called Milo Morai (1986)
H. Carr, The Red Prince: the life of John of Gaunt (2021)

N. Gaiman et al, Sandman, vol 8: World's end (1994)
N. Gaiman et al, Sandman, vol 9: The kindly ones (1996)
W. Golding, The Spire (1964)
N. Jubber, Epic continent (2019)

T. Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (1988)

I bought this month's BOTM by complete accident. I tried (twice!) to buy Ormrod's biography of Edward III, as part of my ongoing quest to work through the high middle ages in England. But I ordered this by mistake so might as well have read it. And it was outstanding - it's such pleasure to read proper historical analysis with succinct conclusions. The central framing, that segments Edward III's reign into three phases, is clear and very helpful to any understanding. I'm not going to bother with the biography now. I wish I hadn't bothered with that of John of Gaunt, where the author has simple regurgitated her reading  notes. Sigh.