Bibliography, 2023

A triumph! For the first time since the children, I read over ten books a month. Six of them were graphic novels (comics), so it's not quite the unambiguous result I was hoping for, but I will take it.

The breakdown is atypical. Lots of fiction (70 books) and lots of 'hard' non-fiction. History alone was 28 books. But much less cultural output than usual (only 19). It's a split comparable to my nadir-year of 2017, though the volumes were almost twice that. Books of the Month were even more extreme. Seven were non-fiction, all history, with only five fiction. Interestingly, though 80% of my fiction reading was of white authors - as usual - three of those five were by black writers.

Two of those vied for my favourite fiction of the year. I thought Segu was a marvellous book, but I think A grain of wheat is a great one. It brings real immediacy to a time that is unfamiliar, but is nuanced and thoughtful around it. It's striking to me how good the plot is too. This is not a cipher for a story of colonialism, this is a great story.

Non-fiction was much much harder. Several of these were outstanding. Townsend was brilliantly illuminating; Hoschchild ruthlessly compelling. I almost gave BOTY to Shapiro's masterpiece about Shakespeare, and I do think it is a masterpiece. The concept alone is worth a lot. It's an original and effective way into well known texts, and really sets up a much richer and real engagement with them. I loved it. I would recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the topic. I would not recommend Peter Wilson's book on the Holy Roman Empire on the same basis. It is much denser and more technical, and requires a decent working knowledge of a lot of German history. But I loved it, and it is brilliant, and bold, and has transformed how I think about the Empire. I suspect I will come back again and again to it.

Jan: P. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire (2016)
Feb: M. Ormrod, Edward III (1990)
Mar: Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A grain of wheat (1967)
Apr: A. Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (1998)
May: O. Butler, Kindred (1979)
Jun: C. Townsend, Fifth sun (2019)
Jul: C. Powers, In the memory of the forest (1997)
Aug: J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)
Sep: S. Alexievich, Second hand time (2013)
Oct: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)
Nov: M. Mazower, The Greek revolution (2021)
Dec: M. Conde, Segu (1984)

Bibliography, December 2023

BOTM: M.Conde, Segu (1984)

B. Duffy, The generation divide (2021)
B. McClellan, Promise of Blood (2013)
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected stories (2018) [all stories pre-1935]
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014)

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987)

M. Wallis, Wines of the Rhone (2021)

M. Williams, The chalet girls grow up (1997)

I really liked Segu, though some reviewers have pointed out the problematic parts of it. It's particularly striking I think if you're used to an Anglophone sense of African literature, where Islam features so much less heavily than French Africa. Anyway, it's big, and bold, and well done. The narrative is very good at imagining the world that the characters inhabit, and it's chosen very well to show the gradations within that West African society as well as a specific slice of European encounters. And it was good to see the European narrative carry weight without taking centre stage.

A placeholder note for a provocative imagining of the future for the Chalet School triplets. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I don't have time to write down, but I am also glad I read that. Almost everyone else, good and bad, would have benefitted from making their books shorter.