Bibliography, December 2013

BOTM: W. Dalrymple, Nine lives

S. Brook, Liquid Gold: dessert wines of the world
M. Kundera, The farewell party*
Montesquieu, Persian Letters*
W.S. Maugham, Liza of Lambeth

I almost gave this to Kundera (who is overdue a reread. I bought and reread this without remembering I'd read it before; and indeed own it), but Dalrymple's was consistently excellent, and engrossing. Basically, I can't really be bothered to read up on India properly, so I'm grateful for him and a selected handful of others for being effective and entertaining guides. He has never disappointed me. In other news, Maugham's celebrated debut is rubbish.

MPs' pay: the other metric

MPs and their pay, again. Boring boring.

And I say boring because the debate is so rubbish (though as an issue it is also intrinsically a bit boring). I don't really know where the right compromise is between enough and too much for MPs, but I find our summary of IPSA's logic pretty clear and it looks like they've got it about right, particularly as the overall cost of paying MPs will be flat. I could be persuaded otherwise.

However, what I'm struck by is how the debate totally ignores the rules for how MPs' pay will go up in future - in line with average earnings. This obviously does two things. Firstly it risks their pay getting out of sync again (their benchmarks may go up more or less than average earnings), secondly it gives them an incentive to support changes in the economy that improve average earnings, for which we should be grateful, I suppose.

But it doesn't go far enough. The average here is a median, so what this means is MPs will be judged on how much the person is in the exact middle of the list of earners does. But that's not how I would judge them; and that's not what the rhetoric of both sides is based on. They should be judged on how the worst off do (inter alia, I think making sure the average does up is the best solution to that too). So I would link MPs' pay to the mean average incomes of the poorest (10%; maybe 25%). That's what their real job is; they should be encouraged to do it.

Bibliography, November 2013

BOTM: A. Sisman, Hugh Trevor - Roper

J. Betjeman, Summoned by Bells
T. Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword
M. MacCambridge, America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation
J. Major, My Old Man: a personal history of Music Halls
G. Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four*

What a month! Four of the six books here could have been BOTM in almost any other month. Honestly, by the time I got to Orwell's masterpiece I felt I was on a downward spiral (it would still have comfortably taken prizes in previous months). Honourable mention to MacCambridge's history of American Football, which is essentially perfect, though as a subject not quite up there with Sisman. That wasn't perfect - I felt the seventies were undercooked - but it was brilliant.^ Peter Brown once described PhDs in Late Antiquity as choosing your bishop. Perhaps more modern biographers should choose their academic. In both cases, it's a fantastic way to hang a history of a period and a world, especially if, like HTR, they knew everybody. It's also a great triumph of taking a world which now feels very remote, though with familiar contours, and making it immediate. Finally, of course, it immaculately allows us into HTR's own head - and that's compelling. Sisman also writes excellently, with some lovely barbs hidden in the text. This was a favourite.^^ 

^I should of course disclose a more personal reason for finding this all fascinating: as well as being a Christ Church man, HTR was also my MSt supervisor's stepfather. He makes the odd appearance, very sympathetically too.

^^I did in fact have lots of markers of wonderful gobbets to quote, but the child took them all out, despite being supervised by A at the time.

Bibliography, October 2013

BOTM: A. Munro, Runaway

G.K. Chesterton, The Man who was Thursday 
R. Ellison, Invisible Man 

R. Mathiessen, The snow leopard 
A. Munro, Open Secrets 

J. Wyndham, The Chrysalids 

Disastrously, I've not updated this for weeks. Doubtless, everyone is on tenterhooks. I feel they may be disappointed. There are certainly few surprises in the selection - broadly, if you win the Nobel in English and aren't Pinter I'm going to aim to read you - soon. In this case, it was even easier as Anna already had these two Munros. And they were great, for the reasons the Nobel committee gave (bizarrely hard to find on their site, summarised externally). I'd also add what Jonathan Franzen wrote in my introduction to Runaway which is also her surprises - just as you think you've reached the point of a story, the perspective shifts. It's brilliant stuff. To be honest, which one was BOTM is a bit arbitrary, and the winner may have shaded it simply on the fact I read it first. It's clearly a canon I'm going to have read more of. Everyone should.

Bibliography, September 2013

BOTM: A. Patchett, Run

T. Harford, The undercover economist
N. Hawthorne, The house of seven gables
W. Horwood, Duncton Wood*
C. Smith, The Rediscovery of man
D. Swann, Swann's way out

I meant to read Ellison's Invisible Man this month, but I moved house instead and didn't get round to it. I'm sure it's excellent. Many of the books on this list aren't. Swann's book is silly; Hawthorne and Harford slight and while I love the Duncton trilogy, it is ultimately a fantasy trilogy about moles with most of the plot drawn from the Bible. However, Run was a deserving BOTM. It's been sitting on our shelves for ages (it's Anna's, so not included in my reading all my books), and I read it solely because it was set in Boston. There are lots of things to like about it, not least the simplicity of the concept. You can certainly easily imagine the pitch for the novel. I suspect I'm currently pretty susceptible to novels about parenthood, but this was a great one, despite it's really obvious setup. Anyway, what I liked was that despite the really obvious setup, it was full of lovely byways and really well done other bits, around politics, religion and, indeed, fish (read: obsessions). Good end too.

Tax does actually have to be taxing

In case you were in any doubt about the value of the Liberals, here they come with a plastic bag tax that isn't even a plastic bag tax. I'm objecting here not on the issue of whether we should have a plastic bag tax - I don't really see why not, but that's not the point - but the muddled and dangerous thinking behind the idea of a compulsory levy that doesn't go to government (as per the system in Wales). It's awful, in principle and in practice.

I think we can quickly attend to one half of the problem. Donating the money to a good cause is optional. Therefore, if they choose supermarkets can net additional profits by keeping the money. It's an odd (and badly designed) sin tax that incentivises those charging it to sell more. We wouldn't suggest that the markup on cigarettes was kept by the tobacco companies. Luckily, public and political pressure will mean that all the big firms will pass it on to charity. That's almost worse.

And there are two big reasons why:

• It suggests charity is a better use of money than government spending. It isn't: it's not universal; it's not monitored; it's not accountable and it's not capable of the large scale planning and investment that government does. I know we do it for gift aid, but that's for additional voluntary giving. This is compulsory. This matters: once you start attacking the principle that taxes go to government for government to allocate, it's not clear why you have government at all. 
• Worse, it also suggests a direct link link between a single tax and an area of spending. That's not what taxes are for (Nota Bene, people who bang on about 'road' tax). Fiscal policy is set to do two things: raise money (this won't) and influence behaviour (this will, pace tobacco). It's muddleheaded thinking to link this to spending priorities. That's just a waste of money simultaneously leading to a downward spiral of decay for poor places and unfashionable causes. Governments must allocate spending where we need it, not based on where they raise it. 

In the end this particular element doesn't matter very much, and not just because it's a Liberal policy. It's not pointless (it will shift behaviour in probably a positive way); it's not very much money (especially if it works). It's just an unnecessary signal in the wrong direction and symptomatic of the weakness of political thought. 

Anathema.

Bibliography, August 2013

BOTM: J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom

W. Cather, O Pioneers
A. Christie, Lord Edgeware dies
A. Christie, Dumb witness
G. Greene, The Comedians
L.P. Hartley, The Boat 

J. Lees-Milne, Ancient as the Hills*

Honourable mentions all round this month. I'm loving Willa Cather at the moment, Greene was moving and excellent, while Hartley is repaying investment outside his big hit. I was also tempted to give BOTM to Lees-Milne, whose diaries remain exquisite, ten years after I read them the first time round. However, McPherson was pretty much perfect. Obviously, I don't know much about the American Civil War (or the second American civil war as I think we should call it), but it is a major - and salutary - topic. My host in the States was of the view it's far more important than the revolution in understanding the country and I think he might be right. This treatment was as engrossing as it is economical (here defined as getting it in to one volume). Buy it; read it.