Bibliography, December 2014

BOTM: S.S. Tepper, The Gate to Woman's country 

C. Booker, The Seven basic plots

M. Bulgakov, A dog's heart
W. Gibson, Neuromancer 

T. Pratchett & N. Gaiman, Good Omens*

P.G. Wodehouse, Sam the sudden 

I liked a lot of these, though none were absolutely stellar. Booker was terrible, after about page 250 (there were a lot more). I was tempted to put Good Omens at the top, but I have read it enough times before such than many of the great jokes were remembered as much as read. I almost put Gibson at the top for the reverse reason, namely I've never read it, but it now feels very familiar - it's famously a book that launched a subgenre - but it does feel dated now. So, with these caveats, my favourite was Tepper's feminist envisioning of a post-apocalyptic world. and I can't really believe I'm writing that.

Daniel John Garrood

b. 01:43, 30.xii.2014, London, 8lb 6oz (3.8kg)

Daniel for:
the Prophet
the Stylite

John for:
the Baptist
the Revelator (as this, not as imagined by DH Lawrence)
Tzimiskes
Cash
And my grandfather, John Garrood

Disappointingly, Anna vetoed Charles.

Bibliography, November 2014

BOTM: R. Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north

G. Flynn, Gone Girl
P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the World's Desire
R. Mortimer, Dear Lupin: letters to a wayward son
J. Norman, Edmund Burke
P.G. Wodehouse, Cocktail time

So, I've done this already, Flanagan's Booker prize winner is deserved. It's also the best book I've read this month, in what is a strong field, with the return of the Earl of Ickenham in a late Wodehouse and the compelling account of Ottoman Constantinople, which was very well done indeed. Anyway, I won't rehearse my reasons for Flanagan, which was almost entirely well and effectively done (there's an annoying and pointless Jane Eyre like coincidence in the plot that I hated, but it was a small detour). The subject is fascinating and I think it's a mark of how well it's done that the Japanese sections work as well as the Australian.

Bibliography, October 2014 (Booker edition)

BOTM: E. Waugh, Men at Arms

J. Ferris, To rise again at a decent hour

K.J. Fowler, We are all completely beside ourselves 

H. Jacobson, J
N. Mukerjee, The lives of others
A. Smith, How to be both
E. Waugh, Helena
E. Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen
E. Waugh, Unconditional Surrender
M Zusak, The Book Thief

&, for completeness but not actually finished till November, R. Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north 

This has become a bit difficult. I delayed this because - for the first time ever - I've managed to read all the Booker shortlist. Unlike last year, they appear to have been right. So, Flanagan would have been BOTM had it been in the month, but it wasn't. Anyway, It's still difficult to award pick a favourite then because I can't really call out which one of Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy is the best. The last one is the nicest to read because it gets resolved, but I think it's the first one that does what it does best, though that may be because I found the great character of the mad brigadier (Ritchie - Hook) more amenable than the monstrous Ludovic who stalks Officers and Gentlemen. The trilogy, it goes without saying, is magnificent.

For the record, I'd rank the Booker shortlist as follows: 1. Flanagan, 2.Fowler, 3. Mukerjee, 4. Ferris, 5. Smith, 6. Jacobson. If I could have read just the first half of Ferris or the second half of Ali Smith (in my version, the modern story), they'd have done better.

Bibliography, September 2014

BOTM: D. Brown, Bury my heart at wounded knee*

M. Atwood, Oryx and Crake

J. Berger, Ways of seeing

M. Kundera, Immortality

L. Lee, A moment of war

D. du Maurier, My cousin Rachel

H. Murakami, Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world

R.L. Stevenson, Kidnapped*

I've had to abandon my objection to Margaret Atwood doing Science Fiction, because - aside from the Handmaid's tale, which is a bit clunky - it turns out she does it really well. However, her achievement pales beside the feat of historical re-imagining that Dee Brown manages with his famous, and wonderful, account of the history of the end of the plains Indians. Reading it for the second time, I looked up the reaction, and the criticism. Some of that criticism is probably fair. It is a whitewash, and no attempt is made to analyse and understand the acts of the settlers. But, more than ever, I don't think that matters. What he does is to give a vanished people a history, albeit one without a happy ending. And he does so with a voice that isn't that of the victorious Americans. That's astonishingly hard to do - we are all prisoners of own historiography - and here it's done with style and an emotional punch that still smarts long after I finished reading. Were I to do one of those ten books challenges, it would be there.

Bibliography, August 2014

BOTM: M. Kundera, Life is Elsewhere 

R. Calder, Willie: a life of Somerset Maugham

T. Hunt, 10 cities that made an Empire

D. du Maurier, Jamaica Inn
E.M. Remarque, All quiet on the Western Front
K. Roberts, Pavane 
A. Solzhenitsyn, August 1914 

I had forgotten just how much I like Kundera. I've picked up a few ones I didn't have in charity shops recently (including one I accidentally bought for the second time). Rather nicely, they seem pretty much to have come in chronological order. Anyway, this one was great - light, funny, and touching. I don't think it's his best, but it was good enough this time.

Down with the Manor of Northstead

Douglas Carswell may have given an undeserved victory to Ed Milliband, and he has certainly given a filip to Nigel Farage, for both of which he should ashamed. People seemed to have talked about that a lot. However, he is definitely taking Parliament closer to the tyranny of party, which is much worse, and people haven't really talked about that enough. I don't believe he's doing it cynically - there’s no doubting that he is a man of principles, but so was Lenin. Neither's happen to be mine.

I feel we are underplaying the constitutional impact not so much of what he has done, but how he has done it. We have had MPs defecti before - there are a surprising number. They make excellent copy, and they are disastrous for parties. However, most don't resign their seats. In fact the last MP to do so was Bruce Douglas-Mann in 1982. Reflexively people tend to think this is bad, arguing that MP's who switch allegiance should be forced to face their electors again. Apparently this is more 'democratic.' Obviously, I don't really care if it's more democratic. Douglas Carswell does. But where does this end: when Claire Short resigned as a Labour MP, should she have faced the electors? When parties discipline members by withholding the whip, should that trigger an election? Should all the Liberal Democrats fight their seats anew after their volte-face on a manifesto promise?

Of course they shouldn't. We don't elect parties; we elect people. Their electors elected them; next year they get to vote again. Let us roll back party, not entrench it. Switching party shouldn't be privileged. If we believe in having independent-minded people in public life, in the power of Parliament over government, then we need less party, not more. If this becomes the norm, we move ever closer to party lists and the horrors that attend it. 

The electors of Clacton elected Douglas Carswell. Turn down the Manor of Northstead and in the name of God, Stay.