Bibliography, November 2015

BOTM: H. Yanagihara, A little life

P. Fitzgerald, The bookshop

I. Watson (ed.), The Mammoth book of alternate histories

It took me twenty five days to read A little life, partly because of childcare but mostly because it was such hard going. It was however worth it. It's been controversial and the plot issues are real, but it was haunting, beautiful and so sad. The writing was also excellent. Although it's been described as grim, and there are passages I physically flinched at, I think it finishes well. It was robbed of the Booker.

Edit. My final Booker 2015 rankings are thus below. McCarthy was terrible:

1. Yanagihara
2. James
3. Tyler
4. Sahota
5. Obioma
6. McCarthy

Bibliography, October 2015

BOTM: M. James, A brief history of seven killings

T. McCarthy, Satin Island
C. Obioma, The fishermen
S. Sahota, The year of the runaways
A. Tyler, A spool of blue thread

So, I've read the Booker shortlist (almost). I'm part way through the final one. I think, so far, the judges were right (incidentally, I've found myself having to defend in argument the value of judges opinions quite a lot when I mention this, of which more later). I don't think it's a vintage year. James' work is powerful, but the disjointedness is hard to manage, and the judges (and I) may well have been influenced by the fact that very few people know very much about Jamaican history at all. It is hard going, and not at all brief. I think the same attended Obioma, which is much weaker. Anne Tyler was excellent as ever, but in the same way as ever. Sahota was good, but I think this is social commentary bleeding into the literature and the ending was wrong. McCarthy was lightweight, though it had some great lines. I think judges may have believed it contained profundity that it didn't. James was profound, and high octane, I felt exhausted after finishing.

Bibliography, September 2015

BOTM: Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: the golden days

G. Dyer, Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi
C. Higgins, This new noise: the extraordinary birth and troubled life of the BBC
A. Laurain, The president's hat
Y. Mishima, The temple of the golden pavilion
R. Yates, Revolutionary road

I'm stuck in the middle (well, at the start) of the Booker shortlist. It turns out that A brief history of seven killings is a) not brief, b) largely in Jamiacan patois. It was a poor place to start. More on that next month. Best this month was probably not the great Chinese epic that I have chosen, but it was the most compelling, despite nothing actually happening. I can't decide whether I read it as an interested historian or a consumer of fiction. As someone who knows nothing about eighteenth century China, I found it fascinating, particularly once I reread the introduction about a third of the way through. As a novel, though I said nothing happens, when I reflect actually quite a lot goes on. Several characters get killed off, a child is sold into slavery, there's a magic stone. Somehow, and I think this is the triumph of the book, it glides along gradually, layering these things on, almost imperceptibly, to arrive at the end of the book. It's one of five, and I'm sorely tempted to tackle the rest, where I think that the pace and intensity pick up. 

Interminable Booker shortlist first.

Glory

I never really mind too much when we lose to Wales in the rugby. There are exceptions, when they deny England the grand slam (e.g., two years ago), or when it would have been just embarrassing. But I'm usually excited when Wales do well, partly because it makes A happy; partly because my grandfather was Welsh and I am technically an eighth Welsh (expect that to come to the fore if we lose to Australia); partly because it's such a big part of Welsh culture and it means so much  to them (this my favourite from the weekend); and partly because Wales is supposed to be good at rugby - no-one begrudges a fast Ferrari; no-one should celebrate a poor Welsh team.

So while I still don't quite know how we lost on Saturday, and I would much rather we won, I can't be too upset about it. I still think we threw it away, but Wales played with endeavour and bloody-mindedness that deserves reward. It was also a great match to watch. 

Controversially, I disagree on the talking points, or at least the headlines of them. I'm glad we went for the line-out in the final five minutes. The real issues are a) that we messed up the tactics of the throw, and b) far more importantly, why we were close at all. There were plenty of wasted opportunities to do well down in the Welsh half, and we casually gave away penalties in ours. That's what should attract criticism, not the call to go for the line. In fact, I'd go further and praise the mentality that went for the line. It is true that modern sport, especially in tournaments, is all about percentages, but that's a shame, not something to be celebrated. It should be about glory. We were all quick to praise Japan for the same call and the same impulse the week before, and though the press have since tried to argue that England should behave differently to Japan, I don't see why that should be so. One of the great things about sport is that the very top can behave just like everyone else in approach, this is a prime example. There's no fundamental shame in draw, but there is when a win is available. On Saturday, England (and Wales) went for glory. Wales dug in for it in the middle of the second half; we went for it at the end. I am glad they both did, though I wish the outcome had been different.

Beware the backwaters

When I sat finals, my modest hopes for the seventeenth century were dashed when my banker question, on the Thirty Years War, the great conflagration primarily fought between the Habsburgs, Dutch, French and Swedish, turned out to be about Bavaria. I didn't know very much about Seventeenth century Bavaria. I still don't know very much about seventeenth century Bavaria (though I do think someone should write a parallel biography of Maximilian II and Prince Eugene of Savoy). I'm still not convinced it was a legitimate question. Bavaria was a unit of real weight, as it is now, but it was a backwater. Nothing important happened in Bavaria in this period - they were just a useful source of senior catholic marriages - almost Kings of Spain, but only almost. 

Backwaters occasionally become important. I read last month Bulgakov's novel, the White Guard, set in the aftermath of the Great War in Ukraine. I know even less about this than I do about Bavaria. It turns out the Ukrainian theatre was important in the Russian civil war of the early twentieth century. I note also that any resolution then was only temporary. I feel we're watching a later act play out out right now. If we all knew more about Ukrainian history, we'd be able to speak more intelligently about the crisis.

I revel in these byways. Under no circumstances can the later Byzantine Empire be described as central to the flow of history. The depth and texture of history relies on specialists getting to grips with alien, obscure periods and people and the temptation of these oddities and alien places is vast. Norman Davies wrote a lovely book about them (NB. Not all of these are actually backwaters). Any half decent library will show the deviations it owner has taken. For example, I have more books on the county of Foix and the Languedoc than I do on the USA (a low bar), while my 'Germany' section is almost entirely books on the Habsburgs (including, because of my technical definition of 'Germany,' Hungary). It is easy to build up a historical view that is entirely covered with beautiful, fascinating, vignettes, often of obscure, sleepy or forgotten places (I did buy a book about Liechtenstein the other day).

It would be easy, enchanting. And wrong. These are all still backwaters, wonderful backwaters, but but backwaters nonetheless. We forget the main trunk roads of history at our peril. This is exactly the trap that curricula fall into when they lose sense of chronology (hence the thrust of Michael Gove's somewhat imperfect reforms to ours). They are the ornaments, not the branches. Now, I think everyone should read about both, but if you only read one, read about the important thing. Then read about the obscure, possibly for longer, but never first.

Bibliography, August 2015

BOTM: J.B. Priestley, English Journey

A. Bennett, Smut
E.M. Brent Dyer, The Head Girl of the Chalet School
M. Bulgakov, The White Guard
P. Delerm, The small pleasures of life

W.S. Maugham, The Magician 
C. Mieville, Embassytown 
S.S. Tepper, Beauty 
R. Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon*
R. Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn*

R. Zelazny, The Hand of Oberon*

R. Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos*
R. Zelazny, Trumps of Doom

R. Zelazny, Blood of Amber

R. Zelazny, Sign of Chaos

R. Zelazny, Knight of Shadows 

R. Zelazny, Prince of Chaos

A post - baby reading record. Heavily inflated by reading Books 2-10 of the Chronicles of Amber (note: they are all very short). They weren't exceptional. In fact, even the classic first quintet compared unfavourably to others in its genre this month. Tepper was enormously inventive and original - as she reliably is. And I thought the Mieville was too. 

However, they were all as pygmies beside Priestley. English Journey is a well known classic, and it deserves to be. It's well observed, with exceptional turns of phrase - I have a forest of bookmarks to dig out for quotations - but it's much more than that. It's intended as a survey of England in the 1930s, which of course it is, but, unlike Orwell's register of poverty that it inspired, it is rooted in the longer term evolution of England and English society. It also contains rather delightfully robust asides from the author on the state of the nation; and on generally held views on the state of the nation. Some of those aren't quite right, but they have a lot less wrong with them than Orwell's (and they take up less space); many are spot on, and a pleasure to read. It's scope makes it still highly relevant today: in a period where we are spending our time questioning the Union and the nation, I would suggest we could all do well to read books like this. Instead, outrageously, it is out of print. Hunt it down.

Bibliography, July 2015

BOTM: Ford, F.M., No More Parades 

Bryson, B., 1927
Bryson, B., Shakespeare
Ford, F.M., Some Do Not ... 
Ford, F.M., A Man Could Stand Up 
Ford, F.M., The Last Post 
Maugham, W. S. The Moon and Sixpence 
Maugham, W. S. The Razor's edge 
Wrangham, R., Catching Fire: how cooking makes us human

Zelazny, R., Nine princes in Amber

It turns out Parade's End isn't about the war at all (well, maybe a bit), it's really about being a Tory. As a result, I enjoyed a lot more than I imagined I would. I even came to like what we might describe as its 'distinctive' style. And the themes are in fact eternal, not limited to the war at all. I'm not sure there's much science behind which volume I've chosen here as a favourite because obviously they only work when taken together. However, this was the most immediate, uncertain and opaque (deliberately) and all the better for it.