Bibliography, April 2018

BOTM: G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (1958), tr. A. Colquhon (1961)

S. Berry (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2008)

S. Berry (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2009)

S. Berry (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2010)

S. Berry (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2011)
L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2012)

A. Christie, Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
M. Engel (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2006)
M. Engel (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2007)
D. Gilmour, The last Leopard (1988)
K. Kassabova, Border (2016)
S, Murray, Moveable feasts (2007)

I have had some methodological issues with this month's reading. Obviously, these entries are not the sum of my reading. Periodicals are excluded, both weekly like The Economist and those less often like Slightly Foxed and Sobornost. Nor does it include scholarly journals which can appear annually, like the JRS. However, despite some comparisons, I think I can draw the line the other side of Wisdens. Indeed, as I have basically spent the month reading them for all the years I have been going to test matches , it would have been a bad record to have them unrepresented. I'll write about them when I'm done next month. It's been fascinating.

I'm not sure I could put any of them top this month though. My favourite remains The Leopard. It was in 2007 too. It was particularly lovely to read just after the author's biography. Some elements, particularly the lethargy around Sicily, acquire a greater resonance. None of that is necessary though, and to read it is to be enfolded into a world that remains almost perfectly drawn despite its ever greater distance.

Bibliography, March 2018

BOTM: D. Sandbrook, Never had it so Good: 1956-63 (2005)

Anon, The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken (2018)
A. Cherry-Gerrard, The worst journey in the world (1922)

T. Disch, On wings of Song (1979)

P. Fitzgerald, The Blue flower (1995) 

J. Morrissey, Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini and the Rivalry that Transformed Rome (2005)

G. Simenon, Piotr the Latvian (1930)

A collection of curate's eggs. With everything uneven, I toyed with making BOTM the first Maigret book, as it was nicely done, and short, though the ending was weird. I also gave consideration to Cherry-Gerrard, but I felt it was too long and unbalanced. However, despite numerous flaws, I most appreciated Sandbrook's account of Macmillan's Britain. I've made a thicket of notes from it which I'll put up later, and it is a treasure chest of information and gobbets. I'm not really an expert in modern Britain, so much of it was news to me. I'm not sure I'd suggest everyone reads it, as it is also too long and can't quite decide what kind of book it wants to be. I think there are two books trying to be written here. One about the social change (or lack thereof) through the period and a more conventional political and economic history of the period. I think Sandbrook has a better eye for the former (I'm unconvinced by his economics), and in either case, the book would have benefited from being wider in range, including at least the period to the end of the sixties which he went on to write in a second volume. Nonetheless, in the good sections, and there are many, he uncovers currents and significance that can easily be lost in compressing perspective of the recent past, and I do think that we often get that wrong. In most cases he doesn't and that perspective is welcome.

Bibliography, February 2018

BOTM: T. Shipman, All out war (2016)

D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, Why nations fail (2012)
J. Diamond, Guns Germs and Steel (1997)
E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
G. Maxwell, The House of Elrigg (1965)
T. Shipman, Fall out (2017)

I said I'd read more non-fiction this year: it's working. And lots were very good indeed, though I found the frankly terrible history in Acemoglu too much to stomach. It made me very nervous of his wider conclusions. Compared with Diamond, which I thought was very good, I found the reviewing responses curious. Diamond is subject to much harsher reviewing opinion about overreach, but is actually much more measured than his critics claim - and much more than Acemoglu. Regardless, my favourites were Tim Shipman's books on the collapse of functioning British politics. I've given it to the Brexit one, but it could have been either. They're thorough, detailed accounts of the double implosions of the Tory party that have brought to where we are. I suspect All Out War was easier to write and it's certainly easier to follow, if entirely depressing. The level of anatomisation of politics does remind me of the (disappointingly not by Bismark) quotation about laws and sausages, but feels essential to understand what happened, and what is following. These are excellent aids to that process.

Bibliography, January 2018

BOTM: S. Middleton, The Daysman (1984)

J. Berger, A fortunate man (1967)
K. Grahame, The Golden Age (1895)
E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea (1952
K. Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (2017)

N. Mahfouz, Sugar Street
C. Mieville, This census taker (2016)

S.S. Tepper, A Plague of Angels (1993)
T. Travers, London boroughs at fifty (2015)
S. Zweig, Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures (1927 and 1940. New translation 2016)

The temptation to make this Grahame's wonderful evocation of childhood in the Edwardian age was almost overwhelming. And it is lovely, though it does repeat, and is ultimately slight. I'm also conscious that it was almost designed for me and yet didn't elicit the depth of response I would have expected. So I resisted, and instead I plumped for an account of a Comprehensive Headteacher in the 1980s. Middleton won the Booker a decade previously with Holiday which I thought was decent rather then excellent. This was better, and his understated prose I think deployed to best effect.

Bibliography, 2017

I come across this summary of a year's reading, which is in a far better format than this, but it's too late now. Regardless of format, it's been my worst year for reading since records began (67 books),  but a year of non-fiction triumphs. Fiction still accounted for the majority of my reading, but at the lowest level since the children. Books of the Month were evenly split, but the quality differential was high. As a result, I'm resolved to read much more non-fiction next year, especially history and economics.

So strong was the non-fiction field that I struggled to make a choice. At least three were pretty much everything you could want of their genre. Lost in Translation is amongst the best memoirs I have ever read, and Bowling Alone made me take (some) sociology seriously. However Piketty was brilliant, insightful and loaded with data. It wasn't the book I expected at all, though some conclusions were in line with some of my existing thinking. It has shaped and refined how I think about a range of issues and shows brilliantly the importance and possibilities of historical analysis. It is deservedly lauded, even if some of the conclusions both in the book and especially outside are dubious.

After all that, fiction was easy. The best thing I read was Mahfouz's Palace Walk. The first of his Cairo trilogy, and the best, is captivating. I've been meaning to read them for ages, and I wish I'd done so earlier. 

Here's the list by month:

January: U.K. Le Guin, Rokannon's World (1966)
February: N. Mahfouz, Palace Walk (1956)
March: U.K. Le Guin, A wizard of Earthsea (1968)
April:N. Mandela, Long walk to freedom (1994)
May:R. Adams, Watership Down (1972)*
June: R.D. Putnam, Bowling alone (2000)
July: M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical me (1943)
August: A. Bennett, These Twain (1918)
September: T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st century (2013)
October: J. Morris, Spain (1964. Revised 1979)
November: R. Irwin, The Alhambra (2004)
December: E. Hoffman, Lost in Translation (1989)

Bibliography, December 2017

BOTM : E. Hoffman, Lost in Translation (1989)

G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous trifles (1909)
N. Mahfouz, Palace of Desire (1957)
M. Forsyth, A short history of drunkenness (2017)

This was easy. I liked everything I read this month. Any of them could have been Book of the Month at other times, but Hoffman's book is outstanding. It's easily the best memoir I've read all year. Possibly the best I've ever read. The base subject is good - an early life in post war Polish Jewry is fascinating - and well done. But it is lifted onto another level by her experience emigrating at thirteen to Canada and the dislocation and distance from her original culture that thus occurs. Astoundingly conceived and excellently done.

Bibliography, November 2017

BOTM: R. Irwin, The Alhambra (2004)

E.M. Brent-Dyer, Exploits of the Chalet Girls*
Evliya Celebi, Book of Travels. Ed. & tr. E. Dankoff and S. Kim, An Ottoman traveller (2010)
C. Fisher, Postcards from the edge (1987)
A. Lurie, Real People (1969)
J. O'Neill, Netherland  (2008)
C.P. Snow, George Passant (1940)

Late. So a flurry of these will come at once. It was thin on quality, though a number of these are famous. A number of them are also dated, especially Snow, but also Fisher. I thought Lurie was dated too, but I only realised on completion that it was written in the 60s not the 80s. It nonetheless doesn't hold up so well now. Many of them had very good parts, but none quite held it together enough. Irwin on the Alhambra was the best of the bunch.