Bibliography, August 2019

BOTM: A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015)

J. Arlott, Arlott on wine (1986)

F. Fernandez - Armesto, Millenium (1997)

P. Hensher, Kitchen Venom (1996)
C. Louvin, Satan is real (2012)*

L. Mangan, Bookworm (2016)

A. Marshall, Life's rich pageant (1984)

S. Runciman, The lost capital of Byzantium (1980)

D. Storey, Saville (1976)
J. Thayil, Narcopolis (2012)

A. Wilson, As if by magic (1973)

I read widely this month, but not well. I have though cleared the decks of some long overdue books, where I liked Millenium (a shamefully never completed 18th birthday present), but not Saville (one of three unread Booker winners, but with a dire, unconnected ending). Much of the rest was mediocre and some (Hensher, Wilson) were bad. I make Gill's memoir my favourite with some reluctance as other contenders fell away. Runciman was solid rather than sparkling; Mangan I did enjoy, but a) the distance between our childhood reading was too great (essentially because she's a girl) and b) I'm jealous of the number of books she must get to read even now. I did consider giving it to Arthur Marshall's rather lovely autobiography, but I think I would have needed to know who he was beforehand, though it had some very good lines. So it had to be the Gill, which I found both engaging and problematic. Lots is left out; and much of his fairly aggressive public persona is not engaged with or heavily glossed over. And that makes it a not very honest book, deliberately, despite claiming to be. It is affecting, but the compelling episodes add up to a disingenuous whole. The episodes are however often very well done. In fact, I enjoyed the digressions on art and on journalism more than the central plank of the book. That is problematic, but it does make a very worthwhile read. 

Bibliography, July 2019

BOTM: W. Goldman, Adventures in the screen trade (1983)

N. Faber, Faber and Faber: the untold story (2019)
R. George, Ninety percent of everything (2013)
E. Huxley, The flame trees of Thika (1959)
J. Lees-Milne, People and places (1992)
L. Lynn, Coal miner's daughter (1976)
T. Snyder, Bloodlands (2010)

H. Turtledove, Agent of Byzantium (1987)

There were some great books this month. Bloodlands was good, but not as strong as Snyder's earlier book on the region. It was however very good on the different historiographic elements of our understanding of the Holocaust. I was very struck by the difference in our knowledge of Auschwitz being in part a function of both its westerly location and its combined function as a labour camp. This brought out the picture to include those multitudes gassed in camps with very few survivors and those millions shot in regions further east.

However, the best three were all memoir. Huxley was excellent, but felt slightly shallow, an impression that comes mostly with its age I think. Its preoccupations and lack of curiosity of the indigenous communities have dated. Loretta Lynn's autobiography was great, and actually far from shallow, but the narrative punch of the first half I don't think was backed up by the second. That had a bit too much opinion and not enough story - Lynn is much better at the former. Goldman's book on Hollywood, on the other hand, was riddled with opinion, and he is very good at it. I picked it up on whim. I hadn't realised how big a scriptwriter Goldman was. That's incidental to the book, but it does give it credibility. It's also funny, well-written (you would hope so) and illuminating. Best of a good month.

Bibliography, June 2019

BOTM: Y.N. Hariri, Sapiens (2011)

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994)
A. Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)
S.S. Tepper, The Margarets (2008)
H. Williamson, Tarka the otter (1927)
J. Wong, Red China Blues (1996)

It's been a very weak month for volume. I've been binge watching Brooklyn 99 instead of doing any reading. I could have spent those 30 hours really getting to grips with shipping containers (next reading) amongst others. I also had some reservations about the books too. I have loved Sherri Tepper's books over the last few years, but despite being one of the best reviewed of hers, I thought it was contrived and resorted to the fantastical for the central plot. It wasn't the only one that disappointed. Best of them was definitely Sapiens, which I liked a lot, though itself not without issues. In particular the change that came with the scientific revolution is presented as more binary than I think was. However, the general sweep and scope were excellent and with lots of insightful nuggets.

Bibliography, May 2019

BOTM: J. Jeffs, Sherry (6th ed., 2016)

J. Baldwin, If Beale Street could talk (1974)

C. Fielden, Manzanilla (2010)
T. Hamilton and A. Hazarika, Punch and Judy politics (2018)

M. Miller, Song of Achilles (2011)

S. Mucha et al., Alphonse Mucha (2000)

D. Reynolds, Empire of Liberty (2009)
J. Scalzi, Redshirts (2011)
R. Silverberg, Dying inside (1972)

J. Preston, A very English scandal (2016)

A definite feeling of fleshing out here. Reynolds and Preston were books from radio and television for me, though I know they didn't start like that. And I recall Julian Jeffs hosting an evening on sherry for the 5th edition several years ago. Of these, and of all of them, that was the best. It's partly the state of my knowledge. I had some knowledge, but material gaps in process and lots in the history. It does those admirably and is written fluidly and packed with splendid asides. It helps that its core is sixty years old and some of the original text clearly breaks through. I'd recommend it, though you probably do need to be up for sherry.

Bibliography, April 2019

BOTM: P.G. Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith (1908)

J. Betjeman, Sweet songs of Zion (2007) 

L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2019)
T. Clark, Monopoli Blues (2018)

B.D. Ehrman, The Orthodox corruption of Scripture (1993)

C. Fowler, Book of forgotten authors (2017)

C. Freeman, AD 381: Heretics, pagans and the Christian state (2008)

J. Haldeman, The Forever War (1974)
--------, Forever Free (1997)

--------, Forever Peace (1998)

A. Hamilton, J. Madison, and J. Jay, The Federalist papers (1787)

P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith in the city (1909)

--------, Psmith, Journalist (1910)

It's pretty unclear to me what the best of these was. None were outstanding, though plenty were OK. Forever Free contains possibly the worst ending one can imagine, but I toyed with giving BOTM to Haldeman's 70s classic - in the end, the rest of the book doesn't live up to its brilliant concept. I had the same issues with Ehrman's book, which is the product of outstanding work, but exceptionally hard going (and tells me that Mark 1.1 is wrong). So, in the end, I went for the first of the Psmith novels. It's the best of the three here, and it has cricket as a central part of the plot. It's light relief that I very much needed.

Bibliography, March 2019

BOTM: D. Levy, The cost of living (2018)

J. Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion (2012)

D. Levy, Things I don't want to know (2014)

C. Liu, The Three body problem (2006)

N. Mahfouz, Children of the alley (1957)
S. Reynolds, Shock and awe: Glam rock and its legacy (2016)

G. Robb, The debatable land (2018)

A few of these could really have done with being part of the books they were. Liu's multi-garlanded science fiction could have ended earlier, and Haidt's and Robb's initial chapters were laboured with too much tedious personal detail. Both finished well. No criticisms of either of Deborah Levy's succinct volumes of autobiography. I stumbled across Levy through the Booker, but she's a fine writer, though I've found her fiction intriguing rather than outstanding. These I think do it better, with a stronger rootedness to place, and tighter writing. I read them in the wrong order, which doesn't really matter - both were excellent - but I wouldn't recommend you do. I enjoyed the later one more, but by a fine margin.

Bibliography, February 2019

BOTM: A. Kurkov, Death and the penguin (1996)

K. Addison, The Goblin Emperor (2014)
M. Beard, Women and Power (2018)

D. Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations (1998)

U.K. Le Guin, The other wind  (2001)

J. McMorland-Hunter and S. Dunster, Quinces: Growing and Cooking (2014)
M Maeterlinck, The life of the bee (1901)

C. Mieville, The last days of new Paris (2016)
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (2012)

Non-fiction was poor this month. I am craving a general economic history that has a clear thesis without being overly reliant on it. Landes wasn't it. Fiction was much stronger, though I doubt any of them will be troubling me for book of the year. The Goblin Emperor was engrossing, and I'm glad I read it by mistake, but suffered from that regular annoying trope of innocents cleaning out government etc. No such idealism in Kurkov's bizarre and macabre novel about post Soviet Ukraine - with a penguin. It's inventive, and slightly mad, but was clever and great fun. It has a sequel, which based on this review, I won't read. You should read this.