Bibliography, January 2022

BOTM: P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013)

C. Achebe, A man of the people (1966)
A. Glenconner, Lady in Waiting (2019)
M. Kamman, When French women cook (1976)
W.S. Maugham, The painted veil (1925)
J. Rayner, The last supper (2019)
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)*
I. Suzuki, Terminal boredom (2021)
O. Tokarczuk, Drive your plow over the bones of the dead (2009)

It's an effort, Short's monumental book on Mitterrand. It's almost 600 pages and it really covers the ground. This has downsides - it took a third of the month to read, and sometimes I think it does lose its way in the details of the Presidency. And it does help that I didn't know the background. I'm sure students of the (frankly, insane) French political system in the Fourth and Early Fifth Republics will find less new and interesting than I did. Equally, People whose knowledge of the resistance is not based largely on 'Allo 'Allo may find the earlier chapters less fresh. 

But, caveats aside, it does fulfil its very broad and ambitious scope. The writing is crisp, and though Short inherits a vast treasure trove of material, he marshals it well. He brings to life the background and underlying personality of Mitterand - with some great anecdotes. And that's important, because by the post-war period, that's clearly overlaid by his vast ambition and the layers of 'ambiguity' described here. It's very good on Mitterrand's pre-presidency career, and his critical decision to oppose De Gaulle, as well as how he sidestepped better placed rivals to lead that faction. I'm very glad I read it.

Quick note for The Painted Veil. I really like Maugham's writing and I think he's criminally underread now. This was again excellent. Everyone should start with Cakes and Ale, but it's all great. 

Bibliography, 2021

Tantalisingly close to the pre-baby benchmark of ten books a month, in the end I fell short by five. If I'm honest, I would have been a hollow victory, bulked up with a lot of science fiction and fantasy (28 books, more than any year since 2002). Much of that was excellent, and I am very glad I did a strong run through of golden age Sci-Fi too. It is, however, a) easier to read and b) doing nothing for my aim to hold down my white men percentage in fiction. 

Fiction in general was high. I actually read a little less non-fiction than last year, and it should also be noted that I read nine books by or about the Mitfords, which is probably too many. For the first time in a while, BOTMs were roughly in line with reading rates. Fiction about half my BOTMs (four of which were science fiction). History and cultural books three each.

Choosing a favourite novel was only slightly difficult. I do love Foundation and Dune, and Shipstead I thought was robbed of the Booker, but this was a straight choice between Achebe and a loving Martian pastiche of the Chalet School. I loved the latter, but Anthills of the Savannah was outstanding. I wish people talked about this more than Things fall apart.

Again this year, non-fiction was overwhelmingly harder. Three outstanding books in Didion, Trevor Roper and Alexievich. They are all massively famous which makes it embarrassing that I'd read none of them before. Of all of them Alexievich is the one that everyone should read. It's immediacy and remorseless illumination of a completely invisible part of World War Two is essential reading. But, for me, and for any historian I suspect, Trevor Roper's analysis of the end of that war is just an exemplary piece of writing and the historical method. I don't think schoolchildren should study the War, but if they are going to, I find it baffling that they aren't forced to read this.

Jan: The Mitford sisters (ed. C. Mosley), Letters between six sisters (2007)
Feb: C. Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
Mar: H.R. Trevor Roper, The last days of Hitler (1947)
Apr: R. Heinlein, Double Star (1956)
May: S. Sturluson, The prose edda
Jun: S. Alexievich, The unwomanly face of war (1985)
Jul: L. Sprague de Camp, Literary swordsmen and sorcerers (1976)
Aug: J. Didion, The year of magical thinking (2005)
Sep: I. Asimov, Foundation (1951)*
Oct: M. Shipstead, Great circle (2021)*
Nov: F. Herbert, Dune (1965)*
Dec: C. Brenchley, Three twins at the Crater School (2021)

Bibliography, December 2021

BOTM: C. Brenchley, Three twins at the Crater school (2021)

D. Adams and M. Cawardine (1990)

E. Carrere, The kingdom (2014)
D. Devonshire, Wait for me (2010)
K. Addison, Witness for the dead (2021)
C. Mieville, Perdido Street station (2000)

M. Rubin, The hollow crown, 1307-1485 (2005)

E. Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1968)

C. Thubron, Emperor (1978)

I. Vincent, Dinner with Edward (2016)

Three great books here. Taylor is one of those largely forgotten novelists that deserve not to be, and this was excellent. Better though was Dinner with Edward. I read it in a single sitting and it was exactly what you would want this memoir to be. The right balance of introspection and external engagement, and in this case combined with a lovely bit of food porn. I am already committed to the apricot souffle. Looking online, I am not the only one.

However, and with full credit to Anna, my favourite book is intensely personal. I had never imagined that anyone other than me would write a loving pastiche of the Chalet School set on Mars under a steampunk future British Empire. But they have, and it is amazing. Tonally, it's near (though not absolutely) perfect, the world-building is unobtrusive, and the plot contains the right mix of excitement within a fundamentally secure environment. There's another one. I hope there are many more.  

Couple of final thoughts on The Kingdom. Lots of chat about how good this is in religious circles, but I found it very difficult to read. I felt, like I did with Tey's The Daughter of time (and in fact Thubron's on this list), that it was fatally flawed as a book because it couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Firstly, the autobiographical section, and especially the intrusions into the main text, were unnecessary (the section on the author's pornography watching habits was a particular low point). Then it falls between two stools: is it a novelistic treatment of Luke and Paul or is it a serious analytical work? I wish it had been the former, but it kept trying to be the latter, and you just can't do that without footnotes. Frustrating, though some sections were very good indeed.

Bibliography, November 2021

BOTM: F. Herbert, Dune (1965)*

R. Aickman, Dark entries (1964)
P. Fitzgerald, The beginning of spring (1988)

B. Sanderson, The final Empire (2006)
---------, The well of ascension (2007)
---------, The hero of ages (2008)
W. Tevis, The man who fell to earth (1963)
C. Wilman, Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music (2005)

Obviously, the best book I read this month was Dune. However, I have read it a lot of times, so I did briefly agonise about whether it should be BOTM again. And, had I a standout alternative, I might have gone there. But I didn't. Honourable mention for Rednecks and Bluenecks which had a lovely turn of phrase, as well as fascinating context on the Iraq political controversy. I dread to think what the current analysis would look like. I also enjoyed Sanderson, but it was a little too fond of the twist at the end. I did really enjoy Fitzgerald - I think her historical novels are excellently imagined and conceived. However, Dune is Dune. 

I watched it because of the film. It's better than the film, though I thought they did a good job with it this time.

Bibliography, October 2021

BOTM: M. Shipstead, Great circle (2021)

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977)
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938)
N. Gaiman, Norse mythology (2017)
P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979)
P. Lockwood, No-one is talking about this (2021)
M.S. Lovell, The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family (2001)
N. Mohamed, The fortune men (2021)
R. Powers, Bewilderment (2021)
B. Pym, Quartet in Autumn (1977)

A chance conversation with Anna revealed that she overwhelmingly reads books published since 2000. I do not: I've read 48 novels this year so far. Eight were published after 2000, and six of those were the Booker shortlist. In comparison, 17 were published before 1960. This seems reasonable to me. It would be a slightly weird position to believe that the majority of great literature was written in two decades when they've been writing good ones in volume for at least fifteen. This month, both Pym and Lively were really good novels: well observed, imaginatively done, and shining a light into stories less often told. Both are older than me. Non-fiction is usually more modern as the scholarship usually needs updating in a way a stories don't. Both Tindall's book on the history of Kentish Town and especially James' classic on Haiti have endured. The Black Jacobins is a product of Marxist theory, which does date it, but James is too good an historian to follow it blindly, and his analysis breaks free of ideology. It remains a shamefully neglected piece of history.

All that said, my favourite book this month was contemporary. I liked a lot of the Booker shortlist. Even Lockwood's sort of twitter one was not as bad as I thought. There were very funny bits. None were outstanding, but a number were decent. Best I thought was Shipstead's Great Circle which runs a strong, deep, central narrative around a female aviator (not a neglected subject) in the early age of flight. It has a secondary, parallel narrative that provides a lighter counterpart, which works really well. But the main narrative is the star - beautifully written, ranging over a wide canvas, and packing real punch at several points. It's not a masterpiece, but it's very good, and it was my favourite.

Rest of the Booker shortlist was tight. Mohamed (Second part) and Powers (first) both wrote very uneven books which, had they sustained them would have pushed them higher. Galgut, the favourite, I found underwhelming. My ranking:

1. Shipstead
2. Arudpragasam
3. Mohamed
4. Powers
5. Galgut
6. Lockwood

Bibliography, September 2021

BOTM: I. Asimov, Foundation (1951)*

A. Arudpragasam, A passage north (2021)
I. Asimov, Foundation and Empire (1952)*
ꟷꟷꟷꟷ, Second Foundation (1953)*
E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia (1920)
J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974)
D. Galgut, The promise (2021)
P. Lively, Judgement day (1980)
J.G. Williamson, Trade and poverty: when the third world fell behind (2011)

In my mind, I have a broad understanding of history in all periods and can understand all full length treatments easily based on my general knowledge. Williamson was enthralling, but blew that belief away. It turns out A-level economics is not enough to dive in to pages of data. Part of me wants to dig much deeper; part of me doesn't. Quite a few of the others were underwhelming on their own merits. I thought I would love Benson, but I found it a slog. I thought Galgut would be harrowing, but profound, but instead it was easy, too easy, and managed to tell the story of the betrayal of a promise to a black woman by erasing her voice. I'm sure it was deliberate, but I didn't feel it worked.

That 'not working' was an issue for me too in the later, and much beloved, Foundation novels too. By the time we get to the Second Foundation, I feel Asimov has lost track of his central conceit. Instead of psychohistory being about mass movements and probabilities, it relies on a shadowy cabal of psychics to fix the outcomes. If he could secure a millennium-long magician elite, the probabilistic aspect feels a bit pointless. My other complaint, though this really applies across the whole thing, is that he gets the maths wrong. And every time he talks about the capital world of the galaxy, all I can think of is that he doesn't know how big a billion is.

Having said all that, it's still magisterial. Yes, psychohistory is total nonsense; yes, it's ridiculous to imagine that a galaxy-wide polity could exist in a meaningful way in the manner described; no, there are no women at all in the first book. But it's fantastically imaginative, broad in scope, and little sounds cooler than a universal Galactic Empire. I also like its openness and its cleverness. Asimov wasn't afraid to poke holes in his own model: the Mule is a wildcard so that breaks the prediction, Foundation inhabitants think about their destiny and so that undermines it too. These come later, but the unfolding of the original concept is still the best bit - and that's captured economically and brilliantly in the opener. 

Apple better not mess this up.

The Oval, 5th September 2021

It happened about five o'clock, though it may have been later. Evening shadows over the grounds are a trope of cricket writing, but shadows are supposed to be of church steeples. In this case it was the mass of the huge Vauxhall End stand at The Oval. But shadows there were and, suddenly and implausibly unexpectedly, we had entered my favourite part of watching the cricket. We were sitting in, give or take, the same seats that I first watched test cricket sixteen years ago for an overcast Ashes securing day, and again, four years later where watched us actually win the Ashes themselves.

Yesterday wasn't one of those successful days for England, though - thankfully - nor was it a repeat of this test in 2007, where I watched Dravid score 12 in 96 balls and seemed to spend an hour getting each run. But it didn't matter. We were amongst cricket people, at the cricket, and very little else mattered. I'd brought a set of people who didn't know each other at all at eleven, but by the afternoon had developed their own in-jokes. To our left was a ten year old whose excitement was matched only by the sharpness of his eyesight and his understanding of the LBW rule. We didn't need the replay to tell us Jadeja was out and they had wasted a review, he'd already talked us through it. At lunch we took the admiration of the group behind us because one of us had managed to bring a large pie; after tea we managed a full cheeseboard. I personally continued my unbroken run of smuggling drinks into the ground in defiance of the absurd ban on bringing alcohol in, though the lack of effort they put into bag searching did rather demean the outcome. 

And the cricket, well, it was exactly why only test cricket really counts. I don't really think anyone was superlative, but it didn't matter. It was enthralling, while allowing time for conversation (and more drinks. There were a lot of drinks). Early England inroads made us hopeful that we'd limit India to a manageable lead before a hundred run seventh wicket partnership rather drained us of all optimism. My low case prediction of a 350 target with some big batting after tea came rather depressingly true. It was shortly after that that the shadows fell, and this time my low case predication was entirely wrong. We didn't end four wickets down at the close of play. Somehow, we avoided subsiding like, well, England, and we watched Rory Burns hold out on his home ground and Haseeb Hameed write the next lines of what will hopefully be a deeply satisfying redemption story this summer. 291 to get today with all wickets in hand is possible, if unlikely.

And we drank in the summer evening, talked novels, and watched that slow patient cricket, and - pausing briefly after the cricket itself to have a further drink - I walked home listening to the only known popular music act to entirely specialise in cricket songs singing about sleeping on the boundary.

I fully expect us to lose today, but it doesn't matter. It was marvellous, and by that I truly mean that it is a marvel. None of this should work, but it does, almost every time. I had missed the cricket far more than I realised, but no longer. Marvellous indeed.