Bibliography, October 2019

BOTM: B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019)

M. Atwood, The Testaments (2019)
M. Atwood, The handmaid's tale (1985)
E.M. Brent-Dyer, The new house at the chalet school (1935)
B. Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
C. Obioma, An orchestra of minorities (2019)
J. Paxman, The political animal (2002)
S. Rushdie, Quichotte (2019)
E. Shafak, 10 minutes, 38 seconds in this strange world (2019)

I love Bee Wilson's work. I think she writes well and has exceptionally interesting things to say. I need to read the lot. This is fascinating on our food culture (and depressing, particularly as I write this just after Halloween). Like all books of this kind, it makes me want to make bread, but it also makes we want to think more about a much wider range of foods (and drinks). Read it; and read her Consider the fork as well, which is even better.

It probably would have been book of the month anyway, but it wasn't really challenged by this years' Booker shortlist, which was weak. I agreed with the judges (I am ignoring the sentimental award to Atwood, which was emphatically not deserved), and thought Evaristo was the best. It was engaging, nicely phrased and vocalised from its various viewpoints. And I thought it managed the contradictions and and problems of its narrators well. There's a cute, semi-twist in a final coda that I quite liked, but some didn't. I don't think it matters very much. Of the others, it was tight between Shafak and Obioma, and I applaud the ambition of Ellmann. Rushdie and Atwood felt tired and shadows of the former selves. I reread the Handmaid's tale after this, which I liked a lot more than I did first time round, and just served to show how pedestrian the sequel is.

My ranking.

1. Evaristo
2. Shafak
3. Obioma
4. Ellmann
5. Atwood
6. Rushdie

Bibliography, September 2019

BOTM: A. Maalouf, The rock of Tanios (1993)

A. Bennett, Anna of the five towns (1902)
L. Ellmann, Ducks, Newburyport (2019)
D. du Maurier, The scapegoat (1957)

Ducks, Newburyport was not my favourite, but it did take up most of the reading time. It has also been somewhat misleadingly reviewed. I think that may well be because many of the reviewers didn't finish it. It is accurately reported as being very very long, and definitely outlandish in technique. It is a stream of consciousness novel, but a very specific manner which is essentially a list. That makes it hard going, though the writing does make many of those fragments very quotable. Contrary to most of the reviews, it is actually full of plot. There's a whole biographical backstory packed into it, and central conventional narrative has a dramatic (one could say melodramatic) climax. It's far from perfect, and it could definitely be half the length or less, but it's an ambition to be applauded.

Everything else was high quality without being outstanding. Arnold Bennett remains consistently good, and given that consistency, ever more surprisingly unfashionable; Du Maurier was fun. However, Maalouf's evocation of the beginnings of modern religious conflict in Lebanon was particularly nicely done, and it's right on target for me. I'll be reading the rest of his.

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.