Bibliography, February 2024

BOTM: R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004)

A. Barr, Drink: a social history (1998)

E. Crispin, Swan song (1947)
G. Dyer, The last days of Roger Federer (2022)
M. Evans, Who let the Gods out (2017)
A. Light, Common people: this history of an English family (2014)

A. Tinniswood, The Verneys (2007)

After an exceptionally good month in January, this was poor. The BOTM is probably the only one I'd recommend, and you do need to have read a lot of Wodehouse to get the value (which I have). It's a good biography, and marshals everything well. I find the chronological analysis of writing deeply fascinating. And in this case, it's particularly interesting given that Wodehouse wrote into his 90s, and the fault line in his life happened at 58. It means that the corpus for which he is best known is almost entirely from the latter part of his life. Like Elizabeth I, we wonder what his reputation would be if he died at an average age. Also, I loved the attention paid to his oft-neglected Broadway musical period. 

Bibliography, January 2024

BOTM: K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023)

J. Brotton, Sale of the late King's goods (2006)
E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948)

S. Dercon, Gambling on Development (2023)
R. Harris, Act of Oblivion (2022)

A. Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown (2022)

P. Lawrence, Needle (2022)

T. Shippey, The Road to Middle Earth (3rd ed. 2005)

B. Stanley, Let's do it! (2022)

Apart from months where I just read the Booker shortlist, I think this may be my most modern month of reading ever. Two thirds published in the last two years. It's also been a fantastic month. I have things to say on almost all of them

Stanley's prequel to his exceptional history of modern pop is not as good, but it's still very very good. And, while I still don't really like jazz, it's made me more appreciative, as well as extended my love of mid century musicals. It's very good too on the technology of music listening, which I think is more important that we think now. I read several seventeenth century histories in honour of the martyr this month, and the best was Keay's on the Interregnum. It won everything, and it's a very well done piece of writing: it doesn't drag, but really brings through the narrative of the 1650s. Strong recommendations too for Dercon (though it would have been a better book were it shorter) and Edmund Crispin (one of the best of the minor golden age crime novelists, and short).

My favourite of all was Rundell's absolute jewel of a book. I'm increasingly infatuated with her as a writer, though I'm not convinced we agree on anything else. I am delighted that someone took their All Souls fellowship, and their doctorate in Donne, and wrote for children. I liked her Donne book, but I loved this. She's read deeply of the well of children's (and wider) fantasy literature in its widest sense. It's beautifully written, and it's clever, inventive, funny, and well embedded in that weave of older fantasy lit and legend. It's notionally for children. It's worth everyone reading it.  

As an aside, there's a very mean spirited Private Eye review of it that basically complains that all fantasy tropes have been done before. I don't think that's accurate (there are plenty of fun new bits in this, in content and form - I thoroughly enjoyed the opening bestiary), but it also misses the point twice over. Firstly, this particular novel is explicitly in part about 'real' legends, so it's deliberately playing on this. The sphinx section is a case in point. Secondly, all fantasy does that; that's the point. Part of the enjoyment is how people reassemble the deck as well as what new cards they play. Shippey's formidable, but illuminating book on Tolkein's sources is magisterial on how he did it, though hard to read in parts.

Bibliography, 2023

A triumph! For the first time since the children, I read over ten books a month. Six of them were graphic novels (comics), so it's not quite the unambiguous result I was hoping for, but I will take it.

The breakdown is atypical. Lots of fiction (70 books) and lots of 'hard' non-fiction. History alone was 28 books. But much less cultural output than usual (only 19). It's a split comparable to my nadir-year of 2017, though the volumes were almost twice that. Books of the Month were even more extreme. Seven were non-fiction, all history, with only five fiction. Interestingly, though 80% of my fiction reading was of white authors - as usual - three of those five were by black writers.

Two of those vied for my favourite fiction of the year. I thought Segu was a marvellous book, but I think A grain of wheat is a great one. It brings real immediacy to a time that is unfamiliar, but is nuanced and thoughtful around it. It's striking to me how good the plot is too. This is not a cipher for a story of colonialism, this is a great story.

Non-fiction was much much harder. Several of these were outstanding. Townsend was brilliantly illuminating; Hoschchild ruthlessly compelling. I almost gave BOTY to Shapiro's masterpiece about Shakespeare, and I do think it is a masterpiece. The concept alone is worth a lot. It's an original and effective way into well known texts, and really sets up a much richer and real engagement with them. I loved it. I would recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the topic. I would not recommend Peter Wilson's book on the Holy Roman Empire on the same basis. It is much denser and more technical, and requires a decent working knowledge of a lot of German history. But I loved it, and it is brilliant, and bold, and has transformed how I think about the Empire. I suspect I will come back again and again to it.

Jan: P. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire (2016)
Feb: M. Ormrod, Edward III (1990)
Mar: Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A grain of wheat (1967)
Apr: A. Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (1998)
May: O. Butler, Kindred (1979)
Jun: C. Townsend, Fifth sun (2019)
Jul: C. Powers, In the memory of the forest (1997)
Aug: J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)
Sep: S. Alexievich, Second hand time (2013)
Oct: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)
Nov: M. Mazower, The Greek revolution (2021)
Dec: M. Conde, Segu (1984)

Bibliography, December 2023

BOTM: M.Conde, Segu (1984)

B. Duffy, The generation divide (2021)
B. McClellan, Promise of Blood (2013)
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected stories (2018) [all stories pre-1935]
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014)

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987)

M. Wallis, Wines of the Rhone (2021)

M. Williams, The chalet girls grow up (1997)

I really liked Segu, though some reviewers have pointed out the problematic parts of it. It's particularly striking I think if you're used to an Anglophone sense of African literature, where Islam features so much less heavily than French Africa. Anyway, it's big, and bold, and well done. The narrative is very good at imagining the world that the characters inhabit, and it's chosen very well to show the gradations within that West African society as well as a specific slice of European encounters. And it was good to see the European narrative carry weight without taking centre stage.

A placeholder note for a provocative imagining of the future for the Chalet School triplets. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I don't have time to write down, but I am also glad I read that. Almost everyone else, good and bad, would have benefitted from making their books shorter.

Bibliography, November 2023

BOTM: M. Mazower, The Greek Revolution (2021)

J. Crace, eden (2022)
E. Crispin, Holy Disorders (1945)
J. Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca (2004)
R. Heinlein, Farmer in the sky (1950)
A. Martine, A desolation called peace (2021)
E. Mittelholzer, My bones and my flute (1951)
R. Sepetys, I must betray you (2022)
C. Spencer, Killers of the King (2014)

Almost all the novels I read were pretty good, though I think eden isn't up to Jim Crace's normal standards. Best of them was probably Mittelholzer, in part because of the distinctiveness of the background. Slightly unfairly, because I think this is a pattern, they all came second to a very done summary on a historical issue I'm interested in to read a full account of, but not enough to read several. I do wonder if I'd have put Mazower top if I'd read lots about the Greek revolution. As I haven't, this was a great book. I think he's a great historian. I would say he's undervalued, but this did win major prizes. Either way, it does a very good job of disentangling the complex background of the Greek revolution, and making clear the contingent nature of its success as well as the complexity of Balkan politics at the time. I'm very glad I read it before the Elgin marbles controversy blew up again.

Against Pelagius (probably)

Preached Remembrance Sunday (12th November) 2023, St Michael's Stockwell

Amos 5.18-24
Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4.13–end
Matthew 25.1–13

There is a lot of about justice in the readings today, and in context of today, today’s war, indeed any war, justice is hard to locate:

• Where was the justice on the 7th October when Hamas killed women and children.
• Where was the justice yesterday, and plenty of others, when Israeli forces bombed hospitals where children are under care.
• Where indeed is the justice when this conflict has been on the headline of every bulletin for a month, yet there are twenty other conflicts running that killed over a thousand people last year.

These positions are complex, and murky, and need a better political analysis than I am capable of, or than I am intending to give. They, and every war, are the backdrop to our thinking about justice, and about remembrance. It throws our readings into sharp relief.

And they made me think of two distinctly unbiblical quotations. The first is from the 1970s US comedy MASH, set in the Korean war, where there’s an argument about whether war is hell. No, ‘War is war, and Hell is Hell. And … war is a lot worse.’ Sinners go to Hell, but “There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them.” Divine justice is simpler than human justice. You know who the baddies are. And we long for the simplicity of divine justice: here is Paul who tells us that living and dead will receive their reward; here the Psalmist who talks of the coming of the Lord. They are waiting for divine justice.

The other quotation that came to me while I was preparing for today I first encountered in an Agatha Christie murder mystery (Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - an excellent seasonal read). It’s actually 2000 years older, about the time of Jesus: the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. That’s the justice people think they they are looking for. In the Second World War, both Churchill and Roosevelt quoted that line when promising retribution for the extermination of the Jews. Divine justice is transmuted into human vengeance.

But they are rather assuming that they, we, will be on the right side. And I think we all should be reading the book of Amos more closely. Amos is one of my favourite prophets. Not that he thinks he is a prophet. He is a shepherd – he tells people this several times in the book. He is an outsider. He stands apart from the establishment.

And he hates everyone: he hates the leadership of Israel, the pre-Christian northern Kingdom, not this one; he hates the priests; he hates the people: 'I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies …. I will not listen to the melody of your harps.' He hates the complacency of the Psalmist: 'Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light.'  The standard of divine justice may be simpler, but it's much much higher than human justice, and everyone fails.

It’s the same in the gospel. The bridesmaids who fail are not enemies. They do not face the bridegroom across a fortified border. They are part of the wedding party. They’re us. And they have failed. And they are locked out. We long for justice, but we will not be ready when it comes. Slightly annoyingly, the very next verse of Thessalonians is the famous one that says that the ‘the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night.’ It seems a missed opportunity. We should prepare, we will try to prepare, but we will not be ready. We will fail.

Where does that leave justice? And where does that leave remembrance?

Firstly, this doesn’t negate the striving. There are bridesmaids with flasks of oil. People should and will do the right thing. The Nazis were wrong. We should remember those who faced war and didn’t come back, and those who did and were marked by it forever. Every year, every news headline, I am conscious of my vast privilege of living away from war for my whole life – not the case for everyone here. I honour that. We should not be putting our judgement aside.

But we should also remember the limits of human justice and human action. We should think of those who were just in the wrong place, which at times is everyone. The fourth century heretic Pelagius is felt to have argued that humanity has autonomy enough to choose not to sin. Amos would say otherwise. When we think of war, we must recognise that human justice, however effective, has its limits. People cannot do the right thing all the time. We are remembering people who tried, not people who were perfect. People will fail.

Amos believes in justice. He believes it’s going to come. He just doesn’t think we’re going to pass. But listen to how he describes it: let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. He does not reach for the metaphor of the refiner’s fire – that’s Malachi – but water. Justice is broad, not narrow, replenished, not spent, cleansing, not destructive, and life giving, not deadly. It is not just retribution, but bounty.

So, knowing we will fall short. But also knowing that righteousness will come. We remember. And we hope for the ever-flowing stream of the love of God.

Bibliography, October 2023

BOTM: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)

R. Adams, Trumpets of war (1987)
S. Bernstein, Study for Obedience (2023)

J. Escoffery, If I Survive You (2023)
P. Harding, This Other Eden (2023)
C. Maroo, Western Lane (2023)
P. Murray, The Bee Sting (2023)

J. Shapiro, 1606: the year of Lear (2015)

T. Shaw, The world of Escoffier (1994)

James Shapiro does not repeat the trick in his 1606 Shakespeare book that he did with his superlative one on 1599, but it is still good. I found it disjointed, though very good sections. Elsewhere, mostly Booker nominees, and it's a very frustrating list this year. All Booker debuts and that's probably unwise. Escoffery and especially Murray were just crying out for better endings and structure. In Paul Murray's case, it would have been better if he had just chopped the last quarter off the book entirely. Lynch's book ended well, though I don't think that's the best thing about it. It does require a leap of faith: it's st in an Ireland sliding into dictatorship and civil war, and it does precisely zero work on establishing how that happens. If you just buy that up front, it's a visceral and brutal exploration of how that is experienced and felt. It is not pleasant: it made my skin crawl. It's why I thought it was best. Its well written too.

If I've done the maths right, I've just tipped over the half way mark for all novels ever nominated for the Booker. 164 read; 163 to go. 2023 Booker ranking:

1. Lynch
2. Harding
3. Maroo
4. Escoffery
5. Bernstein
6. Murray