Bibliography, November 2025

BOTM: A. Aswany, The Yacoubian building (2002)

L. Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom (2016)

J. Lewis-Stempel, The Glorious life of the Oak (2018)
S. Loftus, Puligny-Montrachet (1992)

O. Matthews, Glorious Misadventures (2013)
Y. Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)
M. Osman, The Ghost theatre (2023)
R. Perlstein, Reaganland (2020)

D.S. Tesdell (ed.) Shaken and Stirred: Intoxicating stories (2016)

I'm in a bit of a reading rut at the moment. Almost all of these were fine. They weren't bad (though Osman was disappointing), but few were really exciting. That's not to say I didn't learn anything. Reaganland, which I thought was the weakest of Perlstein's books, gave up details I am glad I know. Matthews opened a window onto a fascinating life in Russian America, though couldn't quite decide if it was a biography or an account of that view of US history.

However, the best of all was Aswany's Cairene farce, which was good. Like Loftus, it reminded me how alien the recent past is (that's a book I'd love to write). In this case, that's tripled by the fact that it's published in 2002, looking back at the 1990s, about characters who themselves hark back to the 1950s. I suspect it couldn't be written now, and that's a shame. Bizarrely, it reminded me of the aesthetic of The Producers, for some obvious reasons (the gays), and some less so (the precariousness of some long standing, but ramshackle groups in big cities). Someone should do a musical.

Bibliography, October 2025

BOTM: K. Rundell, The poisoned king (2025)

S. Choi, Flashlight (2025)
K. Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025)
G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (2003)

K. Kitamura, Audition (2025)
B. Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives (2025)
A. Miller, The land in winter (2024)
R. Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge (2014)

C. Sheffield, Brother to Dragons (1992)
D. Szalay, Flesh (2025)

Katherine Rundell's book was published too late for the Booker, but it wouldn't have been nominated because it's for children. This is a shame, but it is unquestionably better than half of them, including the winner. It's not quite as good as Impossible Creatures, which was utterly enchanting, but it's still very very good. Like all good fantasy writers, she knows what she's doing with the genre, and she writes lightly and cleverly. My children were delighted to see a 6-7 reference in there too. She's paying attention.

It was also Booker month, so I've read them all. I'm writing this after we know the result, but I didn't know when I read them. It's not a vintage year I think. The depth of the list is far from superb. I woudl only really recommend reading half of them. The concepts behind Kitamura and Szalay I think flaws them as novels too much, and makes frustrating reading. While I'm don't feel they or Markovits had much to say. Desai and Choi were too long, though the core of both was good. I enjoyed them; I'd have enjoyed them more if they had been shorter. Miller was the best, and I think is a very well done miniature of life in a point of change in social and economic shift in the 60s, just before something happens. My ranking:

1. Miller
2. Desai
3. Choi
4. Markovits
5. Kitamura
6. Szalay

Bibliography, September 2025

BOTM: R. Guha, India after Gandhi (2017)

A. Foulds, The quickening maze (2008)
E.J. Howard, The light years (1990)
---------------, Marking time (1991)
---------------, Confusion (1993)
---------------, Casting off (1995)
---------------, All change (2013)
A. Krebiehl, Wine of Germany (2019)
R. Perlstein, Nixonland (2008)
A. Seldon, Major: a political life (1997)
F. Wade, Square haunting (2020)

I am glad that I've now read Elizabeth Howard's Cazalet saga. I thought they were very much worth reading, though I don't think any were outstanding. #1 and #4 were the best. I did wonder if one of them deserved it, but in the end felt that Guha's book was the best. It's obviously an impossible task to cover seventy years of Indian history even in a very long book, but he does a good job or marshalling the narrative. As ever with these things, the back end is harder to do and it is worse than the front. It very much helped me to understand Indian modern history, particularly to distinguish the bits that were inherited and the parts that were changed after independence. Very helpful on Kashmir too. I hesitate to recommend it because it is so long, but the best of September's reading.

Bibliography, August 2025

BOTM: Tan Twan Eng, The house of doors (2023)

M. Albertus, Land Power (2007)

P. Barker, The silence of the girls (2018)
--------,    The women of Troy (2021)

--------,    The voyage home (2024)
J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984)*

H. Chang, Bad Samaritans (2007)

J.M. Coetzee, Summertime (2009)

Y. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes (1952)

J. Lees-Milne, The last Stuarts (1983)

R. Perlstein, Before the Storm (2001)

G. Redmonds, Christian names in local and family history (2004)

J. Thurber, The 13 clocks (1950)

Great holiday month; I read loads of things, and some of them were really really long. And, with the exception of Land Power, I think they were all good. My favourites were Barnes, Perlstein, Chang and Eng. Barnes is dismissed as lightweight, which I don't think it is at all, just very finely balanced (I loved it just as much the second time round). Perlstein was fascinating. Key conclusion: America has always been nuts; and racist. Chang was fantastic, though I think less interesting to read now, 18 years later, because some of that thinking has become mainstream, particularly post crash. I do have quite serious regret that I didn't do more economic history as an undergraduate. 

Best of the lot was Tan Twan Eng's book on Maugham, which I thought was outstanding. I do really like Maugham, so I am biased around books that cover him, but this was a splendid sideways access onto a fragment of his life, and that of those strange eastern imperial Englanders. It's better than his excellent prior novel, and I'm going to seek out his other one too.

Bibliography, July 2025

BOTM: T. Chivers, Everything is predictable: how Bayesian statistics explain our world (2023)

C. Adiche, Purple Hibiscus (2003)
C. Adiche, Half of a yellow sun (2006)
A. Byatt, Ragnarok (2011)
A. Bashford, The Huxleys (2022)
M. Bahari, Then they came for me (2013)
J.M. Coetzee, Youth (2002)
J. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
M. Grant, Gone (2008)

I loved Chivers' book on Bayes. I regret not doing more statistics beyond 18. In a minor key, I'd have been well placed to do a paper on historical statistics in my first year at university; more majorly, I do wonder if I should have done economic history more generally. There aren't many status in first millenium. Sadly. Anyway, had I done so, I hope I would have been part of the debates and communities he describes. It's done very well (though I think could be slightly shorter) and it has songs!

It's a good job it did have songs. Half of a Yellow Sun is an outstanding book. Everyone says so; they're right. It was very close.

Bibliography, June 2025

BOTM: P. Morris, Black Butterflies (2023)

L. Baston, Borderlines: A history of Europe told from the edges (2024)
A. Berkeley, Malice Aforethought (1931)
J. Elledge, A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders (2024)
B. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the afterlife (2020)
J. Haidt, The anxious generation (2025)
S. Harvey, The Western wind (2018)

B. Malone, Country Music USA (5th edition, 2018)
N. Nicholson, Portrait of a marriage (1940)

B. Unsworth, The quality of mercy (2011)

J. Vinge, The snow queen (1980)

D. Wright, Breaking Bread (2025)

If I was just judging books on their first parts, then this would be a straight clash between Ehrman and Malone. I thought the early history of country music and the early (read: Jewish) history of the afterlife, was absolutely fascinating. They did not sustain their excellence, with Malone in particular really falling off and losing focus. I often find this with music history. By the 1970s, it just gets too fragmented. Several decent novels Iles (pen name for Anthony Berkeley), Morris, Vinge all very good. Morris the best, though I thought some part were naively done, especially about religion. It was powerful though (it's the story of the siege of Sarajevo). By a whisker though, I would put it ahead of Baston's book . I read that in a pair with Elledge, and it is by far the better book. My main dilemma is whether it's really history or travelogue, but I decided it was history, and a very good vignette-led history it is.

Bibliography, May 2025

BOTM: A. Patchett, Those precious days (2021)

L. Baston, Borderlines: a history of Europe in 29 borders (2024)
C. Brenchley, Mary Ellen, Craterean! (2024)
L. Booth, (ed.), Wisden cricketers Almanack (2025)
R. Gaafar, A mouth full of salt (2024)
R. Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress (1966)
H. Kashiwai, Restaurant of lost recipes (2024)
S. Mawer, The glass room (2009)
A. Patchett, Truth and Beauty (2004)
A. Petersen, On the edge of the dark sea of darkness (2008)

A. Sen, Home in the world (2021)

One of A's many virtues is that she can pick out superb books for me. A few years ago, she found Chaz Brenchley's amazing fusion of pre-golden age science fiction (in this case Imperial Mars) and school stories for girls (in this case, especially the Chalet School). They're a marvel. This is the third and they remain wonderful.

It does, mean, horrifically, that even the old feeling books were modern. Thankfully, at read some actual golden age science fiction to keep at least one thing before 2000 (even if seven were in the 2020s). As well as being modern, a lot of the other readings were deeply frustrating books. They weren't bad (apart from Petersen), but they could have been so much better. In particular, I thought Gaafar struggled for resolution, Sen for narrative drive, and Baston for consistency, while Mawer wrote an excellent 200 pages before really tailing off in the second half. On balance, I am glad I read them all though.

No balance needed for my favourite. Having completed all of Ann Patchett's novels this year, I've knocked off the memoirs now. Those precious days is her COVID memoir and it's beautiful. All the things you expect of her writing. I think I've read everything of her's now. This is right up there.