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.

Bibliography, April 2025

BOTM: R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: master of the senate (2003)

R. H. Benson, Lord of the world (1908)

R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the passage of power (2012)
W. Dalrymple and A. Anand, Kohinoor: the story of the world's most infamous diamond (2020)
N. Duerden, Exit stage left: the curious afterlife of pop stars (2022)
J. Meades, The plagiarist in the kitchen (2018)
N. Novik, His Majesty's dragon (2006)
M.S. Pillai, Rebel sultans: the Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji (2018)
R. Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

R. Zelazny, A night in lonesome October (1994)

A lot of these were mediocre. Duerden, Novik, Dalrymple, and Benson were all actively bad, with flashes of quality or information in some places. I did enjoy Meades and Zelazny, though I suspect I didn't have as much fun as they did writing and conceiving them (Zelazny's book is written from the perspective of Jack the Ripper's dog).

On the other hand, I am definitely glad I was reading rather than researching Caro's volumes 3 and 4. Volume 3, on Johnson's senate career, is the best of the lot, and is as much a history of the mid century senate as it is of Johnson. As a result, it is a thousand pages long. It's an astonishing book, that penetrates a world that seems unimaginable, yet was vital, and is engrossing about the tactics and practicalities of power. It's a marvel.

Bibliography, March 2023

BOTM: R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the path to power (1982)

R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the means of ascent (1990)
A. Patchett, The patron saint of liars (1992)
--------, Taft (1994)
--------, The magician's apprentice (1997)
--------, Tom Lake (2019)
E. Wald, Dylan goes electric! (2015)

I'm deliberately reading a lot about America this year, and this month is, accidentally, entirely American - and deeply homogenous. I'm delighted that I've now read all of Patchett's novels and have always thought she was great. Of these, I liked The magician's apprentice the best. It's a curious idea for a novel, but lives are curious and it was expertly, softly, done. My completist nature is even more excited by the prospect of addressing Caro's Lyndon four volume (to date) Johnson biography. I've been thinking about it for years, but kept putting it off because of it's massive length. I regret that. It's a masterpiece. I read the first two volumes in March and they're both compelling, but the first is the better (I think the second is the weakest of the four). It is obviously too long, he's not born for the first fifty odd pages, but the length and the detail is the point. It's an immersion in a world and the nuances of that world aren't obvious to us without that detail. Two standout moments for me:

• Firstly, the chapter on Johnson bringing electricity to the Hill Country of Texas is a truly astonishing piece of writing, which drops an astounding evocation from social history into a biography, and makes you realise the power of politics to change things
• Second, a vignette from the end, when Johnson loses his first senate campaign because although he stole votes, his opponent's backers stole more. Hearing this news, FDR talks about his own vote stealing. We forget how short the distance is to voting working like that in the US.

Anyway, it told me lots about America, lots about Lyndon Johnson, and lots about what I like in politicians (not what I look for in friends). I wish I'd read it sooner.

Bibliography, February 2025

BOTM: H. Nicolson, Diaries (ed. N. Nicolson, 2004)

J. Dench, Shakespeare: the man who pays the rent (2023)

H. Mantel, A change of climate (1994)

E. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (2010)

C. Van Tulleken, Ultra-processed people (2023)

J. Waine, A company of slayers (2023)

I really struggled to get momentum this month, hence only six books. I blame Anna for going away for a fortnight to work. Children are time consuming. Lots of value though. It didn't come off in Tulleken, which was disappointing because of embarrassing overreach. Fascinating on the nutrition; absolute woo woo on everything else. (Sample quotation: 'I see the avoidance of tax as part of ultra-processing'). No such issues elsewhere. Colonel Roosevelt is a very good end to the biographical trilogy, and really frames that tragic final act for Roosevelt. Mantel's novel also very good. Dench was great on Shakespeare and on how little time she has for many people. I liked it a lot.

Dench is an actress of the highest quality; Harold Nicolson is not an author of comparable standing. I've read one of his novels and it was fine; I suspect there's a reason why we don't read them now. I get the feeling that his political career was similar. However, as a diarist, he is superb. Fortunately, he is also at the thick of things during the war, even if he is slightly detached. My father bought them for me because he loved them, and so did I.

Bibliography, January 2025

BOTM: B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023)

L. Bardugo, Six of Crows (2015)

G. Ehrlich, The solace of open spaces (1986)

R.F. Kuang, The Poppy war (2018
G.Lamming, In the castle of my skin (1953)

M. Margolyes, This much is true (2021)

E. Morris, Theodore Rex (2002)

I've been really busy this month, and Morris' second volume of his TR biography is long. It's also very good, though I think less effective than this first. That's primarily because the business of the administration has to co-exist with the account of the man, and I don't think it does that perfectly. It's still hugely compelling, and I've bought the third and final volume already. I've decided to read a lot of Americans this year. I think I will find their past more congenial than their present. On Americans, I loved Ehrlich's book about Wyoming. I think the only other books I've read about Wyoming are the My Friend Flicka series - about horses (secondary ambition: read a book for every state). Horses feature in the Solace of Open spaces but the land and the people dominate. And it's a beautiful book about just that. It was written post bereavement, and those jagged moments cut through, but don't dominate, adding another layer to a fine book about place.

Curiously, my favourite book was also one where sadness (divorce, not death) sat just under the surface. I love Bee Wilson's work. This is her third BOTM - behind only Fermor and tied with Wodehouse, Trollope, Gibbon and Bryson. That's a dinner party! - and I didn't even mean to buy it. I casually took it out of the library, read it in a weekend, and bought a copy the next day. It's a fantastic book. It's easy and engagingly written, also funny. I found it also a font of practical advice - not all of which I agreed with. It's also got excellent recipes, which is why I bought a copy, but I'd read it even if you aren't intending to make anything it. That said, her recipe for gochujang carrots is outstanding. It's going to get used a lot this year.

Bibliography, 2024

I read 122 books in 2024, exactly the same as 2023. A second consecutive year of being back over ten books a month since the children were born. Last year, six graphic novels got me over the line; this year it was eleven children's books, most - but not all - of which the children read first.

Similar ratios: lots of fiction (though only 55 for grown ups) and cultural output still down on long run averages. Maybe I've read most of the great memoirs. A 7:5 split to fiction in Books of the Month towards fiction, and history edging out culture (though East West Street is actually both). Note also the ghastly modernity of the results. For the first time, no BOTM novels were written before I was born (of the 28 published before 1980 read this year - Baldwin's Giovanni's Room best, but edged by Morris in June).

One of the children's books made BOTM, pretty much exactly in line with overall reading volumes, but it was an outstanding book. I read Impossible Creatures first of all my novels this year, and it was my favourite of the whole year. I think it's a marvel. It helps that she's clearly read everything I've read, and then stuffs lots of it, joyously, into a single work. I also think she does it with just the right amount of whimsy. Anna tells me that she gets the Welsh wrong, but I'm pretending I don't know that. Read it, and make your children read it. Were I to choose an adult novel, I'd choose Patchett.

Choosing non-fiction is a straight duel between Teddy Roosevelt and the medieval church. It is possible that the appeal of Morris and Heather's books may be reduced if you have less affection for the subjects than I do, but they are both important, and brilliantly done. I think achievement of Christendom is the greater, given the complexity of the material. It was my favourite of all. I think it's right, but even if you don't agree with it, it's a masterful grand narrative of a central narrative of Christianity and the many streams that gave us the medieval catholic church.

Jan: K. Rundell, Impossible Creatures (2023)

Feb: R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004)
Mar: M. Conde, Crossing the Mangrove (1989)
Apr: P. Sands, East West Street (2016)
May: P. Fitzgerald, At Freddie's (1982)
Jun: E. Morris, The rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979)
Jul: M. Lee, Eight lives of a century-old trickster (2023)
Aug: M. Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
Sep: S. Harvey, Orbital (2023)
Oct: Leaman & Jones, Hitting against the spin (2021)
Nov: P.  Heather, Christendom (2022)
Dec: A. Patchett, The Dutch House (2019)

Bibliography, December 2024

BOTM: A. Patchett, The Dutch house (2019)

A. Gray, At Christmas we feast (2022)
J. Hawes, The shortest history of Germany (2017)
T. Hughes, The Iron man (1968)
D. Landy, The Faceless ones (2009)
A. MacCaffrey, Dragonflight (1969)
J. Ng, Under the pendulum sun (2017)
D. Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
Orme, Going to church in medieval England (2021)
M. Paver, The crocodile tomb (2015)
M. Paver, Warrior bronze (2016)
O. Thomson, The other kaisers (2010)
G. Wolfe, The shadow of the torturer (1984)
A. Wood, Powder monkey (1953)

I saw out the year with a glut of children's books (at least five of the nine novels I read). I liked most of them, which isn't true of my adult reading. I had issues with Olusoga, which was annoying. The stuff he knows well was well done, and it is undertaught, though not by as much as he claims, but his headline case is plain wrong: there have not always been black Britons beyond isolated examples, which is why there are no chapters in the book on the period between the Fall of Rome and the Tudors. It's a weird opening to take. 400 years just isn't that long ago. Elsewhere, Thomson's book on German Emperors was just rubbish, and my decision to retreat to comforting science fiction was badly let down by the execution of Ng and Wolfe. The latter of which is meant to be a classic, but I just couldn't face book two, even though I a two volume set out of the library. 

So, having covered all those, Patchett's novel is great. She's an exceptionally good novelist, and I think this is one of her very best. She has this extraordinary gift of being able to imbue not much happening (no melodrama, no high stakes plots) with very high engagement. They're engrossing, and brilliantly played out. I think very much the same about Arnold Bennett, and that's high praise indeed. I said the same last time I made one of her novels my favourite, and it's a reminder that you don't need a gimmick to make things work.