Bibliography, October 2026

BOTM: M. James, The disappearers (2026)

W. Dalrymple, The Golden Road (2024)
M.J. Harrison, The end of everything (2026)
M. James, Moon witch, spider woman (2022)
L. Kennard, Black bag (2026)
S. Matthews, The new Byzantines (2025)
R. Perry, May we feed the king (2026)
E. Strout, The things we never say (2026)
D. Stuart, John of John (2026)
A. Thirkell, High rising (1933)

It's Booker month, and - unusually - I have held them exactly in a month. It means, very much to my surprise, I've read two Marlon James in a month, three in the year. And I'm conflicted, because I really wanted to love his fantasy and I just couldn't. However, his Booker nominee is brilliant. It's also, and typically, really long, dense and violent, but it really works. I wonder if he needs the anchor of the real world to add some shade. It is unflinching in its examination of gay Jamaican life, but weaves a complicated plot around it, wrongfooting expectations throughout. The language and the writing is brilliant. There are some astonishing tour to force sections within it, vocalising participants on each side of the battlelines. I loved it, as I did also The New Byzantines, though slightly heavy handed. And Thirkell I was told about at work, and very much enjoyed. 

Booker time. Obviously, James was my favourite. I would also recommend Stuart and Kennard. Perry I found terrible, but that may be a function of knowing something about medieval courts. It is very apparent that she did not, which makes writing about it a curious choice. Booker 2026 ranking below. I think James will win:

1. James
2. Stuart
3. Kennard
4. Harrison
5. Strout
6. Perry

Bibliography, September 2026

BOTM: E.M. Brent Dyer, The Chalet School in Exile  (1940)

P. Everett. Dr No (2023)
A. Fletcher, A refuge for the chalet school (2017)
A. Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt affair (2017)
H. Lewis, The Genius Myth (2025)
H. Oliver, Second Act: what late bloomers can tell us about success (2025)
V. Sackville-West, All passion spent  (1931)
Tan Twan Eng, The gift of rain (2007)
S.T. Warner, Lolly Willowes (1926)

I mean, it was never in doubt. Exile remains one of my favourite books in the world. I read it because Anna had bought me the fill in which covers a section of missing chronology. So I read that interleaved with the original. I very much enjoyed refuge, but the original is the best. I wish I had written the Slightly Foxed review, which is good, though a little bit dismissive of the religion. Exile it describes as the 'one truly great book' of the series, which is true. I think what makes is so brilliant is that it combines ordinary school moments with melodrama (Nazis! Spies! Engagements! Someone's hair turning white overnight!) with brutal clarity about the world as it was. Characters just die several time. It was published in 1940 and it is a genuinely affecting book the older I am when I read it, and not just for the jolly-hockey-sticks stuff or the religiosity, both of which I am massively in favour of. 

Tan Twan Eng's first book is really good too, though not as good as the Chalet School or his latest. And I did very much enjoy Vita Sackville-West.

Bibliography, August 2026

BOTM: A. Massie, A question of loyalties (1989)

C. Brenchley, Radhika rages at the Crater school (2025)
E. Carrere, I am alive and you are dead (1993)
T. Cole, Open city (2011)
E. Frank, Stranger than Fiction (2023)
A. Gide, Strait is the gate (1909)
V. Hugo, Les Miserables  (1862)
M. James, Black leopard, red wolf (2019)
P. Ormerod, David Bowie and the search for life, death and God (2026)                   
N. Slater, 1000 feasts (2024)
H.G. Wells, The island of Dr Moreau (1901)

There was quite a bit of rubbish here - Ormerod's was overwhelmingly the worst. Facile and cherrypicked. And I was starting to worry that I hadn't read an outstanding book for months. But I reckon there are three here. Most marginal was Teju Cole's novel where the main character is really New York, so I had an uneasiness that this will read very differently if you know that city well. It's still an excellent evocation about place and - through omission - person. Next up, Hugo, which I took to France as my long holiday reading and it was magnificent. I discover it's basically as long as War and Peace which was not obvious when I started, but is well worth the effort. It is crammed with brilliant observations and - as far as one can tell in translation - marvellously written passages. The structure and plot are also superb. I may even break my historical reservations about 80s musicals as a result. However, BOTM, and the reason why was read Hugo in the first place was Alan Massie's (much shorter) book on the legacy of Vichy. I thought this was the best novel I've read in ages. It's is a window into a very particular and I think now very little known slice of French history, and it integrates that organically into the trunk of France in a way that's fascinating. It's written very well, with the right level of distance: neither author, nor narrator, nor reader here are French. Alongside it, the narrator subplot also threads well. It's not perfect - I think the ending could have been landed a couple of degrees better - but it did make me want to read more French literature and history, which I am very glad I did.

NB.  Because I have the stats, it's worth noting that France is actually my fourth country in terms of literature. However, the ratio is extraordinarily fat headed. Since I started recording these things, I've read just under 2,000 novels, 950 of them by English authors, 550 by Americans. France (43) lags Scotland (5) by a small margin. Ireland (36) and Russia (29) bring up the top six. It's embarrassingly narrow. Only about 250 are not from Anglophone countries. Anyway, I'm reading more French literature for the next year.  

Bibliography, July 2026

BOTM: S. Freedman, Failed state (2024)

C. De Hamel, The posthumous papers of the manuscript club (2022)
J. Delaforce, The factory house at Oporto (1990)
D. Graeber and D. Wengrow, The dawn of everything (2022)
Hesiod, tr. M.L. West, Theogony/Works and days
R. Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)
O. Moshfegh, Lapvona (2022)
J. Saramago, The History of the siege of Lisbon (1989)
E. Sanceau, The British Factory, Oporto (1970)

July really got going at the back end. I struggled with Riddley Walker because it was in stupid made up dialect and orthography that made no sense. I struggled with The dawn of everything because they kept moving back and forth with the chronology and the argument wasn't as strong as they seemed to think it was. It was interesting in parts. Meanwhile, Saramago, De Hamel and Freedman were all excellent. I'm not sure why I've not read any Saramago before, but this was a rather lovely. I'm not convinced it was a profound as some reviewers think, and it does require some attention, but overall a minor gem. De Hamel definitely needed attention as it's long, but he writes very accessibly (unlike at least the translated Saramago) and it bounces along. I had heard him lecture on it already, so I had heard some of the best bits (e.g., the feud at the heart of the British Museum in the early nineteenth century), but it was still marvellous. I had heard Freedman talk about his book too, and I do wonder if that took the edge off slightly. I thought it was very clear and diagnostically clear. He has a good line in quick judgements, even if some of the targets are easy, and marshals his case well. I did think he got shakier the further back in history he went, and I felt the solutions for the media section were off, but the prognosis was very good. It feels very timely to be talking about decentralisation right now, and I just hope they don't mess it up (like they have so far). It won't be Freedman's fault if they do; it's a great, and pretty quick, read.  

Bibliography, June 2026

BOTM: J. C. Scott, Against the Grain (2017)

S. Berry, Disappearing world (2023)

L. Booth (ed), Wisden Cricketers Almanack (2026)

K. Gattas, Black wave (2020)
L. Mangan, Bookish (2025)
A. O'Neill, A history of heavy metal (2017)

I. Murdoch, The Green Knight (1993)
A. Roy, The ministry of utmost happiness (2017) 

J. Walton, Tooth and Claw (2003)

I am sad to report that Jo Walton's retelling of A small house at Allington with dragons is enjoyable, but not amazing. I am glad I read it though. I am similarly glad I read Black Wave, which does the good work around noting the period around 1979 as a hinge year for a series of Islamic countries, not just Iran. However, it didn't do enough on the why. I almost gave BOTM to Roy's second novel which I thought was an excellent piece of work, which only slightly sagged int the model. It's clearly political, but not overtly, and I think held things together well. I know why people didn't like it as much as The God of small things and I think they are right, but the gap is smaller than you might imagine. 

My favourite this month did not suffer from lack of a why; if anything it was too reductive. However, I thought James Scott's theory around the centrality of grain to the emergence of civilisation was excellent and thought provoking. I'm very far from a specialist in early states and this was bracing in addressing some of the cause and effect in those debates. I don't think it's all right, but I do think it does its thesis well, and taught me a lot.   

Bibliography, May 2026

BOTM: V. Evans, The Correspondent (2025)

A. Citchens, Dominion (2025)
L. Doucet, The finest hotel in Kabul (2025)
D. Fancourt, Art Cure (2026)
E. Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
M. Houlihan, Tripe: a most excellent dish (1987)
M. Hutchinson, The Mercy Step (2026)
R. Kelly, Kingfisher (2025)
L. King, Heart the lover (2025)
J. Mackrell, Artists, Siblings, Visionaries (2025)
A. Roy, The God of small things (1997)
A. Roy, Mother Mary comes to me (2025)
J. Rogoyska, Hotel Exile (2026)
K. Rundell, Explorer (2017)
E. Temelkuran, Nation of Strangers (2026)

Due to the generosity and organisation of a very good friend, I am going to the announcement of the women's prize this year. In preparation for this, I read the shortlists for both the fiction and non-fiction prizes. In honour of this, I am continuing to read only women till then. Somewhat unexpectedly, this seems to have made me very swift in my reading. It may be that the books nominated for the Women's prize are shorter.

Non-fiction shortlist
Disappointingly, I found the non-fiction shortlist weak. There was lots of interest (fascinating on Heinrich Mann, evocative on Afghanistan), but too many of them just weren't tight and clear enough - I have very firm views about this - even the good ones. I was very interested by Art Cure, but it really needed to define art better and distinguish between consuming and creating art. Meanwhile Hotel Exile was all over the place. Is it an history German exiles in France? Is it about the Hotel? Who knows. And I found the conceit around Temelkuran's letter format terrible (see below) as well analytically unsound. My favourite was Roy's memoir, partly because it's spendidly written, partly because it has a fascinating central character, partly because it kept focus. 

Ranking

1. Roy
2. Doucet
3. Fancourt
4. Mackrell
5. Rogoyska
6. Temelkuran

Fiction
This was much better. I loved The correspondent. It was the best of all. It's expertly observed, especially about old people - the protagonist is the same age as my parents. It also uses the format properly. As an epistolary work, it uses the letters to reveal something about writer and receiver as well as advance the plot (unlike Temelkuran). I also, somewhat to my surprise, like Kelly's Kingfisher a lot, though the start was shaky, I thought the end unsettling and moving, and the whole thing done well. Hutchinson I wanted to like more than I did, but I felt it couldn't decide if it wanted to a child's view account, or something weirder (first section is in the womb etc). It fell between two stools for me, though the voice was great. I liked them all though, even Dominion which I felt really failed to show what was driving it all.

Ranking

1. Evans
2. Kelly
3. Hutchinson
4. Choi
5. King
6. Citchens

Other

Amazingly, I managed to squeeze a few others in. I reread The God of small things after the memoir and it's a slightly odd experience when so much is stolen, but so much not. It's 25 years since I read it first and I remember basically nothing, certainly nothing of the plot. But then, it's really an atmosphere book anyway. I liked it a lot, though I didn't think it was outstanding. I am a little annoyed with myself that I failed to finish Guevara in April so do not have a perfect month of women, but I did finish him on May 1st.

Bibliography, April 2026

BOTM: M. Lefkowitz and J. Romm (ed.), The Greek plays: sixteen plays from Aeschulyus, Sophocles and Euripides

E. Bulwer-Lytton, Vril: the power of the coming race (1871)
P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958)*
P. Pullman, The Northern Lights (1995)*
_______, The Subtle Knife (1997)*
_______, The Amber Spyglass (2000)*
S. Runciman, The lost capital of Byzantium (1980)*
Thucydides, tr. Lattimore, The Peloponnesian war*
Xenophon, tr. Warner, Hellenica

It's wildly unclear how to rate this month's reading, two third of which were rereads anyway. I love Mani and I loved rereading it, but I can't just keep giving it Book of the Month for that reason. I also really enjoyed rereading Runciman's book on Mistra partly because we went, but also because it has a briskness and refreshing approach that I didn't appreciate the first time I read it, seven years ago. Then I described it as 'solid', but I don't think that's fair. It's much more fun than that, though probably less solid than I thought. I also revised, on rereading, Philip Pullman's books, which I read because my son and I are watching the BBC series, and thought were a lot weirder this time than they were before.*

After all that, I plumped for a book that I initially wondered shouldn't be a book at all, and that's the excellent collection of Greek tragedies (and that's partially a reread because I've seen several of these). However, I found it genuinely mind expanding to go back to the (albeit translated) text and plots. It also came with good essays to frame it for novices. The plays themselves remain the star though, both in terms of what they illuminated and about their own quality. This didn't make me wish I'd done classics, because I already think that, but it did make me want to read and see much more Greek tragedy.

*This didn't belong above, but I really liked them on publication. I think that's because the world is great and the religion narrative intriguing, but also because I was young and didn't know anything. In reality, while the first one is the best and the world is superbly built in that novel. After that it's hampered by a) the breakdown of that worldbuilding, which doesn't hold true later, b) the inconsistency of the religious angle, which I felt was lacking in texture when it could have been so much better (and also literally referred to a major plot device as working through 'grace', without a hint of irony), and c) what now feels quite creepy about adolescence and love as THE major plot driver.