Bibliography, June 2008

This is the second of what I think I will make a regular slot. I recorded my reading last month, and rather liked the discipline. So here goes once more:

Bought / Received (28)
L. Adkins, Empires of the Plain
H. Boll, And where were you Adam?
R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
A. Brookner, Hotel du Lac
M. Bulgakov, A Country doctor's notebook
A. Burroughs, Dry
K. Clark, Civilisation
P.K. Dick, The world Jones made
J. Fox, The Book of Martyrs
G. Greene, Stamboul Train
H. Hesse, Strange news from another star
S. Howatch, Mystical paths
J. Lovegrove, Provender Gleed
D. Martin and P. Mullen, No Alternative
V.S. Naipaul, India: A million mutinies now
L. Namier, The Structure of politics in the age of George III
S. Nowell-Smith, The legend of the master
J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey
S. Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox hunting man
B. Scovell, Dickie: A tribute to Harold Bird
J. Solomon, Accessing Antiquity
F. Spufford, The Child that books built
B. Sykes, The Seven daughters of Eve
A.J.P. Taylor, British Prime Ministers and other Essays
G. Usher, Dictionary of Military History
M. Weis & T. Hickman, Elven Star
P. Williams, Dylan as performing artist 1960-73
K. Williams, Complete Acid Drops

Read (12) - asterisks denote acquired this month also
J. Ash, A Byzantine journey
*R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
M. Goodwin, Rome and Jerusalem
*G. Greene, Stamboul Train
*H. Hesse, Strange news from another star
*V.S. Naipaul, India: A million mutinies now
*F. Spufford, The Child that books built
C. Thubron, Behind the wall
*B. Sykes, The Seven daughters of Eve
*M. Weis & T. Hickman, Elven Star
*K. Williams, Complete Acid Drops
*P. Williams, Dylan as performing artist 1960-73

A net gain of rather too many books this month (16; mostly from charity shops in the North); next time I am going to try to restrict acquisitions a little so that I start making inroads into my unread piles, which currently stand at an unprecedented high of 7% of my collection. I may well fail, but hopefully not as disastrously.

A good month as well: many of these were excellent and most of the rest disposable rather than bad. This was aided by deliberate selection of some known classics in their fields - Stamboul train is as good as it is famous and while Fahrenheit 451 isn’t as profound as it might be, it was still good. I’ve been reading a bit of Hesse recently, and though nowhere near as good as Steppenwolf, this mythic collection was generally fun, and occasionally profound. It also only took a lunchtime to read.

Elsewhere, Naipaul’s India redeems what I felt he did poorly in An Area of Darkness, and Thubron was fascinating, especially read in conjunction with the Chinese sections of his Shadow of the Silk Road, which I have also read recently. The contrast of both with John Ash’s Byzantine themed travel book is marked. Ash struggles to be more than a well written guidebook, though he has inspired me to get to Cappadocia.

I read The Seven daughters of Eve as part of my push to read more science, and I’m glad I did – it’s a great account of a complex piece of work, though the final imaginative sections were absolute rubbish. The other analytical books this week were also excellent. Goodwin is magisterial on the Jewish and Roman worlds of the first century, though he did lose focus, partly as a result of the scale of the book. The last chapters, though interesting, could have been cut. Spufford’s book on children’s literature was warm, affectionate and fascinating, as well as being more than a little familiar. It felt fitting to slide from this to one of the more fertile of the SF writers of my youth, for the Death Gate series, one I’ve never really got to grips with, but I think may reward re-reading (if I could find the others).

Lastly, one isn’t supposed to read Acid Drops in one go, but I couldn’t put it down. Paul Williams’ book on Dylan is average to poor, though occasionally interesting. The best bit however, is a binning of Tarantula (possibly the worst book I have ever read, with the exception of the Girl in the Box) - which is so splendid I reproduce it below:

"It is very unlikely a reader unaware of Dylan's other work would find anything of merit or interest here. There are occasional clever lines and paragraphs, but even these are quickly rendered unappealing by the phony ironic context that seems to entrap every sentence. The games with language are not liberating or stimulating, but transparent and banal; the rhythms of writing are fun for a sentence or two at a time, but quickly become stodgy, stagnant, sleep- inducing." p.171