B. Bryson, Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
F. Stark, Ionia
M. Tully, India in slow motion
A. Powell, At Lady Molly's
A. Powell, Casanova's Chinese restaurant
A. Powell, The kindly ones
Wisden, Cricketers' Almanack 2006
Books read (12)
P. Auster, New York Trilogy
M. Beloff, An Historian in the 20th Century
S. Foehr, Waking up in Nashville
P. Glazebrook, Journey to Kars
Q. Hogg, The left was never right
A. Kenny, A path from Rome
D. Lodge, Changing places
J. Major, More than a game: the story of cricket's early years
A. Powell, A buyer's market
G. Robb, The discovery of France
R. Thaler and C.R. Sunstein, Nudge
M. Younus, Banker to the poor
These little bibliographic excursions are running the risk of getting overlong. I'm just going to highlight a book of the month now and then comment on a couple of others briefly. This time, it's been a pretty high quality month actually, though I didn't really understand Auster and Nudge was overlong.
The best though was Robb - stunningly good and an original piece of work. He takes as his subject the local, regional France of the Early modern era and charts its emergence as an at least partially united country over the nineteenth century, driven in large part by technology - obviously the railway, but also critically the bicycle. It's a fascinating glimpse into a recent, yet compellingly alien, past of isolated villages, and a France that clashes with all our conceptions of a centralised monarchy. Required reading for Francophiles - I'm buying it for my dad.
No comments:
Post a Comment