Bibliography, November 2015

BOTM: H. Yanagihara, A little life

P. Fitzgerald, The bookshop

I. Watson (ed.), The Mammoth book of alternate histories

It took me twenty five days to read A little life, partly because of childcare but mostly because it was such hard going. It was however worth it. It's been controversial and the plot issues are real, but it was haunting, beautiful and so sad. The writing was also excellent. Although it's been described as grim, and there are passages I physically flinched at, I think it finishes well. It was robbed of the Booker.

Edit. My final Booker 2015 rankings are thus below. McCarthy was terrible:

1. Yanagihara
2. James
3. Tyler
4. Sahota
5. Obioma
6. McCarthy

Bibliography, October 2015

BOTM: M. James, A brief history of seven killings

T. McCarthy, Satin Island
C. Obioma, The fishermen
S. Sahota, The year of the runaways
A. Tyler, A spool of blue thread

So, I've read the Booker shortlist (almost). I'm part way through the final one. I think, so far, the judges were right (incidentally, I've found myself having to defend in argument the value of judges opinions quite a lot when I mention this, of which more later). I don't think it's a vintage year. James' work is powerful, but the disjointedness is hard to manage, and the judges (and I) may well have been influenced by the fact that very few people know very much about Jamaican history at all. It is hard going, and not at all brief. I think the same attended Obioma, which is much weaker. Anne Tyler was excellent as ever, but in the same way as ever. Sahota was good, but I think this is social commentary bleeding into the literature and the ending was wrong. McCarthy was lightweight, though it had some great lines. I think judges may have believed it contained profundity that it didn't. James was profound, and high octane, I felt exhausted after finishing.

Bibliography, September 2015

BOTM: Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: the golden days

G. Dyer, Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi
C. Higgins, This new noise: the extraordinary birth and troubled life of the BBC
A. Laurain, The president's hat
Y. Mishima, The temple of the golden pavilion
R. Yates, Revolutionary road

I'm stuck in the middle (well, at the start) of the Booker shortlist. It turns out that A brief history of seven killings is a) not brief, b) largely in Jamiacan patois. It was a poor place to start. More on that next month. Best this month was probably not the great Chinese epic that I have chosen, but it was the most compelling, despite nothing actually happening. I can't decide whether I read it as an interested historian or a consumer of fiction. As someone who knows nothing about eighteenth century China, I found it fascinating, particularly once I reread the introduction about a third of the way through. As a novel, though I said nothing happens, when I reflect actually quite a lot goes on. Several characters get killed off, a child is sold into slavery, there's a magic stone. Somehow, and I think this is the triumph of the book, it glides along gradually, layering these things on, almost imperceptibly, to arrive at the end of the book. It's one of five, and I'm sorely tempted to tackle the rest, where I think that the pace and intensity pick up. 

Interminable Booker shortlist first.

Glory

I never really mind too much when we lose to Wales in the rugby. There are exceptions, when they deny England the grand slam (e.g., two years ago), or when it would have been just embarrassing. But I'm usually excited when Wales do well, partly because it makes A happy; partly because my grandfather was Welsh and I am technically an eighth Welsh (expect that to come to the fore if we lose to Australia); partly because it's such a big part of Welsh culture and it means so much  to them (this my favourite from the weekend); and partly because Wales is supposed to be good at rugby - no-one begrudges a fast Ferrari; no-one should celebrate a poor Welsh team.

So while I still don't quite know how we lost on Saturday, and I would much rather we won, I can't be too upset about it. I still think we threw it away, but Wales played with endeavour and bloody-mindedness that deserves reward. It was also a great match to watch. 

Controversially, I disagree on the talking points, or at least the headlines of them. I'm glad we went for the line-out in the final five minutes. The real issues are a) that we messed up the tactics of the throw, and b) far more importantly, why we were close at all. There were plenty of wasted opportunities to do well down in the Welsh half, and we casually gave away penalties in ours. That's what should attract criticism, not the call to go for the line. In fact, I'd go further and praise the mentality that went for the line. It is true that modern sport, especially in tournaments, is all about percentages, but that's a shame, not something to be celebrated. It should be about glory. We were all quick to praise Japan for the same call and the same impulse the week before, and though the press have since tried to argue that England should behave differently to Japan, I don't see why that should be so. One of the great things about sport is that the very top can behave just like everyone else in approach, this is a prime example. There's no fundamental shame in draw, but there is when a win is available. On Saturday, England (and Wales) went for glory. Wales dug in for it in the middle of the second half; we went for it at the end. I am glad they both did, though I wish the outcome had been different.

Beware the backwaters

When I sat finals, my modest hopes for the seventeenth century were dashed when my banker question, on the Thirty Years War, the great conflagration primarily fought between the Habsburgs, Dutch, French and Swedish, turned out to be about Bavaria. I didn't know very much about Seventeenth century Bavaria. I still don't know very much about seventeenth century Bavaria (though I do think someone should write a parallel biography of Maximilian II and Prince Eugene of Savoy). I'm still not convinced it was a legitimate question. Bavaria was a unit of real weight, as it is now, but it was a backwater. Nothing important happened in Bavaria in this period - they were just a useful source of senior catholic marriages - almost Kings of Spain, but only almost. 

Backwaters occasionally become important. I read last month Bulgakov's novel, the White Guard, set in the aftermath of the Great War in Ukraine. I know even less about this than I do about Bavaria. It turns out the Ukrainian theatre was important in the Russian civil war of the early twentieth century. I note also that any resolution then was only temporary. I feel we're watching a later act play out out right now. If we all knew more about Ukrainian history, we'd be able to speak more intelligently about the crisis.

I revel in these byways. Under no circumstances can the later Byzantine Empire be described as central to the flow of history. The depth and texture of history relies on specialists getting to grips with alien, obscure periods and people and the temptation of these oddities and alien places is vast. Norman Davies wrote a lovely book about them (NB. Not all of these are actually backwaters). Any half decent library will show the deviations it owner has taken. For example, I have more books on the county of Foix and the Languedoc than I do on the USA (a low bar), while my 'Germany' section is almost entirely books on the Habsburgs (including, because of my technical definition of 'Germany,' Hungary). It is easy to build up a historical view that is entirely covered with beautiful, fascinating, vignettes, often of obscure, sleepy or forgotten places (I did buy a book about Liechtenstein the other day).

It would be easy, enchanting. And wrong. These are all still backwaters, wonderful backwaters, but but backwaters nonetheless. We forget the main trunk roads of history at our peril. This is exactly the trap that curricula fall into when they lose sense of chronology (hence the thrust of Michael Gove's somewhat imperfect reforms to ours). They are the ornaments, not the branches. Now, I think everyone should read about both, but if you only read one, read about the important thing. Then read about the obscure, possibly for longer, but never first.

Bibliography, August 2015

BOTM: J.B. Priestley, English Journey

A. Bennett, Smut
E.M. Brent Dyer, The Head Girl of the Chalet School
M. Bulgakov, The White Guard
P. Delerm, The small pleasures of life

W.S. Maugham, The Magician 
C. Mieville, Embassytown 
S.S. Tepper, Beauty 
R. Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon*
R. Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn*

R. Zelazny, The Hand of Oberon*

R. Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos*
R. Zelazny, Trumps of Doom

R. Zelazny, Blood of Amber

R. Zelazny, Sign of Chaos

R. Zelazny, Knight of Shadows 

R. Zelazny, Prince of Chaos

A post - baby reading record. Heavily inflated by reading Books 2-10 of the Chronicles of Amber (note: they are all very short). They weren't exceptional. In fact, even the classic first quintet compared unfavourably to others in its genre this month. Tepper was enormously inventive and original - as she reliably is. And I thought the Mieville was too. 

However, they were all as pygmies beside Priestley. English Journey is a well known classic, and it deserves to be. It's well observed, with exceptional turns of phrase - I have a forest of bookmarks to dig out for quotations - but it's much more than that. It's intended as a survey of England in the 1930s, which of course it is, but, unlike Orwell's register of poverty that it inspired, it is rooted in the longer term evolution of England and English society. It also contains rather delightfully robust asides from the author on the state of the nation; and on generally held views on the state of the nation. Some of those aren't quite right, but they have a lot less wrong with them than Orwell's (and they take up less space); many are spot on, and a pleasure to read. It's scope makes it still highly relevant today: in a period where we are spending our time questioning the Union and the nation, I would suggest we could all do well to read books like this. Instead, outrageously, it is out of print. Hunt it down.

Bibliography, July 2015

BOTM: Ford, F.M., No More Parades 

Bryson, B., 1927
Bryson, B., Shakespeare
Ford, F.M., Some Do Not ... 
Ford, F.M., A Man Could Stand Up 
Ford, F.M., The Last Post 
Maugham, W. S. The Moon and Sixpence 
Maugham, W. S. The Razor's edge 
Wrangham, R., Catching Fire: how cooking makes us human

Zelazny, R., Nine princes in Amber

It turns out Parade's End isn't about the war at all (well, maybe a bit), it's really about being a Tory. As a result, I enjoyed a lot more than I imagined I would. I even came to like what we might describe as its 'distinctive' style. And the themes are in fact eternal, not limited to the war at all. I'm not sure there's much science behind which volume I've chosen here as a favourite because obviously they only work when taken together. However, this was the most immediate, uncertain and opaque (deliberately) and all the better for it.

Just not cricket

After yesterday, I am longer mentioning international cricket. Unfortunately, because I've been talking about cricket for some weeks, my elder son is now fascinated. He took not coming to Lord's with a good grace (thankfully. He's far too young to be useful and be sent to get the drinks). Instead, I said I'd take him to the Oval to watch Surrey another weekend. This has three major advantages: it's cheap, down the road, and there's a chance they might actually win. I discover today it has one overwhelming disadvantage: there aren't any matches. Not one.

Preposterously, in the week that schools break up, there are now no more weekend fixtures at the Oval - for the entire rest of the year (her's the schedule). In fact, Surrey played on only one weekend day throughout all July (in Leicester). They play most weekends in August, but only one is at home (and that's in Guildford). They don't play a single weekend in September unless they reach a final or two. None of these games are at the Oval. These things aren't relevant to me yet, but that means there is not a single weekend game for the entire school holidays, even if you're working off private education holidays. In the spirit of even-handedness, the early part of the summer was better, but I am unimpressed. 

I know no-one watches county cricket, but I feel they could try a bit harder.

Bibliography, June 2015

BOTM: M. Pollan, Cooked

B. Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean
C. Mieville, The city and the city
M. Robinson, Lila
W. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
E. Zola, Germinal
A. Zamoyski, Poland

It's a sad reflection of living with children, that despite being on holiday for much of June, I still only managed a paltry seven books, albeit a number were long and excellent. Mieville and Zola exceptionally so. As an aside, this means I may attempt the whole Rougon - Macquart sequence. The best of all though was Michael Pollan's book about cooking (and baking and brewing). I was concerned in the first few pages that he may be a too Californian for me, but though there were moments, they were few and mild. Instead, his book manages simultaneously to be both a fascinating discursive ramble through the cooking approaches he explored and a practical call to action to specific cooking techniques. As a result, in my spare time between reading nineteenth century French novels, I am going to bake bread.

Bibliography, May 2015

BOTM: M. Robinson, Gilead

J. Braine, Room at the top
J. Crace, Being dead
E. Crispin, Buried for pleasure
U. Eco, The Prague Cemetery
B. Greene, Liechtenstein: Valley of Peace
A. Huxley, Island
H. Macdonald, H is for hawk
M. Robinson, Home

Gilead - perfect; everything else (and several were outstanding) - not Gilead.

Bibliography, April 2015

BOTM: P. Lively, Moon tiger

J. Barnes, A pedant in the kitchen*
A. Bennett, Clayhanger
W. Golding, Rites of passage
P.H. Newby, Something to answer for

Astute observers will notice that I am filling in the missing Booker winners I've not yet read. I'm getting very close to being able to produce a definitive ranking.  Astute observers will also note that I haven't actually managed to do much reading, but there is much to remark about on these. What I'm most struck by is the fragility of literary reputation. Newby and Bennett are obscure now, yet neither deserve to be - Bennett is particularly marvellous. I'd also comment on the loss of Egypt as a setting in modern fiction. From the 1950s onwards, Egypt crops up again and again. I'm thinking here of Durrell, Olivia Manning, Waugh et cetera - most of course about the war. Lively's, with The English patient five years' later, is really the last hurrah (I am happy to be corrected on this). It's all India now and that's a shame. Anyway, Moon tiger was great. Elegantly written and deeply affecting. Go find it. It's quite short and well worth it.

Bibliography, March 2015

BOTM: P. Barker, The Ghost Road

P. Barker, The Eye in the Door

E.M. Brent-Dyer, A princess at the Chalet School

A.S. Byatt, On histories and stories
T. Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
J. Huley, A matter of taste: a history of wine drinking in England
O. Jones, The Establishment

A. Leckie, Ancillary justice

S. Middleton, Holiday
H. Saberi, Tea: A global history

Despite a strong showing from Leckie's multigarlanded science fiction debut, only one author was going to win BOTM. I did have some difficulty choosing which one, but - like the Booker judges - I came down on the final volume of the Regeneration trilogy. It's exquisitely done. I read them at the time, but hadn't remembered very about them. Perhaps I was too young. Nonetheless, they are pretty much pitch perfect in their recreation of a very specific slice of the War, and the real and fictional blending is done very well indeed. It's also much softer on the heartbreak than it could be. The deaths aren't melodramatic, but just sad. I think that makes it a cut above those novels that hammer home the point. It's superior in most other ways too.

Bibliography, February 2015

BOTM: J. Wood, the fun stuff

C. Achebe, Things fall apart
P. Barker, Regeneration*
E.M. Brent Dyer, Jo of the Chalet School*
I. Fleming, From Russia, with Love
U. Le Guin, The left hand of darkness
S. Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh*

I note, a) I've begun to really step up the rereading, which may damage my calculations about how many books to retain in the house and b) this has been an exceptional month. I reckon at least three of these would have taken BOTM in January (Wood, Barker, Rushdie). And I could make a case for Le Guin and Achebe. I think this is the last of Rushdie's great works, and it makes painful the decline he has suffered since. Comparing this to The Enchantress of Florence (which has strong echoes of this in it) is painful.

Not though as painful as Paul Auster would find James Wood's essay on his output. It's a savage, and richly deserved, binning. And just one of the succession of gems in his latest collection of essays. It helps of course that I think he's right on most of the authors he discusses, but really it's the penetration and elegance with which he approaches each subject that makes this outstanding. As a bonus, we don't just get literary criticism but an astounding essay on the late Keith Moon, decades after his death. It's been richly lauded, and I heartily concur. Unless of course you're a huge fan of Paul Auster.

The simple things

When I was much younger, I used to aim to make Ash Wednesday mass as late as possible on the day. As Lent only starts then, you can get two drinks in after work before the 7:30 service. I remember once pelting through central London on a bike after glibly promising my drinking companion I could get from Charlotte St to Camden in under 10 minutes (you can't, but it's close enough). That was when I had time; and evenings. Now I try to work Ash Wednesday more efficiently and knock it off during the day. It's amazing how hard that is.

I suspect it's true that you can tell a lot about any organisation by how well they do the irregular activities. It's certainly true that you can tell a lot about a church based on what happens outside Sundays. Getting Ash Wednesday right should be easy. If you're a city church near a lot of workplaces, you should have an Ashing service at lunchtime. You might well want to have one after work too, but don't have it at 7:30. If you're residential, do it after dinner (7:30 is fine). And tell people about it - at the very least put a poster up outside, and you should really learn to use the Internet - I don't believe it's that hard anymore. People who are looking for a service near work should be able to look you up. In London, the diocese could even co-ordinate.

On Wednesday, I had to walk 20 minutes in the centre of London to find a church I knew had a service. I walked past two churches on the way. Even after looking at their noticeboards, I couldn't work out if they had a service at all, let alone at lunchtime. I mourn the fact that Ash Wednesday isn't a fundamental part of the rhythm of modern life, but I'm just angry that the churches don't even seem to trying. Anathema.

P.S. My old and new churches did this just fine.

Bibliography, January 2015

BOTM: M. Cunningham, The hours

L. Barber, An education
R. Blythe, Akenfield
E.M. Brent- Dyer, The school at the chalet*
E. Crispin, The case of the gilded fly
C.L.R. James, Letters from London
M. Marquesee, War minus the shooting*
R. Silverberg, Downward to Earth*
B. Unsworth, Pascali's Island

In some ways, I'm bottling this. My delight about the delivery of the complete Chalet School series from home is profound. There is a creeping inevitability about me reading them all. The first is excellent and was a strong contender for BOTM. As was Mike Marquesee's book on the 1996 cricket world cup. Instead, I've plumped for Michael Cunningham's famous, highly lauded, concept novel. It is of course better written than the Chalet school and structurally more complex. It's also exceptionally clever and well done. It's not a long book and it's packed tight (note of course that it's not really three stories but two and a prequel). I find Virginia Woolf unreadable, but this briefly made me think I wanted to revisit her work. Instead I've started book two of the Chalet school. I'm happy with that.

Bibliography, 2014

So, here's what I said:

Jan - J. Crace, Harvest

Feb - L. Hughes-Hallet, The Pike

March - N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects

April - D. Hendy, Life on Air

May - P.L. Fermor, Between the woods and the water*

June - B. Wilson, Consider the fork

July - A. Solomon, Far from the tree

August - M. Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

September - D. Brown, Bury my heart at wounded knee*

October - E. Waugh, Men at Arms*

November - R. Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north

December - S.S. Tepper, The gate to Women's country

To be honest, it's been the worst reading year of my adult life. The monthly average is down to seven, and it's propped up with some, shall we say, lighter efforts. Fiction dominated, though actually less than the last two years (61%). Also worth noting was the strengths of the rereads. Three BOTMs were rereads, and I could easily have had a fourth in December. Anyway:

I read a lot of novels, but the list is majority (7:5) non-fiction. This should make fiction easier to award, and it's really a Booker duel. Harvest, which should have won 2013's prize, was better than the actual winner of the 2014 edition. For me, it remains as astounding evocation of the medieval rural world. A fitting swansong for Jim Crace. Idiot Booker judges.

Non-fiction is a lot harder. Almost all of the monthly non-fiction were astounding. I even cried at some of them (actually two of them, and one was about Radio 4), and choosing one of them is very hard. In the end though, it came down to another duel of two great enterprises, both asking us to re-imagine how we think about America (Bury my heart at Wounded Knee) or children (Far from the tree). Both were transformatively brilliant. Solomon edges it by being a) about children when I had a pregnant wife and b)being read for the first time.

Bibliography, December 2014

BOTM: S.S. Tepper, The Gate to Woman's country 

C. Booker, The Seven basic plots

M. Bulgakov, A dog's heart
W. Gibson, Neuromancer 

T. Pratchett & N. Gaiman, Good Omens*

P.G. Wodehouse, Sam the sudden 

I liked a lot of these, though none were absolutely stellar. Booker was terrible, after about page 250 (there were a lot more). I was tempted to put Good Omens at the top, but I have read it enough times before such than many of the great jokes were remembered as much as read. I almost put Gibson at the top for the reverse reason, namely I've never read it, but it now feels very familiar - it's famously a book that launched a subgenre - but it does feel dated now. So, with these caveats, my favourite was Tepper's feminist envisioning of a post-apocalyptic world. and I can't really believe I'm writing that.

Daniel John Garrood

b. 01:43, 30.xii.2014, London, 8lb 6oz (3.8kg)

Daniel for:
the Prophet
the Stylite

John for:
the Baptist
the Revelator (as this, not as imagined by DH Lawrence)
Tzimiskes
Cash
And my grandfather, John Garrood

Disappointingly, Anna vetoed Charles.