Bibliography, August 2019

BOTM: A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015)

J. Arlott, Arlott on wine (1986)

F. Fernandez - Armesto, Millenium (1997)

P. Hensher, Kitchen Venom (1996)
C. Louvin, Satan is real (2012)*

L. Mangan, Bookworm (2016)

A. Marshall, Life's rich pageant (1984)

S. Runciman, The lost capital of Byzantium (1980)

D. Storey, Saville (1976)
J. Thayil, Narcopolis (2012)

A. Wilson, As if by magic (1973)

I read widely this month, but not well. I have though cleared the decks of some long overdue books, where I liked Millenium (a shamefully never completed 18th birthday present), but not Saville (one of three unread Booker winners, but with a dire, unconnected ending). Much of the rest was mediocre and some (Hensher, Wilson) were bad. I make Gill's memoir my favourite with some reluctance as other contenders fell away. Runciman was solid rather than sparkling; Mangan I did enjoy, but a) the distance between our childhood reading was too great (essentially because she's a girl) and b) I'm jealous of the number of books she must get to read even now. I did consider giving it to Arthur Marshall's rather lovely autobiography, but I think I would have needed to know who he was beforehand, though it had some very good lines. So it had to be the Gill, which I found both engaging and problematic. Lots is left out; and much of his fairly aggressive public persona is not engaged with or heavily glossed over. And that makes it a not very honest book, deliberately, despite claiming to be. It is affecting, but the compelling episodes add up to a disingenuous whole. The episodes are however often very well done. In fact, I enjoyed the digressions on art and on journalism more than the central plank of the book. That is problematic, but it does make a very worthwhile read.