Bibliography, May 2020

BOTM: V. Moore, How to Drink (2009)*

T. Ashbridge, The greatest knight (2015)

Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's daughter (1924)

S. Hill, Jacob's room is full of books (2017)
N.K. Jemisin, The hundred thousand kingdoms (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The broken kingdoms  (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The kingdom of the Gods (2011)
N. Palmer, A cheesemonger's history of the British Isles (2019)

A. Trollope, A. The MacDermotts of Ballycloran (1847)
P.G. Wodehouse, Thank you, Jeeves (1934)

Barely a dud in this whole list. Trollope's debut is weak but the lines of what makes him great are there. I very much struggled to choose a favourite. The non-fiction was better than the fiction, though that's not a reflection on the fiction. I thought Jemisin's first novel sequence was excellent and reading Dunsany was illuminating, if a little wearing.

However, the non-fiction was outstanding. I cried at Ned Palmer's account of the renaissance of British cheese (the last time I did this over a book was reading about the Home Counties' march to save Radio 4 Longwave). In reading Ashbridge's excellent (and close runner up) account of William Marshal, I remembered how absorbing the Angevin kings are. But I loved most of all Victoria Moore's drinking book. I read it at the time, and it seemed pleasant enough, but I dipped into for lockdown and it simply opened up. I learned lots, and not just that Anna and I have different definitions of what 'too strong' means in a cocktail. But I also enjoyed it for the reading alone. It's well paced, nicely informal, and focused on all the right things and the right number of things. In my head, I remembered this as encyclopaedic; it's not at all, and all the better for it. Instead it's highly authored and great fun. And has helped me get rid of my sweet Vermouth that I bought by mistake last year.