J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)
N. Cardus, Autobiography (1947)
I. Colegate, The Shooting Party (1980)E. Donoghue, Room (2010)
P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds (2017)
T. Judt, Postwar (2005)
A. Kwei Armah, The beautyful ones are not yet born (1968)
A. Levy, The long song (2010)
T. McCarthy, C (2010)
A. Levy, The long song (2010)
T. McCarthy, C (2010)
L. Osborne, The wet and the dry (2013)
I. Pears, The instance of the fingerpost (1998)
This was a great month. Three standout books for me and only one duffer (Tom McCarthy's 2010 Booker nominee isn't as bad as his 2015 nominee, but it is bad). Vastly better, and shamefully not nominated at the time, was The shooting party, a finely etched gem of a book littered with brilliant quotations. It may be my favourite novel of the year so far. It was also better than Tony Judt's great book on post war Britain, which wore its many pages lightly, and held the narrative and the analysis very well till about the mid 1990s, where recency trumped perspective. It's a triumph, though I do wish I had read it on publication. The world has changed.
This was a great month. Three standout books for me and only one duffer (Tom McCarthy's 2010 Booker nominee isn't as bad as his 2015 nominee, but it is bad). Vastly better, and shamefully not nominated at the time, was The shooting party, a finely etched gem of a book littered with brilliant quotations. It may be my favourite novel of the year so far. It was also better than Tony Judt's great book on post war Britain, which wore its many pages lightly, and held the narrative and the analysis very well till about the mid 1990s, where recency trumped perspective. It's a triumph, though I do wish I had read it on publication. The world has changed.
Best of the lot, and rightly garlanded with the prizes, was, in its conception, a book that also emphasises the importance of time and place. Shapiro is marshalling a lot of academic work by others, and I don't know it well enough to tell where, but he is doing it brilliantly. The focus on a year is inspired and allows those of us not deep in the literary scholarship to anchor our understanding of what drives some of those key plays. This reading of Julius Caesar in the light of the wars of religion will stay with me forever. Despite what may seem from outside to be a narrow focus, this is in fact a hugely accessible book, which says its many things lightly and fluently. It's a pleasure to read.
As a result of this month's reading, I have now read the full 2010 Booker shortlist. It wasn't great. My ranking below, though 3 and 4 were much of a muchness:
- Donoghue, Room
- Galgut, In a strange room
- Levy, The long song
- Jacobson, The Finckler question
- Carey, Parrot and Oliver in America
- McCarthy, C
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