Bibliography, November 2024

BOTM: P. Heather, Christendom (2023)

A. Berkeley, Trial and Error (1937)
B.J. Catlos, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (2021)

M. Chabon, Gentlemen of the road (2007)
A. Christie, The Sittaford mystery (1924)
A. Christie, A murder is announced (1953)
H. Eyres, Wine Dynasties of Europe (1990)

J. Firnhaber-Baker, House of Lilies (2024)

I. Pezeshkzad, My uncle Napoleon (1973)
E. Rasmussen, The Shakespeare thefts (2010)

I went to an Agatha Christie evening mid-month, hence the golden age crime kick here. They were good. She remains the best of them all. Elsewhere, very pleasing blocks of historical reading, on the Capetians and Islamic Spain, both of which I liked, though both had a few issues of style and content. Catlos was better. I also hugely enjoyed My Uncle Napoleon. It was sold to me as reminiscent of Wodehouse in pre-revolutionary Iran. That is an accurate description and it is therefore huge fun. It's too long though. Wodehouse keeps it tighter.

Preamble over, I now want to talk about Peter Heather's book, which I loved. It's straddles both my Masters and especially my Doctoral research so I was disposed to care lots about it. I'm no expert on the later western church, so I've no skin in that game, but he does also confirm what I argued in my doctorate about Theodosius I so I'm pleased with that. I am also delighted to see the rare sight of someone doing the maths properly and using that to point to the centrality of royal and imperial power to Christianization. There's lots of like about that, for example, very good on the numbers of churches which were quite low till well into the middle ages. It’s also, if we were looking for relevance, an exemplary political economy analysis in relation to the papacy, and showing how little actual power popes had till the failure of both the Empires that followed the End of Rome in the West. Bizarrely, it came to my attention through work, but I'm very very glad it did.

Bibliography, October 2024

BOTM: N. Leaman & B. Jones, Hitting against the spin (2021)

R. Adams, J. Sutphin & J. Sturm, Watership Down: The Graphic novel (2023)
M. Baer, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs (2021)
J. Bate and R. Jackson (eds), Oxford illustrated history of Shakespeare on Stage (2001)
Ar. Bennett, The old wives' tale (1908)

P. Everett. James (2024)
P. Fitzgerald, The means of escape  (2000)
N. Gaiman, Sandman 01: Preludes and Nocturnes (1989)
A. Panshin, Rite of Passage (1969)
M. Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
P.G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim (1917)

In my head, I've not read much about the Ottomans. I discover that this is the third general history of them that I have read. It was good, though it suffers from the normal Ottoman problem, which is that the first part up to Suleiman is way more exciting than the rest, and general histories never really analyse the shift. I need to read a more detailed account of the period between Lepanto and the Siege of Vienna.

That repeating pattern is true for a lot of this list. It covers a lot of typical reading sections for me. Bennett, Wodehouse, Gaiman were all reminders to do more of that. BOTM wasn't by authors I knew, but it's not the first cricket or stats book I've read. It was excellent and really effectively mined the vast amount of data we now have about cricket (and was good at telling about the growth of that data). I loved it.

I didn't really love the Booker shortlist. I read most of them last month, but saved James to the end because I loved Everett's previous novel. However I made the mistake of reading Huckleberry Finn first (which I didn't particularly like either). Despite what you might have been expecting: this is not a retelling and that annoyed me beyond all measure. If you want to use a text, then you have to engage with it, not just deviate from it dramatically about half way through. This is particularly true when the ending of Finn is so obviously the most problematic bit from Jim's perspective, and most fertile for reinterpretation. Ranking:

1. Orbital
2. The Safekeep
3. James
4. Stone Yard devotional
5. Creation Lake
6. Held

I do think Everett will win.

Bibliography, September 2024

BOTM: A. Harvey, Orbital (2023)

J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood (1997)

A. Funder, Wifedom (2023)
A. Gurnah, Afterlives (2020)
L. Holland, Sistersong (2021)
R. Kushner, Creation lake (2024)
J. Roth, The imperial tomb (1938)
A. Michaels, Held (2023)
C. Wood, Stone yard devotional (2023)
Y. van der Wouden, The safekeep (2024)

Almost all fiction, though Boyhood is practically a memoir. I confess I am unsure of the validity of the distinction. The only definite non-fiction was mediocre. I don't like personal reflection in biography, especially not when it's facile. By contrast, but several novels were excellent. Honourable mentions to Gurnah, who I bought on the strength of his Nobel, and van der Wouden, which had too much sex in the middle, and a slightly overneat ending, but an excellent twist. My favourites were Coetzee and Harvey. Coetzee also has a Nobel, and wrote one of my favourite ever books. This is not Michael K but it's a brilliant evocation of provincial South Africa at a particular time. I'm not sure there's a deep message here, but I loved reading it. Orbital is completely different, though also short. It's a lush, lyrical imagination of a day in the space station. Nothing happens, but it happens beautifully. The prose can be a little purple, but the anchoring in the (invented) individuals on the station really works. It's the best of this year's Booker shortlist so far.

Bibliography, August 2024

BOTM: M. Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)

K. Clark, Another part of the wood (1974)
S.R. Delany, The Einstein intersection (1967)
M. Enriquez, The dangers of smoking in bed (2009)
E. Fatland, High (2022)
K. Fitzherbert, True to both my selves (1998)
E.M. Forster, Alexandria (1922)
S. Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus (2020)
P. Hensher, The Emperor Waltz (2014)
V. McIntyre, Dreamsnake (1978)
J. Paul, The House of Dudley (2022)

It's the summer so I've read a lot of big books this month. I'm glad I did, though some were a bit disappointing (Delany, Hensher, Paul). The latter two of which could have written better books if they had been shorter. That's also true of my favourite, which could probably have been trimmed by 50-100 pages without too much pain. However, all of it was a delight to read. I'm increasingly entranced by the world of mid twentieth century American comic books, but I can never really be bothered to read them. I do like to read about them though, and this brilliantly blended that world with the other bleaker world that was happening alongside it. There are a thousand reviews saying the same thing better, but they are right. Honourable mention for the first volume of Kenneth Clark's (the art historian) autobiography. It's very much of its time and class, but huge fun. The first half is the best.

Bibliography, July 2024

BOTM: M. Lee, Eight lives of a century-old trickster (2023)

I. Calvino, Invisible cities (1972)
P. French, Younghusband (1995)
G. Grass, Peeling the onion (2008)
T. Jansson, Notes from an island (1996)
H. Jeffreys, Vines in a cold climate (2023)
F. Leiber, The wanderer (1964)
J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980)
R. Nye, Falstaff (1976)
P.G. Wodehouse, A damsel in distress (1919)

Part of me feels Wodehouse or Morris should be BOTMs. And part of me is right. Damsel in distress is Blandings before Blandings, and it's excellent. But I've read all the Blandings novels. I thoroughly enjoyed this one too. Similarly, while Morris' book is about Venice, a lot is about Byzantium. I'm a big fan of that, but I do know about it. There are some lovely touches, and the history is fine, and comforting. I'd recommend both.

However, for me, the most interesting was Lee's novel, which absolutely benefits from being the first Korean novel I've every read. It's great fun, despite what is a horrific story. And holding the madcap tone of much of it against the series of atrocities that is mid twentieth century Korean history is well done, and hard to do. I'm very glad I read it.

Bibliography, June 2024

BOTM: E. Morris, The rise of Roosevelt (1979)

J. Baldwin, Giovanni's room (1956)
C. McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)
C. Blattman, Why we fight (2022)
M. Fenton, Dr Challoner's Grammar School: the first 400 years (2022)
P. Fleming, News from Tartary (1935)
E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1937)
A. Munro, The view from castle rock (2006)
P. Perry, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (2019)
J. Vincent, Beyond measure (2022)

Some absolute crackers here. Giovanni's room is the best adult novel I have read all year; Morris' biography of Roosevelt an even better read (Morris had the advantage of his subject). Vincent and Munro were also stellar. I am glad Alice Munro won the Nobel. She was a marvel and this is no exception, while Vincent has done a lovely book on measurement and stats. I also read Maillart and (reread) Fleming's parallel narratives of their journey through 'Tartary' in the 30s. In any other month, I'd have talked extensively on those. But ...

Firstly, Baldwin. I'm glad I read the introduction to Giovanni's room first. It highlights what an extraordinarily brave piece of writing it is, not just about sexuality, but for a black author to write about white Americans in the 50s. That's easily forgotten now, but I think relevant. And it's easily forgotten because the work itself is so good. It's highly effective as communicating both place and context very economically. The layering of characters on top of that seems therefore entirely natural. Despite this, it's not an easy read, because it's so painful. I found it excruciating to read, but I'm very glad I did.

If Baldwin was writing a life lived in the shadows, Morris emphatically was not. Technically, this volume only goes up to Roosevelt's accession to the Presidency, but I don't think much changes. It's an extraordinary life (I took great sheaves of notes) and Roosevelt was aware he was living it at the time (a large number of those notes are quotations from the man himself). I always think authors get a boost if their subject is good - and there are few better - but they do choose them, so I think it's allowed. Morris is good though. It's very long, at over 700 pages, but it flew by. And the sheer volume of excellent copy, much by the protagonist, is marshalled expertly. I would love to (and will) read the counter argument to some of the stories here, but I don't think any revisionism will completely overcome the sheer force of personality. I've bought volumes 2 and 3 already. 

Bibliography, May 2024

BOTM: P. Fitzgerald, At Freddie's (1982)

A. Sattin, Nomads (2021)
A.B. Edwards, A thousand miles up the Nile (1876)
L. Booth, (ed.), Wisden cricketers Almanack (2024)
T. Fort, The A303 (2012)
R. Jefferies, After London (1885)
R. Zelazny, The best of Roger Zelazny (2023)

It is my firm, increasing, and possibly counterintuitive, contention that the greatest decade for novel-writing is the 1980s. This month has added evidence to this. I'm 80% of the way through McCarthy's 1985 Blood Meridian, but I think it would have lose out anyway to Fitzgerald's 1982 novel. This is one of her best books (along with The beginning of spring). It's marvelously evocative of 1960s theatre, with slight characters given real flesh with high levels of economy. It's short, but lingering. I think it takes a reputational hit from its lightness, but it is quite dark, it's just disguised by tone.

As an aside, Nomads was poor. If you were looking for both a decent history of the nomad empires of he steppe set in the context of the wider nomadic societies of the world, you would have been very disappointed - as I was. It's musings plus Mongols. He also appears not to know what words mean. At one point he referred, with numbers, to a 40% reduction from the Black Death as a decimation,  and oligarchic selection by soldiery as 'Mongol democracy'. It drove me up the wall.

Bibliography, April 2024

BOTM: P. Sands, East West Street (2016)

F. Bengtsson, The long ships (1941)
A. Berkeley, The silk stocking murders (1928)
R. Blanc, The lost orchard (2019)
N. Crane, Clear water rising (1996)
D. Duncan, Index, a history of (2021)
R. Easterway, Maths on the back of an envelope (2019)
J. Marais, All Souls (1992)
D. Mitchell, Unruly (2023) [Audiobook]
K. Rundell, Why you should read children’s books, even though you are so old and wise (2019)

Momentous month, where I include an audiobook in my reading, even though I think it's usually cheating. I listened to David Mitchell when I was ill, and in full while not doing anything else, so I'm counting it. No precedents. It was good too, with a healthy scepticism about feelings and trade, and strong support for the fun violent bits. Nicholas Crane's work was also nice, especially the sections east of Vienna, Raymond Blanc's book on his orchard was supremely self-indulgent, but thoroughly enjoyable for it. And I also liked The long ships, which does I think a good job about trying to think itself back into the Viking world c.1000 AD. 

Nice though they were, Sands was a cut above. I foolishly hesitated before reading this as when it was recommended to me two years ago because I'd just read another Jewish family memoir. This is a solid family memoir, and I think the stories of refugee Jewish families should be told, but it's much wider than that. I found the story of the evolution of legal thinking at Nuremberg fascinating, and it's a great primer on why the legal distinctions matter. Until this month, I had given no thought to the differences between crimes against humanity and genocide. I think it's probably important that we do have a view on this. This was great on that, without ever losing sight of the human stories behind it all.

Bibliography, March 2024

BOTM: M. Condé, Crossing the Mangrove (1989)

I. Ahmed, The Pakistan Garrison State (2013)
K.J. Anderson, (ed.), War of the worlds: global dispatches (1997)

C. Arseneault & B. Pierson (eds.), Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (2017)

M. Ba, So long a letter (1980)

K. Cashore, Graceling (2008)

M. Cavendish, The blazing world (1666)
A. Christie, The clocks (1963)
M. Freedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

C. Fremlin, Uncle Paul (1959)
F. Herbert, Dune Messiah (1969)*
M.W. Montagu, Embassy Letters (1763)
P.G. Wodehouse, The code of the Woosters (1938)*

I read a lot of relatively short books this month. A lot that wasn't brilliant - I should stop picking up random books in the library, and I should remember that random science fiction is often bad. Dune Messiah is not bad, but it is a) mad, and b) not as good as I remember. Very pleased with a late Agatha Christie, which is nicely done, if not as tightly plotted as some. Freedman was surprisingly readable - though I think built on sand. And - the best of the trio of books written about 1960, I very much liked Uncle Paul - Wodehouse too was exemplary. This is one of his masterpieces, but I have read it before.

However, the best of them all was Condé. Again. A couple of years ago I read a terrible book about decolonising the canon. As an intellectual exercise, it wasn't serious, Or good. But the recommendations were sound, and best of all so far has been Maryse Condé. This isn't Segu, but it's still excellent. She has a real talent for the imagining of world's distant from ours, and these are ones where we lack the underpinning of the the core western narrative, and making them immediate. Crossing the Mangrove writes on a small scale what Segu did on the vast stage. She's a marvel. Or rather, was. She died in between me reading her last month and writing about it, though she'd have been BOTM anyway. There's a long list of further reading to follow up on.

Bibliography, February 2024

BOTM: R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004)

A. Barr, Drink: a social history (1998)

E. Crispin, Swan song (1947)
G. Dyer, The last days of Roger Federer (2022)
M. Evans, Who let the Gods out (2017)
A. Light, Common people: this history of an English family (2014)

A. Tinniswood, The Verneys (2007)

After an exceptionally good month in January, this was poor. The BOTM is probably the only one I'd recommend, and you do need to have read a lot of Wodehouse to get the value (which I have). It's a good biography, and marshals everything well. I find the chronological analysis of writing deeply fascinating. And in this case, it's particularly interesting given that Wodehouse wrote into his 90s, and the fault line in his life happened at 58. It means that the corpus for which he is best known is almost entirely from the latter part of his life. Like Elizabeth I, we wonder what his reputation would be if he died at an average age. Also, I loved the attention paid to his oft-neglected Broadway musical period. 

Bibliography, January 2024

BOTM: K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023)

J. Brotton, Sale of the late King's goods (2006)
E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948)

S. Dercon, Gambling on Development (2023)
R. Harris, Act of Oblivion (2022)

A. Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown (2022)

P. Lawrence, Needle (2022)

T. Shippey, The Road to Middle Earth (3rd ed. 2005)

B. Stanley, Let's do it! (2022)

Apart from months where I just read the Booker shortlist, I think this may be my most modern month of reading ever. Two thirds published in the last two years. It's also been a fantastic month. I have things to say on almost all of them

Stanley's prequel to his exceptional history of modern pop is not as good, but it's still very very good. And, while I still don't really like jazz, it's made me more appreciative, as well as extended my love of mid century musicals. It's very good too on the technology of music listening, which I think is more important that we think now. I read several seventeenth century histories in honour of the martyr this month, and the best was Keay's on the Interregnum. It won everything, and it's a very well done piece of writing: it doesn't drag, but really brings through the narrative of the 1650s. Strong recommendations too for Dercon (though it would have been a better book were it shorter) and Edmund Crispin (one of the best of the minor golden age crime novelists, and short).

My favourite of all was Rundell's absolute jewel of a book. I'm increasingly infatuated with her as a writer, though I'm not convinced we agree on anything else. I am delighted that someone took their All Souls fellowship, and their doctorate in Donne, and wrote for children. I liked her Donne book, but I loved this. She's read deeply of the well of children's (and wider) fantasy literature in its widest sense. It's beautifully written, and it's clever, inventive, funny, and well embedded in that weave of older fantasy lit and legend. It's notionally for children. It's worth everyone reading it.  

As an aside, there's a very mean spirited Private Eye review of it that basically complains that all fantasy tropes have been done before. I don't think that's accurate (there are plenty of fun new bits in this, in content and form - I thoroughly enjoyed the opening bestiary), but it also misses the point twice over. Firstly, this particular novel is explicitly in part about 'real' legends, so it's deliberately playing on this. The sphinx section is a case in point. Secondly, all fantasy does that; that's the point. Part of the enjoyment is how people reassemble the deck as well as what new cards they play. Shippey's formidable, but illuminating book on Tolkein's sources is magisterial on how he did it, though hard to read in parts.

Bibliography, 2023

A triumph! For the first time since the children, I read over ten books a month. Six of them were graphic novels (comics), so it's not quite the unambiguous result I was hoping for, but I will take it.

The breakdown is atypical. Lots of fiction (70 books) and lots of 'hard' non-fiction. History alone was 28 books. But much less cultural output than usual (only 19). It's a split comparable to my nadir-year of 2017, though the volumes were almost twice that. Books of the Month were even more extreme. Seven were non-fiction, all history, with only five fiction. Interestingly, though 80% of my fiction reading was of white authors - as usual - three of those five were by black writers.

Two of those vied for my favourite fiction of the year. I thought Segu was a marvellous book, but I think A grain of wheat is a great one. It brings real immediacy to a time that is unfamiliar, but is nuanced and thoughtful around it. It's striking to me how good the plot is too. This is not a cipher for a story of colonialism, this is a great story.

Non-fiction was much much harder. Several of these were outstanding. Townsend was brilliantly illuminating; Hoschchild ruthlessly compelling. I almost gave BOTY to Shapiro's masterpiece about Shakespeare, and I do think it is a masterpiece. The concept alone is worth a lot. It's an original and effective way into well known texts, and really sets up a much richer and real engagement with them. I loved it. I would recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the topic. I would not recommend Peter Wilson's book on the Holy Roman Empire on the same basis. It is much denser and more technical, and requires a decent working knowledge of a lot of German history. But I loved it, and it is brilliant, and bold, and has transformed how I think about the Empire. I suspect I will come back again and again to it.

Jan: P. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire (2016)
Feb: M. Ormrod, Edward III (1990)
Mar: Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A grain of wheat (1967)
Apr: A. Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (1998)
May: O. Butler, Kindred (1979)
Jun: C. Townsend, Fifth sun (2019)
Jul: C. Powers, In the memory of the forest (1997)
Aug: J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)
Sep: S. Alexievich, Second hand time (2013)
Oct: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)
Nov: M. Mazower, The Greek revolution (2021)
Dec: M. Conde, Segu (1984)

Bibliography, December 2023

BOTM: M.Conde, Segu (1984)

B. Duffy, The generation divide (2021)
B. McClellan, Promise of Blood (2013)
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected stories (2018) [all stories pre-1935]
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014)

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987)

M. Wallis, Wines of the Rhone (2021)

M. Williams, The chalet girls grow up (1997)

I really liked Segu, though some reviewers have pointed out the problematic parts of it. It's particularly striking I think if you're used to an Anglophone sense of African literature, where Islam features so much less heavily than French Africa. Anyway, it's big, and bold, and well done. The narrative is very good at imagining the world that the characters inhabit, and it's chosen very well to show the gradations within that West African society as well as a specific slice of European encounters. And it was good to see the European narrative carry weight without taking centre stage.

A placeholder note for a provocative imagining of the future for the Chalet School triplets. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I don't have time to write down, but I am also glad I read that. Almost everyone else, good and bad, would have benefitted from making their books shorter.