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