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.