Bibliography, February 2025

BOTM: H. Nicolson, Diaries (ed. N. Nicolson, 2004)

J. Dench, Shakespeare: the man who pays the rent (2023)

H. Mantel, A change of climate (1994)

E. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (2010)

C. Van Tulleken, Ultra-processed people (2023)

J. Waine, A company of slayers (2023)

I really struggled to get momentum this month, hence only six books. I blame Anna for going away for a fortnight to work. Children are time consuming. Lots of value though. It didn't come off in Tulleken, which was disappointing because of embarrassing overreach. Fascinating on the nutrition; absolute woo woo on everything else. (Sample quotation: 'I see the avoidance of tax as part of ultra-processing'). No such issues elsewhere. Colonel Roosevelt is a very good end to the biographical trilogy, and really frames that tragic final act for Roosevelt. Mantel's novel also very good. Dench was great on Shakespeare and on how little time she has for many people. I liked it a lot.

Dench is an actress of the highest quality; Harold Nicolson is not an author of comparable standing. I've read one of his novels and it was fine; I suspect there's a reason why we don't read them now. I get the feeling that his political career was similar. However, as a diarist, he is superb. Fortunately, he is also at the thick of things during the war, even if he is slightly detached. My father bought them for me because he loved them, and so did I.

Bibliography, January 2025

BOTM: B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023)

L. Bardugo, Six of Crows (2015)

G. Ehrlich, The solace of open spaces (1986)

R.F. Kuang, The Poppy war (2018
G.Lamming, In the castle of my skin (1953)

M. Margolyes, This much is true (2021)

E. Morris, Theodore Rex (2002)

I've been really busy this month, and Morris' second volume of his TR biography is long. It's also very good, though I think less effective than this first. That's primarily because the business of the administration has to co-exist with the account of the man, and I don't think it does that perfectly. It's still hugely compelling, and I've bought the third and final volume already. I've decided to read a lot of Americans this year. I think I will find their past more congenial than their present. On Americans, I loved Ehrlich's book about Wyoming. I think the only other books I've read about Wyoming are the My Friend Flicka series - about horses (secondary ambition: read a book for every state). Horses feature in the Solace of Open spaces but the land and the people dominate. And it's a beautiful book about just that. It was written post bereavement, and those jagged moments cut through, but don't dominate, adding another layer to a fine book about place.

Curiously, my favourite book was also one where sadness (divorce, not death) sat just under the surface. I love Bee Wilson's work. This is her third BOTM - behind only Fermor and tied with Wodehouse, Trollope, Gibbon and Bryson. That's a dinner party! - and I didn't even mean to buy it. I casually took it out of the library, read it in a weekend, and bought a copy the next day. It's a fantastic book. It's easy and engagingly written, also funny. I found it also a font of practical advice - not all of which I agreed with. It's also got excellent recipes, which is why I bought a copy, but I'd read it even if you aren't intending to make anything it. That said, her recipe for gochujang carrots is outstanding. It's going to get used a lot this year.

Bibliography, 2024

I read 122 books in 2024, exactly the same as 2023. A second consecutive year of being back over ten books a month since the children were born. Last year, six graphic novels got me over the line; this year it was eleven children's books, most - but not all - of which the children read first.

Similar ratios: lots of fiction (though only 55 for grown ups) and cultural output still down on long run averages. Maybe I've read most of the great memoirs. A 7:5 split to fiction in Books of the Month towards fiction, and history edging out culture (though East West Street is actually both). Note also the ghastly modernity of the results. For the first time, no BOTM novels were written before I was born (of the 28 published before 1980 read this year - Baldwin's Giovanni's Room best, but edged by Morris in June).

One of the children's books made BOTM, pretty much exactly in line with overall reading volumes, but it was an outstanding book. I read Impossible Creatures first of all my novels this year, and it was my favourite of the whole year. I think it's a marvel. It helps that she's clearly read everything I've read, and then stuffs lots of it, joyously, into a single work. I also think she does it with just the right amount of whimsy. Anna tells me that she gets the Welsh wrong, but I'm pretending I don't know that. Read it, and make your children read it. Were I to choose an adult novel, I'd choose Patchett.

Choosing non-fiction is a straight duel between Teddy Roosevelt and the medieval church. It is possible that the appeal of Morris and Heather's books may be reduced if you have less affection for the subjects than I do, but they are both important, and brilliantly done. I think achievement of Christendom is the greater, given the complexity of the material. It was my favourite of all. I think it's right, but even if you don't agree with it, it's a masterful grand narrative of a central narrative of Christianity and the many streams that gave us the medieval catholic church.

Jan: K. Rundell, Impossible Creatures (2023)

Feb: R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004)
Mar: M. Conde, Crossing the Mangrove (1989)
Apr: P. Sands, East West Street (2016)
May: P. Fitzgerald, At Freddie's (1982)
Jun: E. Morris, The rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979)
Jul: M. Lee, Eight lives of a century-old trickster (2023)
Aug: M. Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
Sep: S. Harvey, Orbital (2023)
Oct: Leaman & Jones, Hitting against the spin (2021)
Nov: P.  Heather, Christendom (2022)
Dec: A. Patchett, The Dutch House (2019)

Bibliography, December 2024

BOTM: A. Patchett, The Dutch house (2019)

A. Gray, At Christmas we feast (2022)
J. Hawes, The shortest history of Germany (2017)
T. Hughes, The Iron man (1968)
D. Landy, The Faceless ones (2009)
A. MacCaffrey, Dragonflight (1969)
J. Ng, Under the pendulum sun (2017)
D. Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
Orme, Going to church in medieval England (2021)
M. Paver, The crocodile tomb (2015)
M. Paver, Warrior bronze (2016)
O. Thomson, The other kaisers (2010)
G. Wolfe, The shadow of the torturer (1984)
A. Wood, Powder monkey (1953)

I saw out the year with a glut of children's books (at least five of the nine novels I read). I liked most of them, which isn't true of my adult reading. I had issues with Olusoga, which was annoying. The stuff he knows well was well done, and it is undertaught, though not by as much as he claims, but his headline case is plain wrong: there have not always been black Britons beyond isolated examples, which is why there are no chapters in the book on the period between the Fall of Rome and the Tudors. It's a weird opening to take. 400 years just isn't that long ago. Elsewhere, Thomson's book on German Emperors was just rubbish, and my decision to retreat to comforting science fiction was badly let down by the execution of Ng and Wolfe. The latter of which is meant to be a classic, but I just couldn't face book two, even though I a two volume set out of the library. 

So, having covered all those, Patchett's novel is great. She's an exceptionally good novelist, and I think this is one of her very best. She has this extraordinary gift of being able to imbue not much happening (no melodrama, no high stakes plots) with very high engagement. They're engrossing, and brilliantly played out. I think very much the same about Arnold Bennett, and that's high praise indeed. I said the same last time I made one of her novels my favourite, and it's a reminder that you don't need a gimmick to make things work.