L. Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom (2016)
J. Lewis-Stempel, The Glorious life of the Oak (2018)
S. Loftus, Puligny-Montrachet (1992)
S. Loftus, Puligny-Montrachet (1992)
O. Matthews, Glorious Misadventures (2013)
Y. Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)
M. Osman, The Ghost theatre (2023)
R. Perlstein, Reaganland (2020)
Y. Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)
M. Osman, The Ghost theatre (2023)
R. Perlstein, Reaganland (2020)
D.S. Tesdell (ed.) Shaken and Stirred: Intoxicating stories (2016)
I'm in a bit of a reading rut at the moment. Almost all of these were fine. They weren't bad (though Osman was disappointing), but few were really exciting. That's not to say I didn't learn anything. Reaganland, which I thought was the weakest of Perlstein's books, gave up details I am glad I know. Matthews opened a window onto a fascinating life in Russian America, though couldn't quite decide if it was a biography or an account of that view of US history.
However, the best of all was Aswany's Cairene farce, which was good. Like Loftus, it reminded me how alien the recent past is (that's a book I'd love to write). In this case, that's tripled by the fact that it's published in 2002, looking back at the 1990s, about characters who themselves hark back to the 1950s. I suspect it couldn't be written now, and that's a shame. Bizarrely, it reminded me of the aesthetic of The Producers, for some obvious reasons (the gays), and some less so (the precariousness of some long standing, but ramshackle groups in big cities). Someone should do a musical.
