Bibliography, May 2017

BOTM: R. Adams, Watership Down (1972)*

K. Jackson, Coles to Jerusalem (2016)
D. Morris, The washing of the spears (1965)
K. Raworth, Doughnut Economics (2017)
A. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956)

This is tricky. I liked a number of these a lot. I'm nervous that I gave BOTM not to the best of them, but to the one with the most niche interest. Raworth was brilliantly insightful, but frustratingly without traction on a number of issues. And while I thoroughly enjoyed Morris' account of the Zulu wars, it has dated and the narrative around the Battle of Isandlwana needs an editor. I freely admit that I loved Angus Wilson's most famous work in part because the plot centres about medieval historians and medieval history, but don't let that put you off. It's actually brilliant, and full of excellent one liners. It's of its time, obviously, but I think still remains highly relevant about family, work and politics. AND its central plot is about an archaeological discovery.

Edit: I had totally forgotten that I reread Watership Down this month. That was much better than all of them. I love Watership Down.

Bibliography, April 2017

BOTM: N. Mandela, Long walk to freedom (1994)

S. Cain, Quiet (2013)
R. Prawer Jhabvala, A new dominion  (1972)
I. Kadare, The siege  (1970)
L. Lee, Village Christmas (2015)
P. Lively, The photograph  (1987)
J. Welby, Dethroning mammon (2017)
S. Westerfeld, Leviathan (2009)

This was obvious, though the reasons weren't. It also benefited from some others promising much but delivering badly - Welby was particularly vapid. Now, Mandela's book is obviously famous for its story, but I also particularly liked the reflection and the character sketches he makes. It's also very well put together and makes a long book fly by, though in reality the bulk of the book only covers about 15 years. It's a very effective polemic (with an easy target), and you'd be foolish to take it as history, but it's none the worse for that. 

I only ask for the simplest of basics

George Orwell once wrote a lovely essay on the ideal pub, which succinctly laid out what he considered to be the ideal establishment. It's still pretty much bang on, though he seems to care more about china mugs than I do.

I was reminded of it a few weeks ago when, in lieu of actually going to a church away day, I wrote down what I thought we needed to do. I pretty much laid out what an ideal church looks like. Actually though, in the interests, of tact, brevity and pragmatism, I don't think I went far enough. So I have here. Much like Orwell's Moon under water, my ideal church simply does the basics right and is sensible.

It has services at a sensible time, which on a Sunday requires no one to be out of the house before 9:30, or still in church when it is really time for lunch. Information about those services, as well as specific seasonal services is available in plenty of places, including on a website. It is not evangelism to expect people to guess when the Ash Wednesday service is on if they were  not in church on the Sunday. Details of the people and the logistics are also widely shared.

Those logistics are practical, with provision for children that neither forces them to listen to a service they find tedious; nor - worse - forces the rest of the congregation to endure too many children. No exceptions are made to this rule, even on high and holy days. It is not considered essential, as it is for so many churches, for children to be especially bored and their neighbours excessively hostile in the service of Easter. Both children and adults alike are well served with cake after church. And, on days of liturgical celebration, wine.

The texts are in proper prose and include the Old Testament - because we are not Marcionites. Sermons are short, no more than ten minutes, done well, and may even have jokes. They cover the specifics of the texts read. Hymns are mostly traditional, though there is no shame in choosing those that reflect the congregation occasionally. They rarely include the infantilising modern songs that are popular with children but have no place in a grown up church. 

Liturgically, nothing too outlandish is attempted and all is done promptly. There is no Marian idolatry smuggled in through the back door of appropriate vestments, though vestments should be appropriate and reflect in no way any fashion of the last half century. In an ideal world, the language would be Cranmer's, but at the very least, the Lord's Prayer talks of trespassing, not Sin, and at no stage will there be any suggestion that the word disciple is synonymous with friend. Communion is taken in both kinds, and with red wine - no  affection around transubstantiation here. There is, of course, no pause for the Peace. Everyone knows that the right time to swap pleasantries with your neighbour is at the end of the service.

This mostly describes a Sunday morning, but my ideal church would have daily services, to which I would go rarely, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know they exist. When services are not being held the church is open, often for events. Some may be Christian in character, but by no means all. This is a public building, open, supportive and embedded in its community. Someone, though of course, not me, can always clear up.

I am not hopeful.

Bibliography, March 2017

BOTM: U.K. Le Guin, A wizard of Earthsea (1968)

E.M. Brent - Dyer, The chalet school and Jo (1931)
U.K. Le Guin, The tombs of Atuan (1971)
U.K. Le Guin, The farthest shore (1972)
U.K. Le Guin, Tehanu (1990)
C. Mieville, The iron council (2004)
B. Wigdortz, Success against the odds (2012)

Late, and somewhat one dimensional. About half my reading this year has been Ursula Le Guin. The first one was the best, though all were excellent, even with the very obvious shift of gears in Tehanu which tries to retrofit more feminism in the world of Earthsea. It pretty much works, but the world is best realised (and it is very well realised) in the first one.

Bibliography, February 2017

BOTM: N. Mahfouz, Palace Walk

E. David, Is there a nutmeg in the house?
D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom

I'm starting to doubt the value of my Book of the Month allocation. All too often, it's the one I'm obviously going to like best before I've even started. While there are some great passages in both David and Marquand, about bread and democracy respectively, I - like the Nobel prize committee - thought Mahfouz was outstanding. There is definitely a unfamiliarity dividend. One of the reasons why it's so compelling is because it is so alien, but it's a story very well told. The synopsis doesn't do it justice either, and its deceptively gentle for what is a powerful and shocking end. That said, it's also a book about Alexandria. I love books about Alexandria.

Bibliography, January 2017

BOTM: U.K. Le Guin, Rokannon's World

A.C. de Wiart, Happy Odyssey
G. Haigh, Stroke of genius (2016)
U.K. Le Guin, Planet of exile (1966)
U.K. Le Guin, City of illusions (1967)
P.K. Dick, Our friends from Frolix 8 (1970)

I expected this to be the memoirs of one of our most endearingly mad fighters, but while Happy Odyssey was absolutely splendid, I was captivated by Ursula Le Guin's early novels, which I read in a collected edition. I've bought Earthsea again after running into the sand on it twenty five years ago on the strength of it. The best was the first, I think, but they were all outstanding. Like all good science fiction, there is something enthralling about new worlds being drawn, and it's a marker of the quality here that they are done so deftly and quickly. They are gems.

Bibliography, 2016

A reminder:

Jan: G. Maxwell, The ring of bright water (1960)

Feb: H. Trevor-Roper, The hermit of Peking (1976)
Mar: R. George, The Big Necessity (2008)
Apr: R. Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929)
May: T. Capote, In cold blood  (1966)
Jun: E. David, An omelette and a glass of wine (1984)
Jul: P.K. Dick, Flow my tears the policeman said  (1974)
Aug: P. Frankopan, The Silk Roads (2015)
Sept: E.L. Carr, A month in the country (1980)
Oct: P. Beatty, The Sellout (2016)
Nov: H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze  (2016)
Dec: J. Rayner, The Ten (food) commandments (2016) 

It's been a terrible year. I've read 75 books, ten below my previous low. Two thirds were fiction, and half of that was SF/Fantasy - some of which were outstanding, but too much was comfort reading. I blame the doctorate.

Fiction has taken the brunt of this and, despite the weight of reading, mustered only three BOTMs,m one of which was pretty much by default. I read a lot better works of fiction than Flow my tears... this year, just nothing in July. So sparse are the fiction pickings that, for the first time, I feared my monthly ranking is inadequate to the task. I briefly wondered if the best novel I read this year was Kathryn Stockard's The Help, which lost to Maxwell in January. However, that isn't the case. And although comparisons between the two options I have here are invidious - it is hard to line up a novella about English villages and churches with a freewheeling satire on US race relations in LA - I would plump for Carr on England, above other contenders. It's a gem.

Non-fiction should be harder. The list above is packed with quality, and is probably one of the most consistent of any year, both the famous and the obscure. I'd give honourable mentions and strong recommendations about Maxwell, Trevor-Roper, Capote and Jeffreys, but my favourite was Graves. It was probably always going to be.