Bibliography, January 2018

BOTM: S. Middleton, The Daysman (1984)

J. Berger, A fortunate man (1967)
K. Grahame, The Golden Age (1895)
E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea (1952
K. Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (2017)

N. Mahfouz, Sugar Street
C. Mieville, This census taker (2016)

S.S. Tepper, A Plague of Angels (1993)
T. Travers, London boroughs at fifty (2015)
S. Zweig, Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures (1927 and 1940. New translation 2016)

The temptation to make this Grahame's wonderful evocation of childhood in the Edwardian age was almost overwhelming. And it is lovely, though it does repeat, and is ultimately slight. I'm also conscious that it was almost designed for me and yet didn't elicit the depth of response I would have expected. So I resisted, and instead I plumped for an account of a Comprehensive Headteacher in the 1980s. Middleton won the Booker a decade previously with Holiday which I thought was decent rather then excellent. This was better, and his understated prose I think deployed to best effect.

Bibliography, 2017

I come across this summary of a year's reading, which is in a far better format than this, but it's too late now. Regardless of format, it's been my worst year for reading since records began (67 books),  but a year of non-fiction triumphs. Fiction still accounted for the majority of my reading, but at the lowest level since the children. Books of the Month were evenly split, but the quality differential was high. As a result, I'm resolved to read much more non-fiction next year, especially history and economics.

So strong was the non-fiction field that I struggled to make a choice. At least three were pretty much everything you could want of their genre. Lost in Translation is amongst the best memoirs I have ever read, and Bowling Alone made me take (some) sociology seriously. However Piketty was brilliant, insightful and loaded with data. It wasn't the book I expected at all, though some conclusions were in line with some of my existing thinking. It has shaped and refined how I think about a range of issues and shows brilliantly the importance and possibilities of historical analysis. It is deservedly lauded, even if some of the conclusions both in the book and especially outside are dubious.

After all that, fiction was easy. The best thing I read was Mahfouz's Palace Walk. The first of his Cairo trilogy, and the best, is captivating. I've been meaning to read them for ages, and I wish I'd done so earlier. 

Here's the list by month:

January: U.K. Le Guin, Rokannon's World (1966)
February: N. Mahfouz, Palace Walk (1956)
March: U.K. Le Guin, A wizard of Earthsea (1968)
April:N. Mandela, Long walk to freedom (1994)
May:R. Adams, Watership Down (1972)*
June: R.D. Putnam, Bowling alone (2000)
July: M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical me (1943)
August: A. Bennett, These Twain (1918)
September: T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st century (2013)
October: J. Morris, Spain (1964. Revised 1979)
November: R. Irwin, The Alhambra (2004)
December: E. Hoffman, Lost in Translation (1989)

Bibliography, December 2017

BOTM : E. Hoffman, Lost in Translation (1989)

G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous trifles (1909)
N. Mahfouz, Palace of Desire (1957)
M. Forsyth, A short history of drunkenness (2017)

This was easy. I liked everything I read this month. Any of them could have been Book of the Month at other times, but Hoffman's book is outstanding. It's easily the best memoir I've read all year. Possibly the best I've ever read. The base subject is good - an early life in post war Polish Jewry is fascinating - and well done. But it is lifted onto another level by her experience emigrating at thirteen to Canada and the dislocation and distance from her original culture that thus occurs. Astoundingly conceived and excellently done.

Bibliography, November 2017

BOTM: R. Irwin, The Alhambra (2004)

E.M. Brent-Dyer, Exploits of the Chalet Girls*
Evliya Celebi, Book of Travels. Ed. & tr. E. Dankoff and S. Kim, An Ottoman traveller (2010)
C. Fisher, Postcards from the edge (1987)
A. Lurie, Real People (1969)
J. O'Neill, Netherland  (2008)
C.P. Snow, George Passant (1940)

Late. So a flurry of these will come at once. It was thin on quality, though a number of these are famous. A number of them are also dated, especially Snow, but also Fisher. I thought Lurie was dated too, but I only realised on completion that it was written in the 60s not the 80s. It nonetheless doesn't hold up so well now. Many of them had very good parts, but none quite held it together enough. Irwin on the Alhambra was the best of the bunch.

Bibliography, October 2017

BOTM: J. Morris, Spain (1964. Revised 1979)

C.S. Farrelly, The Shepherd's Calculus (2017)
M. Hudson, Managing without profit (2009)
U. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea  (2001)
D. Smith, Former People (2012)

Bit of a thin month, after September's triumphant march through the Booker shortlist (even if the judges didn't agree). For most of it, I thought I was going to give my third BOTM in a year to Ursula Le Guin, because it was a nice collection. Then I read Morris on Spain, the first half of which I loved. It's always fascinating reading about Spain because of the rapidity of the shifts of political perspective. This, written in the 1960s and revised in the 70s, is obviously dated, but all the more interesting for it. It's a brilliant evocation of the history and that period of emergence of modern Spain in those decades. It was particularly poignant to read against the backdrop of the current constitutional mess. And this quotation - about forgiveness - may be one of my lifetime favourites.

Bibliography, September 2017

BOTM: T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st century (2013)

P. Auster, 4 3 2 1 (2017)
E. Fridlund, History of Wolves (2017)

M. Hamid, Exit West (2017)
P. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean: 1204-1500 (1995)

F. Mozley, Elmet (2017)
G. Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo  (2017)
A. Smith, Autumn (2017)

I gave myself a few extra days to finish Auster so I could fit the whole Booker shortlist in one month, especially as - miracle of miracles - it's before the announcement of the winner. He seems to have written (very nicely; and in far too many words) Sliding Doors - it was a lot better than I'd feared and it's certainly my favourite Auster (this is easy; I hate pretty much everything else of his I've read). 

Overall, it was a pretty good Booker list, with only Ali Smith really not up to it - her Brexit stuff was extremely clumsy. Everyone says Lincoln in the Bardo is going to win, but I thought it was nowhere near as clever or profound as everyone else, and the citations seem to be trying to make the same point as GCSE History about unreliable evidence. I had a few issues with Hamid because the high concept sneaks up on you, but then I thought it was great. The start especially is very good. Mozley also sagged slightly in the middle, but was genuinely gripping and a rare evocation of a raw, less civilised, world, just occasionally poking through the cracks of ours. It wasn't cheery, but it was powerful. It was my favourite.

Ranked as below:

1. Mozley
2. Hamid
3. Auster
4. Saunders
5. Fridlund
6. Smith

Not one of them made BOTM. That was Piketty, which I loved. It's not the book I expected it to be at all. It's got hard, real data in. I've referred to it in endless conversations already and I expect to keep coming back to it. It has flaws - its policy solutions are weaker than the analysis - but the good bits (which is most of it) are very very good. The data should be essential reading for any wider discussion about inequality and wealth. It won't be.

Bibliography, August 2017

BOTM: A. Bennett, These Twain (1918)

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The Chalet girls in Camp (1932)
J.P. Bean, (ed.) Singing from the floor: a history of British folk clubs (2014)
D.L. Sayers, Five red herrings (1931)

Slim pickings this month because a) I was finishing the doctorate and b) I've started to read Piketty. I also called the winner last month - These Twain  is masterful. Arnold Bennnett is desperately unfashionable now, but I don't really know why. He's capable of drawing character and plot on the domestic stage with great skill and without melodrama. I spent much of Clayhanger and this volume waiting for the business to fail, but it doesn't. The action is elsewhere. There aren't quite as many lovely asides as in the first volume, but it's a brilliant anatomisation of a marriage. It's obviously dated in some ways, but only in a trivial way. There will be more Bennett to come. Honourable mention to Bean's oral history of British Folk. I don't really like oral history, but this really grew on me.