Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov

In my student days (many years ago now) I regarded Nabokov as the greatest of all authors on the basis of Pale Fire, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Lolita. This one left me a little cold, but I’m not sure whether my tastes have shifted or this is less brilliant.

It is brilliant in some ways. Take the name of Pnin; almost palindromic, almost anagrammatical, comic yet believable and amenable to derivations such as “Pninian”. There are some good jokes, but I often felt that too much was beyond me in terms of plot and symbolism. Maybe I was just smarter when I was 20.

Preacher; Gone to Texas – Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon

Good adolescent fun, in a blasphemous, blood-soaked comic book kind of way. I’m not yet entirely convinced by the main characters but I’ve got a couple more volumes on my shelf so no doubt I’ll get round to them.

Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

There is a strange group of pranksters who attend cinema screenings, only to collectively stand up and leave the moment that the film's title is spoken by a character, much to the bafflement of other audience members. Such folk would have no truck with this book, which repeats the terms "heat", "dust" or "heat and dust" countless times.

No problem though, this is a fine and considered book that won the Booker in 1975. There are two parallel stories; one of a British woman in colonial India who has a relationship with an Indian prince, the other of her great niece who is researching her family history. The stories compare and contrast nicely, and all those hot, dusty adjectives evoke the appropriate mood.

Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens

All of the usual criticisms of Dickens apply more than usual in Martin Chuzzlewit. The goodies are simpering and bland (in particular the nauseating Ruth Pinch), the morality is largely simplistic and the plot rambles around all over the place. The section satirising the "U-nited States" is particularly irritating in all these regards.

Then there are his strengths. Here we find plenty of atmospheric description, some splendidly funny dialogues, and magnificent comic grotesques including the memorably loathsome Mr Pecksniff. Towards the end the story acquires real momentum, and the sense of satisfaction in watching the various narrative strands resolve themselves is genuine and surprising.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and six other stories - F.Scott Fitzgerald

Should you ever wake up and find yourself in a Scott Fitzgerald story, whatever you do don't get drunk. In these splendid stories, alcohol is a sure route to misery and despair. Not my experience of pissedness I must say, but anyway.

Beautifully written and often quirky (in a good way) this collection reminded me how good short stories can be in the hands of a master. I liked the stuff in New York, which reminded me of the sainted Damon Runyon, and Crazy Sunday offered an interesting depiction of Hollywood in the 1920s.

Asterix and the Soothsayer - René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

Love love love the Asterix books, always good for puntastic wordplay and gentle satire. This one comes with added scepticism as a bonus.

Solar - Ian McEwan

It is a rare indulgence for me to buy a new book for top dollar, but when the book in question is the new McEwan I thought "blow the expense". I'm glad I did.

As usual with this author, the narrative revolves around a series of set pieces. One or two of these don't quite come off but when they do the effect is thrilling. There is also some lovely descriptive writing, as in a passage about a plane circling over London whilst waiting for clearance to land. An extended gag about a dispute over a packet of crisps baffled me somewhat, but it is pretty funny.

The comic tone gives McEwan leeway to include some pretty unlikely plot developments but that's OK. The joky mood, academic discussions and mixture of personal and professional entanglements reminded me strongly of David Lodge's classic Rummidge trilogy, which I'm guessing was an inluence.

However, instead of Lodge's literature dons we have climate scientists and engineers, and it is heartening to encounter literature that unabashedly approaches one of the key topics of the age. Antihero Michael Beard, full of selfishness, apathy and gluttony, exemplifies our apparent disregard for the future which, it is suggested, will bring on our own annihilation.

Stunner of a last line, too.

The Leopard – Giuseppe di Lampedusa

A magnificent Italian novel from the 1950s about a formidable Sicilian aristocrat, the "Leopard" of the title, in the 1880s trying to keep his traditional life alive amid great political upheaval.

Despite the barrier of translation, the writing is lush and the sustained imagery is, at times, breathtaking. There is some wonderful stuff about astronomy, the regularity and eternity of the stars contrasted with the tumult of the human world.

The use of flash forwards strangely reminded me of Sparks' "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and the effect is brilliant, as here:

“From the ceiling the gods, reclining on gilded houses, gazed down smiling and inexorable as a summer sky. They thought themselves eternal; but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn., was to prove the contrary in 1943.”

Incidentally, this has now provided me with the definitive example of a great novel that becomes a great movie.

Flatland – Edwin Abbott Abbott

Regarded as a classic of science fiction, this works on the ideas level of imagining one- and two-dimensional realms and constructing plausible social systems. Despite its brevity, however, it soon fails on a literary level and I found it difficult to read the Victorian sexism as satirically intended.

Why Evolution Is True – Jerry Coyne

That evolution is true is a non sequitur, but this functions as a nice primer on evolutionary theory. Much was familiar, but some of the material was new to me, such as the fascinating phenomenon of atavistic traits.

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

It’s the book of the moment, but I’m ambivalent about this novelisation of the life of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a new figure to me, and his life is certainly of interest. His endless plotting in the Tudor court is reminiscent of I, Claudius and requires similar attention to who is up to what. It helps to have a rough idea of the period; mine is less than strong, but I knew what Cardinal Wolsey and Anne Boleyn had coming to them.

Scenes often start, to borrow cinematic parlance, without an establishing shot – that is to say we are dropped in to conversations and left to infer the setting and who is present. This is demanding on the reader, but does express the idea of pace and bustle and business being done that propels both story and character.

Much of it is good stuff, but it takes an age to get going and is way too long. Apparently a sequel is in the works; I’ll probably read it.

The Small Back Room – Nigel Balchin

This was one of those random purchases from a charity shop that turned out to be an absolute zinger.

It opens with an apparently humdrum depiction of a Whitehall department during WWII. We follow one man through a series of meetings, various discussions of engineering geekery and an unsatisfactory relationship. Gradually, the importance of these bureaucratic shenanigans to the broader war effort becomes clear, and an outbreak of deadly mines brings our hero to a moral and personal breaking point.

The writing is unflashy and smart, the characters all convince and the plotting ingenious.

The Spare Room – Helen Garner

A sparse and moving account of a woman caring for a dying friend, which I found far more effective than Garner’s celebrated but self-indulgent Monkey Grip.

Parrot and Olivier in America - Peter Carey

I know nothing about Alexis de Tocqueville’s life and work, of which this is a fictionalised version, so I should probably begin by acknowledging that much of this probably flew by somewhere high over my head. Others may get more from it, but I found the effort demanded by this book was not fully rewarded.

The French aristocrat Olivier and his sidekick Parrot narrate alternate chapters and their personalities and speech are well differentiated. Secondary characters remain a little opaque. The narrative structure is reflected in the story, in which Quixote and Panza begin to blur roles. It’s interesting in parts, but I feel it should have been rather more fun.

Helena – Evelyn Waugh

Waugh considered this to be his best book, which just goes to show that authors are rarely the best judges of their own work. Perhaps it was because this is his most explicitly Christian novel?

It’s very well composed of course, but the story of Roman politics fails to grip and the more interesting ideas about archaeology only come at the very end.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping – Richard Flanagan

I am always trepidatious when approaching a Flanagan, who can be brilliant or hectoring depending on his mood. Luckily this is one of his better ones.

The plot is typical OzLit stuff about displacement, the individual in the landscape et al. It works for two reasons; because Flanagan can write, and because the theme of significant acts echoing through the generations is developed with intelligence and force.