Wrapped Up In Books

A Visit From The Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

2012-01-24T15:10:00.002-08:00

The Goon Squad being time, as we see the effects of the winged chariot on a group of characters from their 1970s rock’n’roll heyday through assorted crises (drugs, prison, kleptomania) towards various degrees of middle-aged acceptance.

Each chapter tells its own tale, and adopts its own narrative strategy including such unlikely formats as a second person section and even a powerpoint demonstration. The risk is that the novel will become incoherent, but Egan knows exactly what she is doing and instead the emotional affect is cumulative and powerful.

The Wrong Set – Angus Wilson

2012-01-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

Wilson brilliantly documents the concerns of the wealthy classes in the immediate post-war period in this short story collection. Both sympathetic and satirical towards its characters, it makes for a terrific read.

Incidentally, is this the worst cover ever inflicted upon a serious literary book? I can’t even identify which story it’s supposed to relate to!

My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell

2012-01-24T15:05:00.001-08:00

A re-read from fondly remembered English classes at school. I wasn’t surprised that my overall remembered impression was correct, in that this is a light-hearted episodic portrait of a rich family staying in sun-drenched Corfu in the 1930s, focussed on the author’s interest in the local wildlife. What surprised me was how much detail I recalled from 25 years ago; the roaming tortoises and the constant chirp of the cicadas (the first time I had heard of them I think).

Nostalgic on two levels.

Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

2012-01-24T15:04:00.001-08:00

Dickens’ last completed novel is a dense affair, combining so many plot strands and complex, almost experimental, techniques that I found myself rather at sea at times, especially during the central sections.

It’s also dense thematically. Many familiar Dickensian tropes appear, such as prominent father-daughter relationships, but the ubiquity of death and the ever-present mounds of “dust” towering over London and concealing all sorts of sinister secrets. I wasn’t surprised by the number of Macbeth references revealed by the footnotes, this is even bleaker than, er, Bleak House.

Reading Year in Review – 2011

2012-01-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

I finished the KJV Bible this year and, as I counted each book individually in the list below, provides and inflated figure of 123 books this year. A more realistic measurement comes from discounting all of the the biblical books except each of the gospels plus Revelation, giving a toal of 101 valid books. Pretty solid, especially given the number of great big Victorian doorstops included.

Best Book: Phineas Finn, just edging out Winter's Bone and The Stranger's Child

Worst Book: The Seven Basic Plots (Easy choice, this)

Longest Book: Dombey and Son (1040 pages)

Non-Fiction Books: 14

Australian Authors: 1 (!)

Female Authors: 25 (up from a pathetic 12 last year)

1 Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope
2 Summer Crossing - Truman Capote
3 The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
4 Oroonoko - Aphra Behn
5 Libra - Don DeLillo
6 The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
7 Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
8 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or the murder at Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale
9 Loving - Henry Green
10 News of a Kidnapping - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
11 Living - Henry Green
12 Raffles - E.W. Hornung
13 Party Going - Henry Green
14 Mr Standfast - John Buchan
15 Matthew
16 The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
17 The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
18 The Story of the Night - Colm Toibin
19 Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
20 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept - Elizabeth Smart
21 Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges
22 Mark
23 The Unfortunate Traveller - Thomas Nashe
24 The Famished Road - Ben Okri
25 Blow Your House Down - Pat Barker
26 Luke
27 The Bone People - Keri Hulme
28 John
29 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
30 An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
31 Room - Emma Donoghue
32 Acts of the Apostles
33 Such Darling Dodos - Angus Wilson
34 Death In Venice - Thomas Mann
35 Romans
36 The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
37 The Children Of Men - P.D. James
38 Phineas Finn - Anthony Trollope
39 1 Corinthians
40 Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin
41 2 Corinthians
42 Galatians
43 Ephesians
44 Philippians
45 Colossians
46 The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
47 1 Thessalonians
48 2 Thessalonians
49 Slow Chocolate Autopsy - Iain Sinclair & Dave McKean
50 The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer
51 Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi - Geoff Dyer
52 Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth
53 The Island of Doctor Moreau - H.G. Wells
54 1 Timothy
55 2 Timothy
56 Titus
57 Philemon
58 Winter’s Bone - Daniel Woodrell
59 Under The Net - Iris Murdoch
60 Hebrews
61 James
62 1 Peter
63 2 Peter
64 1 John
65 2 John
66 3 John
67 Jude
68 Quarantine - Jim Crace
69 Revelation
70 Family and Friends - Anita Brookner
71 Don Juan - Lord Byron
72 The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
73 The History of Mr Polly - H.G. Wells
74 The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch
75 Landscape of Farewell - Alex Miller
76 The Getaway - Jim Thompson
77 Hideous Kinky - Esther Freud
78 Mr Weston’s Good Wine - T.F. Powys
79 The Stranger’s Child - Alan Hollinghurst
80 An Education - Lynn Barber
81 A Landing On The Sun - Michael Frayn
82 Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
83 The Empty Family - Colm Toibin
84 The Matisse Stories - A.S. Byatt
85 Wish You Were Here - Graham Swift
86 Adventures in the Screen Trade - William Goldman
87 Love etc - Julian Barnes
88 Erewhon - Samuel Butler
89 Morbo; the story of Spanish football - Phil Ball
90 Mondo Desperado - Patrick McCabe
91 The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin
92 Tor!; the story of German football - Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger
93 How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Stewart Lee
94 The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson
95 Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens
96 Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
97 Which Lie Did I Tell? - William Goldman
98 Cheri - Colette
99 Diary - Chuck Palahniuk
100 Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
101 Deliverance - James Dickey
102 Tono-Bungay - H.G. Wells
103 The Seven Basic Plots; why we tell stories - Christopher Booker
104 Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
105 Kim - Rudyard Kipling
106 Is Heathcliff a Murderer? - John Sutherland
107 The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
108 The Happy Prince and other stories - Oscar Wilde
109 The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
110 The Big Money - John Dos Passos
111 Notre Dame of Paris - Victor Hugo
112 The Comforters - Muriel Spark
113 Innocence - Penelope Fitzgerald
114 Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen
115 The Soft Machine - William Burroughs
116 H.G. – The History of Mr Wells - Michael Foot
117 Craven House - Patrick Hamilton
118 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe
119 Lucia’s Progress - EF Benson
120 All That I Am - Anna Funder
121 Hell’s Angels - Hunter S. Thompson
122 Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
123 The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes

2012-01-09T18:46:00.001-08:00

This quietly impressive and affecting novella won this year’s Booker. It’s a respectable enough choice, although the twist doesn’t quite work for me, as it raises too many questions about certain character motivations.

Thematically, the main theme is the unreliability of memory, and the implications of this are worked through interestingly.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion

2012-01-09T18:42:00.001-08:00

Joan Didion is a truly splendid writer, and this essay collection provides a superlative overview of 1960s America from a contemporary perspective. The more personal essays are slightly less involving, but the title piece on the Haight-Ashbury movement is quite brilliant.

Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson

2011-11-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

Thompson pioneered this type of in-your-face journalism, which would now be called embedding oneself with the enemy, and he obviously wrote about it in exciting prose. Despite the qualifications offered by our hero, however, the Hell's Angels qualities are massively outweighed by their repulsive attitudes towards sexual violence, so I was pleased to leave their company at the end of the book.

All That I Am – Anna Funder

2011-11-15T19:44:00.000-08:00

This is a novel based on real men and women who fled Germany in the early 1930s and spent years desperately trying to warn a blithe world about the danger of Hitler. Much of the action takes place in London and I was shocked at how active the Nazi henchmen were outside of Germany in this period. I knew nothing about the characters depicted, whose heroism cannot be doubted and, for me, inspire awe.

On a technical level, though, the book is flawed. Sentence for sentence it is fair, but characterisation gets a bit blurry and the overlapping narrators are insufficiently differentiated. I could also have done without the strand concerning life in contemporary Sydney which adds little.

As a work of literature, All That I Am is pretty good. As an act of remembrance, it is magnificent.

Lucia’s Progress – EF Benson

2011-11-10T19:39:00.001-08:00

In which Mapp and Lucia continue their sniping war of one-up-womanship in the setting of bourgeois England between the wars. Cricket matches, local elections and the excavation of Roman ruins all become objects of social prestige in delicious style, if not quite at the level of the similar PG Wodehouse.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe

2011-11-07T21:10:00.001-08:00

Sillitoe does for 1950s Nottinghamshire what Joyce had earlier done for his hometown in Dubliners.

Both books create a tableau of working class life through a series of discreet but thematically linked short stories, dominated by a longer tale (in the case the brilliant title story). Both discuss themes of working class anger, sexual politics and the vulnerability of children. And both are minor masterpieces.

Craven House – Patrick Hamilton

2011-11-07T18:00:00.002-08:00

This isn’t top-notch from the brilliant Hamilton but it’s still the best book I’ve read for a while. Taking the form of a comedy of manners set in a down at heel guest house, it gains real heft from the depiction of the trials of young love and an underlying sense of the characters’ despair.

H.G. – the history of Mr Wells – Michael Foot

2011-11-07T18:00:00.001-08:00

Rather than a straightforward biography, this concentrates on two important strands of Wells’ life; his socialist though and his relationships with women.

On the former, it was a relief to have accusations of racism well and truly quashed. In fact he was a highly progressive socialist, with an unsurprising facility to predict future events with great acuity.

On the latter, he both professed and enacted a form of free love predicated on mutual respect with a series of highly impressive women.

The Soft Machine – William Burroughs

2011-11-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Soft Machine – William Burroughs
Having read and enjoyed Naked Lunch, Queer and Junkie manymany years ago, I was interested to go back to Burroughs and see if he was as good as I remember. It turns out...not.

This is pretty adolescent stuff, and the shock value of using the words “rectum” and “jissom” ad nauseum wears very thin very quickly. It may be that those other books are simply better, but I am disinclined to spend time going back and finding out.

Here’s a representative sample:

Smile of idiot death spasms – slow vegetable decay filmed his amber flesh – always there when the egg cracks and the white juice spurts from ruptured apines – from his mouth floated coal gas and violets – The boy dropped his rusty black pants – delicate musk of soiled linen – clothes stiff with oil on the red tile floor – naked and sullen his street boy senses darted around the room for scraps of advantage.

Skinny Dip – Carl Hiaasen

2011-11-07T17:57:00.001-08:00

Lots of fun as one would expect from Hiaasen, with unlikely characters reeling off quips and racing around Florida having adventures. The serious stuff is less successful, including some well-meaning but horribly clumsy editorialising on environmental issues.

Innocence – Penelope Fitzgerald

2011-10-24T23:37:00.000-07:00

Innocence has a great opening chapter, really startling and setting up the themes beautifully. Sadly, though, it loses its way somewhat after that, or rather I lost my way in it. There are flashes of interest, but I had to try rather too hard to find them.

The Comforters – Muriel Spark

2011-10-20T23:21:00.001-07:00

E.F. Benson meets John Fowles is not a mash-up I ever expected to encounter, but that is what the divine Spark came up with in her debut. It’s an astringent mix, but it works in places.

I liked this introduction of a character, previously alluded to as the Baron:

“It is quite a common thing,” Willi Stock said. “Your brain is overworked”. This was the Baron speaking. He stood by the electric fire with its flicking imitation coals, sipping Curacao.

Notre Dame of Paris – Victor Hugo

2011-10-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

There is an awful lot wrong with this novel. The story doesn’t start until page 200, the plotting makes no sense whatsoever and the focus veers about wildly. So why does it still captivate? I can only ascribe it to a combination of Hugo’s rambunctious style and the iconic characters of the saintly hunchback, the beautiful gypsy and the corrupt priest.

The ending surprised me. It’s very different from that suggested by the various spoofs I’ve seen over the years.

The Big Money – John Dos Passos

2011-10-20T23:16:00.002-07:00

When I did the Observer Top 100 Novels thing, I ticked the masterful USA trilogy off as read without actually having got round to volume 3. The shame! The degradation! Consider me duly shamefaced.

Still, it’s not as if the final instalment differs greatly from the first 2. We have the same mixture of partially interwoven character arcs, impressionistic "camera eye" sequences, potted biographies of major figures of the time (Hearst, the Wright brothers) and "newsreel" snippets of headlines and popular songs. Familiar though it is, the effect is still exhilarating.

I had forgotten how fond Dos Passos is of compound words. On the first page we get the intimidating “Linoleumsmelling companionway”.

The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer

2011-10-20T23:16:00.001-07:00

We’ve all seen the WWII movie in which a mixed group of young American men (Mexican, Italian, WASP etc) go into war together. Some of them turn out to be heroes, some cowards, and the first one to mention his girl back home in Wichita gets his head blown off.

This book, published at a raw time in 1948, pretty much epitomises the format. There’s barely a memorable sentence in it but Mailer’s storytelling verve is evident in this, his first book. The more arty flashbacks are clearly influenced by Dos Passos.

I found the euphemistic swearing rather endearing (a lot of “fugging”), but at the time it was enough to provoke the Sunday Times into running a front page leader demanding that the novel be banned in the UK. Oh reactionaries, when will you ever learn?

The Happy Prince and other stories – Oscar Wilde

2011-10-06T15:02:00.002-07:00

These short stories for children are, of course, beautifully written and show off Wilde’s great imagination. A couple of times they are burdened with excess religiosity, but generally the morals are sound (except in the case of The Devoted Friend, the punchline of which is that moral tales are a terribly bad idea). I liked the final story about an overbearing firework, the kind of conceit the metaphysical poets would have gone for.

The Assistant – Bernard Malamud

2011-10-06T15:02:00.001-07:00

A sad story about individuals setting goals for themselves and then, through misfortune or personal shortcomings, failing to achieve them. The setting is a Jewish run store in 1950s Brooklyn, which lends an interesting cultural angle.

This is an excellent novel, but there is a problematic approach to sexual violence that I think would not get through the editorial process these days.

Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Puzzles in nineteenth century fiction – John Sutherland

2011-09-27T19:41:00.002-07:00

This is a blast. Sutherland picks away at the plot holes and hidden subtexts from a wide range of Victorian literature and comes to some fascinating and startling conclusions. The business about how Frankenstein animated his monster is eyebrow-raising to say the least.

It turns out that your average nineteenth century novel is somewhat racier than you may have thought at first glance.

Kim – Rudyard Kipling

2011-09-27T19:41:00.001-07:00

Kipling portrays colonial India as an exciting melting pot of diverse cultures, but the beneficial role of the English ruling class remains uninterrogated. That’s not necessarily a problem , but the picaresque plotting tries the patience and the streetwise Kim is not quite as charming as he needs to be, so the reader is left trying to come up with reasons to enjoy the book rather than simply having fun with it.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

2011-09-27T00:59:00.000-07:00

Bloody, hell.

I don’t mind violence (in its fictional form, you understand) but if it becomes too all-encompassing then the effect is severely blunted. In American Psycho, for example, the horrors are interspersed with long passages of hilarious banality, so the novel’s satirical effects are achieved brilliantly.

In Blood Meridian, McCarthy presents the reader with a seemingly unending catalogue of murder, rape and sundry outrages with no relieving counterpoint. The idea is to present an American history steeped in the twin original sins of genocide and racial subjugation, set in a landscape at once beautiful and drenched in blood. For me it doesn’t work because I became numb to the violence very early on and could find no compensatory interest elsewhere.

This is my third attempt at McCarthy and we still don’t get on, it seems.

I read this because of the rave it got on First Tuesday Book Club. Different strokes, I suppose.

The Seven Basic Plots; why we tell stories - Christopher Booker

2011-09-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

The first half of this mammoth tome is interesting, outlining 7 basic plots that form the basis of all storytelling. These are:

Overcoming the Monster – Beowulf, Jack and the Beanstalk
Rags to Riches – David Copperfield, Dick Whittington
The Quest – Pilgrim’s Progress, Watership Down
Voyage and Return – Alice in Wonderland, Brideshead Revisted
Comedy – Shakespearean comedy, The Marriage of Figaro
Tragedy – King Lear, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Rebirth – Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol

Later on he adds a couple more, the individual vs the implacable Other (Job, 1984) and the mystery (Sherlock Holmes).

By necessity, large chunks of text are taken up by plot synopses which I tended to skim, either because I already knew the outline or because it was opera, so who cares right?

It’s fun to consider the films, novels and plays one enjoys and figuring out how they fit into Booker’s scheme and, to be fair, just about everything does. However, my suspicions were raised by a few factual errors and some egregious misreadings. For example, he considers the story of only the original Star Wars film and therefore judges it as a failed Overcoming the Monster plot, whereas it was obviously designed as a series of stories that would straightforwardly fit into the Rebirth plot.

The first big problem arises with the thesis is that Booker regards stories that do not conform to these archetypes are, by definition, failed stories. Waiting For Godot is a failure as a Rebirth because the condition of stasis is never relieved. Around The World In Eighty Days is a failure as a Quest because the hero rescues the girl halfway through. No room is allowed for variation. As he says in discussing the “failure” of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, “Lawrence has sought to defy the archetypes. As always, the archetypes have won.”

This is even more egregious when based on a misreading, as when he attacks Joyce’s Ulysses because it fails to copy the archetypal template of The Odyssey. This is nonsense, because Joyce was ironising the original poem rather than attempting, pointlessly, to recreate it.

The second big problem overwhelms the final section of the book, in which Booker attempts to apply his ideas to the real world. He is revealed as a pretty old-fashioned reactionary, as when he describes A Clockwork Orange (the film) as “a glossily-packaged commercial for sex and violence”. No it isn’t. And what’s wrong with sex, incidentally? (He’s none too keen on swearing either. )

Eventually the book deliquesces into a broth of Jungian gobbledegook and unsupported political assertions. Towards the end there’s a very odd broadside against the state of Israel, provocatively worded and utterly out of place.

If this book fits into a fictional genre, it is that of Tragedy. The splendid chapters on Thomas Hardy and Hamlet offer intriguing, stimulating readings of texts that I have read plenty about. Like Othello’s jealousy or Lear’s pride, Booker has a Fatal Flaw. It is overambition (he spent 34 years writing the thing) and it brings about his downfall.

Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells

2011-09-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

The strange title refers to the snake oil panacea invented by our narrator’s uncle that leads to fame, fortune and, inevitably, ruin. The satirical depiction of the business can easily be applied to, say, the homeopathic industry, but much of it applies to capitalism in general. While this main thread is followed the vitality of the book remains, but the effect is diluted by numerous sidetracking episodes.

It was published in 1909, and offers a confounding political outlook. The overall vision often appears to be English conservative, and this is a little too late for the anti-semitism to be shrugged off, but then you are hit with a radical passage like this:

"Great God!" I cried, "but is this Life?"

For this the armies drilled, for this the Law was administered and the prisons did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me then, and for a time I could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! It came to me like a revelation, a revelation at once incredible and indisputable of the abysmal folly of our being.

I have a biography of Wells lined up for future reading, perhaps reading that will give me a better understanding of the political angle.

Deliverance – James Dickey

2011-09-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve always considered the movie to be an overrated bit of superior schlock, so I didn’t expect much from this despite it being on a couple of major “best novel” lists. To my surprise the opening section works really well, introducing the characters and a range of themes that are only partially explored in the adaptation: masculinity, conservation, a very late-sixties take on sexuality.

The first, most famous set piece retains its shock factor, and I was surprised not to find the oft-quoted bit of dialogue from the screen version, the “squeal like a pig” bit.

After this, though, the tension begins to dissipate culminating in a very dull final 40 pages or so in which our intrepid heroes go to great lengths to, er, save themselves a bit of hassle. Maybe this was development of a theme I didn’t pick up on, it’s certainly incongruous.

As an aside, I did learn an awful lot about archery from this book. Apparently the key is to keep your left arm as still as a statue and to release the bow fluidly, and the hardest trick is to keep the string taut for an extended period.

Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-09-15T20:22:00.001-07:00

In which we are introduced to the beautiful, successful Divers swanning around the south of France, but this being a Fitzgerald novel we are aware that this glamorous facade is likely to fall apart in a miasma of alcohol and mental disintegration. So it goes in glorious, hauntingly beautiful fashion, and the shocking central revelation on which the whole plot hinges flashes by in just a sentence.

Diary – Chuck Palahniuk

2011-09-15T20:21:00.002-07:00

The familiar Palahniuk traits of repetition and shock are used here in a surprisingly affecting work, veering closer in tone to Vonnegut than his more outrageous material. There are some laughs/gasps to be had but the overarching result is almost wistful.

Cheri – Colette

2011-09-15T20:21:00.001-07:00

This brief account of a doomed love affair between a spoilt young man and his middle-aged courtesan/teacher is distinguished by a clear-eyed view of sexual relations. It’s interesting, and I’ll ascribe the occasional clunkiness to the translator.

Which Lie Did I Tell? – William Goldman

2011-09-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Subtitled More Adventures In The Screen Trade, this is as mightily entertaining and insightful as its predecessor.

In the last chapter Goldman offers the reader an unmade screenplay and then submits it for comment by a number of professional colleagues. It makes for fascinating reading, and has changed the way that I view films for the better, I think.

Reflections in a Golden Eye – Carson McCullers

2011-09-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

A short, sad work touched by poetry.

I have just discovered that John Huston made a movie of this starring Marlon Brando and Liz Taylor, no less. I’m glad I didn’t know that as I was reading, but I would now like to see the film. Many themes are shared with her McCullers masterpiece, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.

Dombey and Son – Charles Dickens

2011-09-15T20:01:00.001-07:00

The first and last 200 pages of this enormous novel are great. The set-up is intriguing and concludes with a truly surprising narrative turn, and there is some real melodrama towards the end.

Unfortunately, the central section loses its way rather badly and I lost interest in the comical goings-on of the over-stuffed supporting cast.

Also, is this the least enticing book cover you have ever seen?

The Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson

2011-09-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

My better half is a clinical psychologist so I am very aware of the importance of the DSM-IV, which is perhaps the most significant theme of this amiably rambling book. In characteristically revelatory yet haphazard fashion, Ronson riffs on the presence of psychopathy and other perceived disorders in society, by way of absurd Florida businessmen, Broadmoor and the sad case of whistleblower-turned-fruitloop of David Shayler.

I’m not sure exactly what point was reached, but I thoroughly enjoyed many of the stops while I was on the journey.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate – Stewart Lee

2011-09-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

Lee is the best stand-up working today by some distance. His shtick is to begin a riff and then take a step back and pontificate on the meaning of the routine and a dissection of its mechanisms. It sounds academic and dry, but I find it hysterical.

This strange book takes things to yet another level of meta. Most of the book is taken up by a transcript of three separate routines annotated by absurdly extended footnotes, so we get an analysis of already self-conscious art that is simultaneously hilariously funny. Terrific.

If you don’t know Lee’s work, this might give you some idea what he’s about:

Tor!; the story of German football - Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger

2011-09-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

As with the Spanish counterpart Morbo, I learned a fair bit of German history as a by-product of learning about its football culture. There’s a grim, inevitable fascination with the Nazi era material, and occasionally one winces with the incongruity of sentences along the lines of “In the same week that the Luftwaffe started bombing London, Schalke were playing away at Borussia Munchengladbach”.

The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin

2011-09-15T18:50:00.001-07:00

This is another beautiful work from Toibin, one of the best writers around. The plot is somewhat literary, with a group of contrasting characters gathered around a dying man’s bed, but this skilful author makes it work beautifully.

Incidentally, this is possibly my favourite novel title, just something about the sound of it.

Mondo Desperado – Patrick McCabe

2011-09-15T18:49:00.002-07:00

Sex! Delinquency! Blasphemy!

As the title suggests, this is an entertainingly OTT portrayal of the Irish town of Barntosna, full of all sorts of seedy goings on. I found it great fun, although others may not be keen on its gleefully freewheeling plotting and sense of humour.

Morbo; the story of Spanish football - Phil Ball

2011-09-15T18:49:00.001-07:00

My knowledge of Spanish history is horribly weak, filtered primarily through my understanding of the cinema culture and now that of football. The key theme is that of regionalism. Now I really want to get back to Spain and maybe even take in a match or two.

Erewhon - Samuel Butler

2011-09-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is a cerebral take on all those “upright chap ventures into an unknown land” tales that were very voguish in the late Nineteenth Century. The main inspiration is evidently the earlier Gulliver’s Travels, as much time is taken making satirical points about the prejudices of society that are rather lost now.

Love etc – Julian Barnes

2011-09-12T00:37:00.000-07:00

The sequel to Talking It Over adopts a darker tone than its predecessor, but it slips down just as entertainingly. Once again, the three main characters (plus a supporting cast) address the reader directly offering their own biased, and often contradictory, versions of events.

Adventures in the Screen Trade – William Goldman

2011-08-31T23:04:00.000-07:00

A wonderfully readable insight into the world of a top Hollywood screenwriter, the book combines a how-to guide with some deliciously gossipy anecdotes. The stories of the making of All The President's Men and A Bridge Too Far are a hoot.

This was published in 1982 when Burt Reynolds was the number one star worldwide, which sometimes makes the insights feel dated but occasionally illuminates for us how things have changed.

Wish You Were Here – Graham Swift

2011-08-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

In his masterpiece Waterland, Swift adopts a narrative strategy involving multiple plot strands and timelines that twist around each other to brilliant effect. Wish You Were Here attempts a similar feat but, rather than the strands tightening to a coherent whole, they somehow dissipate.

The plot revolves around the return of a soldier’s body from Iraq, an event that triggers various family revelations and resonates with other news events, particularly BSE and the subsequent mass slaughter of cattle. The focus on Devonian rural folk in a miserable cycle of poverty and suicide inevitably recalls Hardy.

The best sequence describes the repatriation ceremony when the coffin arrives at a military airbase, a commonly seen media image that I will now look at with new eyes.

The books major misstep is in an unforgivably clichéd minor character, a financial whiz called Toby who cares only about money and is having an extramarital affair with his PA. Puh-lease.

The Matisse Stories – A.S. Byatt

2011-08-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the efforts to link these short stories to the works of Matisse are subtle but often they are less so, amounting to little more than using a lot of colour-based adjectives. Nevertheless this is one of the better works by the infuriatingly inconsistent Byatt.

The Empty Family – Colm Toibin

2011-08-31T22:56:00.002-07:00

Short stories are not usually my bag, but the new Toibin is always worth a read. This obviously contains some glorious prose and many affecting moments, but by nature it is a patchy affair.

Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

2011-08-31T22:56:00.001-07:00

This is one of Dickens’ more rambling, picaresque novels and is consequently rather patchy. Many of the secondary characters overshadow the rather bland protagonist, including the batty Mrs Nickleby and the dastardly Wackford Squeers.

A Landing On The Sun – Michael Frayn

2011-08-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is a curious splicing of farce and Kafkaesque bureaucratic dystopia, written with author’s trademark wit and with the occasional laugh-out-load moment. The tone is distinctly odd, and the story slightly overstays its welcome.

An Education – Lynn Barber

2011-08-31T22:51:00.000-07:00

Barber is a fine journalist and her skills are shown here to extend to memoir. She does not suffer from false modesty and she’s had some remarkable experiences along the way, so the result is a rattling read.

The Stranger’s Child – Alan Hollinghurst

2011-08-31T22:50:00.000-07:00

Hollinghurst is a genius, and I will be surprised if this beautiful and substantial novel does not take this year’s Booker.

The first section of the novel details the romantic, homosexual liaison between a doomed WW1 poet and his university friend at the latter’s fadingly aristocratic country home. We follow the house through generations, as the memories of the individuals involved and their chroniclers becomes further removed from what we know to be the truth. The effect is insightful, lyrical and deeply moving.

The setting and structure is reminiscent of McEwan’s Atonement, whilst the conflicts between reality, memory and biography recall Byatt’s Possession.

Mr Weston’s Good Wine – T.F. Powys

2011-08-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

A fascinatingly odd novel, I picked this up at random in a charity shop and was charmed by its off-kilter allegory and moral sense. The story brings to mind Under Milk Wood (a night in the life of a collection of villagers) and The Master and Margarita (a major Christian figure walks among us), but it predates both.

Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud

2011-08-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

I don’t understand the fuss about this book, which I found to be lightweight and inconsequential. There’s a real problem with the narrative voice too, which is meant to be that of a young child but is all over the place.

The Getaway – Jim Thompson

2011-08-10T00:48:00.002-07:00

This tough-as-nails gangster novel is stylishly written and stays well within genre conventions except for its most memorable passage, in which the moll has to hide out in a tiny coffin-like cave for 48 hours to chilling effect.

Landscape of Farewell – Alex Miller

2011-08-10T00:48:00.001-07:00

I found this tale of friendship between two academics, one an elderly German man and the other a vigorous aboriginal woman, a little lame. The author is reaching for profound meditations on Australian colonisation and German war guilt, but I found it ineffectual.

The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch

2011-08-10T00:47:00.000-07:00

It seems odd that this unwieldy beast of a novel won the Booker in the 1970s, I detect a whiff of a reward for lifetime achievement rather than this odd book. It tells the tale of a theatrical impresario retired to the seaside until his past comes back to haunt him. The echoes of The Tempest are exploited cleverly, and a curious strand of humour runs through it.

The History of Mr Polly – H.G. Wells

2011-06-16T23:53:00.001-07:00

In which Wells turns his hand from the science fiction for which he is best remembered and goes for comic social commentary, which was in fact taken very seriously at the time. The effect is patchy, with some odd stylistic tics tending to camouflage a simple and rather sweet story.

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

2011-06-07T23:25:00.001-07:00

Joan Didion is the quintessential Upper East Side intellectual; unapologetically privileged, humanely insightful and hyperarticulate. I am a great admirer, and this gorgeously written meditation on the sudden death of her husband and the subsequent grieving process is perhaps her finest work.

Don Juan – Lord Byron

2011-06-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

Byron termed this an “epic satire”, a decent term for this 500 page poem in ABABABCC cantos. The tone is chatty, discursive, allusive and alternately witty and bawdy with occasional outbreaks of seriousness. Perhaps the best example of the learned but fun-loving tenor is the verse that rhymes Plato with Cato with potato.

Family and Friends – Anita Brookner

2011-06-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

An interesting and unusual family saga written in densely textured prose and written in the present tense. Somehow one reads it as if it is being read in a Joyce Grenfell voice:

Revelation

2011-05-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

This has been endlessly analysed by theologians and others for centuries, and we could spend time discussing what it all means but, frankly, what’s the point? This book is just batshit insane.

For sure all the business about draconic invasions of heaven, the whore of Babylon and the seven seals is entertaining enough when taken as madcap poetry, but once you consider that millions of people take it seriously it becomes repulsive.

Here endeth the bible, after nigh on five years of reading. A longer post on my general feelings about the completion of this project is available on Big Blog.

Quarantine – Jim Crace

2011-05-31T18:49:00.001-07:00

In parallel with lots of biblical reading comes a contemporary reworking of the Christ myth, with a focus on the forty days and nights in the wilderness. Crace’s Christ is a man as yet almost unaware of his divinity but gradually coming to terms with it. In the neighbouring caves are other people seeking spiritual insight, and the novel pulls their stories together in interesting ways.

Jude

2011-05-31T18:47:00.001-07:00

The brief penultimate book starts ramping up the hellfire and brimstone rhetoric just in time for the grand finale of Revelation.

3 John

2011-05-31T18:46:00.002-07:00

The shortest book in the Bible.

Nearly there...

2 John

2011-05-31T18:46:00.001-07:00

“For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” (1:7)

You’re welcome.

1 John

2011-05-31T18:45:00.004-07:00

He’s a good poet is John, but I hate the way he refers to readers as “little children” throughout. Patronising git.

2 Peter

2011-05-31T18:45:00.003-07:00

Uneventful.

1 Peter

2011-05-31T18:45:00.001-07:00

Boring.

James

2011-05-31T18:44:00.000-07:00

If you removed the God stuff from this it would actually be a decent little book, a notably thoughtful one for this part of the Bible. The main thrust is that faith is not enough and that by one’s deeds ye will be judged.

"By works a man is justified, and not by faith only." (2:24)

Hebrews

2011-05-31T18:43:00.002-07:00

This uses a lot of the tautologous “The Bible is true because these bits of the Bible tell us so” argument that is still in regular use by Christian apologists today. Feeble.

I also thought that accusing non-Christians of having “an evil heart of unbelief” (3:12) was a little harsh. Well yah-boo sucks to you to.

Under The Net – Iris Murdoch

2011-05-31T18:43:00.001-07:00

This accomplished debut novel started a famous career, and it still entertains if you are forgiving of the more dated elements. As such it reminded me of Lucky Jim, although I think Murdoch is a superior stylist to Amis.

Winter’s Bone - Daniel Woodrell

2011-05-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

The movie was my favourite American film of last year, so I could not help but read the novel through that prism.

Both media centre on the splendid character of Ree Dolly, a tough, resourceful and terrifyingly vulnerable teenager who is every bit a product of her bleak Orzark mountains environment. The film presents the audience with more social context (the army draft scene, the music) whereas the book makes its points through poetic (but not florid) prose.

A masterpiece on the screen, the version on the page is not far off.

Philemon

2011-05-23T01:52:00.003-07:00

Terse.

Titus

2011-05-23T01:52:00.001-07:00

Brief.

2 Timothy

2011-05-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

These Pauline epistles are getting really dull and repetitive now. Of interest to biblical historians, I imagine.

1 Timothy

2011-05-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. (2:12)

At last, a statement of Paul’s I can agree with. Arf!

The Island of Doctor Moreau – H.G. Wells

2011-05-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

As an adventure story this is a clunker but as allegory it fascinates, helped considerably by its allusions to Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The remarkable closing chapter expresses a post-Darwinian fear of the animal within fellow humans, a Gulliver-like final meditation that could be interpreted as speaking to religious, scientific or imperial concerns.

Sacred Hunger – Barry Unsworth

2011-05-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

This triumphant historical novel tells the story of the eighteenth century slave trade in a broad sweep whilst also taking us into the mindset of beautifully delineated individuals of that time.

The plot centres on a pair of cousins, one an insecure, lovesick innocent and the other a diffident radical thinker. As their paths become increasingly entangled, the tale and characters develop in unexpected ways and create that wondrous mix of page-turning excitement and literary zing.

As usual with historical novels, there are a few people with suspiciously forward-looking views on women's rights, slavery, religion and evolution.

It shared the Booker in 1992 with Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Good year, that.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi - Geoff Dyer

2011-05-22T20:45:00.002-07:00

Well, well. What a confounded strange novel this is. It features two consecutive narratives, related to one other by imagery but not narratively. The first is a lively satire of the Venice Biennale that comes across as a bawdier version of Lodge’s Small World. The second is more serious and much duller.

The whole strange contraption goes on too long despite the odd zinger to keep you awake:

“Thought for the week...art world, music business. What does that tell us?”

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England – Ian Mortimer

2011-05-22T20:45:00.001-07:00

This offers an overview of the sights, sounds and smells of medieval England, and I learned a lot in a painless way. Unfortunately, the writing is largely a little flat except for a notable section on the unbelievably devastating Black Death, in which the prose suddenly blazes.

Contains the word “gongfermour”.

Slow Chocolate Autopsy - Iain Sinclair & Dave McKean

2011-05-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating oddball volume, combining Sinclair’s typically sparkling prose with McKean’s dark-hued comic work. The linking thread of the various episodes is Norton, a lowlife trapped in London geographically but able to move through time, and thus witness Marlowe’s murder, the Krays, Jeffrey Archer and other such characters.

The authors create a world of mythologies and self-mythologies, with Sinclair’s usual shout-outs to his old buddies. Despite being narratively all over the place, the results somehow cohere into a fine work, and some of the sloganeering is irresistible:

“Treat London like an autopsy catalogue.”

“Surveillance is the art-form of the millennium.”

2 Thessalonians

2011-05-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

There is textual evidence to suggest that this is a forgery of sorts, an update of 1 Thessalonians by a later scholar. Why do some fundies insist that this is the literal word of God, or even divinely inspired? Anybody who reads the bible can see it is a ragtag of texts put together by committee years after the event.

1 Thessalonians

2011-05-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

It is clear that Paul expected to see Christ's return in his own lifetime, just like the Rapture crowd today. I expect the current lot to experience a similar disappointment.

The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

2011-05-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

I had high hopes for this, as a page-turning thriller with acknowledged literary chops. It turned out to be pretty good. I was gripped in the first half by the sociopathic titular character and the cunningly constructed plot, but somehow the tension drains away in the later sections.

Colossians

2011-05-03T18:15:00.001-07:00

Paul is just repeating himself now; wives submit to your husbands, servants submit to your masters etc. Whatevs.

Philippians

2011-05-03T18:14:00.003-07:00

Paul is still obsessed with foreskins, but “beware of dogs” (3:2) seems sensible advice.

Ephesians

2011-05-03T18:14:00.001-07:00

But for a dodgy bit in the preamble that endorses predestination and some characteristic Pauline sexism, this is actually decent stuff, full of forgiveness and other bits of Nice Christianity.

Galatians

2011-05-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

On to a run of short books that inhabit the NT between Corinthians and the grand finale that is Revelation.

This is still Paul, outlining the reasons that Jesus overturned some of Mosaic law and spending much of his time talking about circumcision. Having gone to a CofE school, I’m grateful that the church decided to ditch this rule.

2 Corinthians

2011-05-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

Well, that was dull. Turgid stuff, although this line sums up one of my major objections to religion from the horse’s mouth:

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (5:10)

Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin

2011-05-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

This is a superbly constructed chronicle of a black family in America from the Nineteenth Century through to the fifties. There is a strong Exodus (and thus civil rights) theme, with characters repeatedly turning away and then returning to God, and a journey from slavery in the south to comparative freedom in New York. White people are either faceless or actively malevolent.

There are some lyrical, highly stylised passages as well as some realist moments. Both can be devastating, as in this description of an older woman's travails:

"by and by she had married and raised children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness and two by auction".

1 Corinthians

2011-05-02T00:18:00.002-07:00

Chapter 13 is the one they always read out at weddings because the poetry is spectacular; through a glass darkly and all that. I still wake up in a sweat thinking about the time I stuffed up a reading at the nuptials of two dear friends. The guilt!

Paul, the author, really doesn’t come across as a nice guy. A definite misogynist, and he also has a thing against men with long hair. Eh?

Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope

2011-05-02T00:18:00.001-07:00

In outline this sounds like a Dickens story. A young Irishman heads to London to make his way in politics where, after many intrigues both romantic and social, he marries his true love. In tone, however, this is pure Trollope, with even the comparative excitement of an attempted garrotting and a duel presented in a low-key way.

Charming.

The Children Of Men – P.D. James

2011-05-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

I didn’t like my one look at James’ detective fiction (to understate the case), but I gave this a go on the basis of her literary reputation and the excellence of the movie adaptation.

I’m still unconvinced, but this is a pretty good read. The central conceit remains fascinating but some of the sci-fi extrapolations seem strange while otherhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif possibilities are simply ignored.

There are echoes of H.G. Wells, mainly in that apocalyptic events take place in the genteel surroundings of the Home Counties.

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith

2011-04-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

The first in a wildly successful series did not offer me enough reward to continue with the series. Whilst I enjoyed the unusual setting of Botswana and the no-nonsense central figure of Precious Ramotswe, too often the storytelling fell into tweeness. I was particularly irritated by the cowardly refusal to use the word AIDS when that is clearly what was being referred to, and a pointless episode involving a blindingly obvious solution ("they're twins!") that drags on interminably.

Romans

2011-04-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Interesting, this. We move from the narratives that have featured in the NT so far into the realms of evangelism and theological discussion as traditionally ascribed to Paul. I’m not very familiar with this stuff, so I kind of enjoyed it despite the fact that the entire premise is a pile of cods.

Death In Venice – Thomas Mann

2011-04-11T04:05:00.001-07:00

This novella only takes an hour or two to read but it packs a lot in. The tale of a writer becoming obsessed with a beautiful teenage boy makes copious references to classical mythology, and the muggy atmosphere of Venice during a cholera outbreak is superbly conveyed.

Such Darling Dodos – Angus Wilson

2011-04-11T04:04:00.004-07:00

It doesn’t sound like a particularly appealing prospect; a book of short stories about the anachronistic middle classes in the well-to-do England of the 1940s by a largely forgotten writer. Happily Wilson’s sharp eye and impish humour make the concoction highly entertaining and, once or twice, rather moving.

Acts of the Apostles

2011-04-11T04:04:00.003-07:00

Other than the story of the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, which is described three or four times, much of this story of the earliest Christians was new to me, and thus pretty interesting. At times, as Paul and co are chased around various Mediterranean islands by unfriendly locals, it reads a little like The Odyssey.

Room – Emma Donoghue

2011-04-11T04:04:00.001-07:00

This is the darling of the book club crowd right now, and I think it’s the bookie’s favourite for this year’s Orange Prize. Very good it is too, walking the line between populist and literary with style.

The narrator is a five year old boy named Jack who lives in Room with his Ma, oblivious to the existence of any world outside. To Jack this is normality, and his perspective partially alleviates the horror that our adult knowledge brings to the situation.

The first half of the story is brilliant, culminating in a sequence that had me breathless as I was reading, it’s really so effective. The intensity dissipates somewhat in the second half, but the abiding memory for me is of the character of Ma, a fierce and smart mother who will let nothing compromise her love for her son.

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

2011-04-11T04:03:00.000-07:00

Long. Reeeaaallly long. Reeeaaallly loooonnng.

The story is fine, the prose is on the verbose side but OK, so how the hell did this comparatively simple plot bloat out to such enormous length? I think it’s mainly repetition. So determined is Dreiser to outline the shortcomings of the American systems of class, religion, politics, the media and justice that every detail is pored over from a multitude of angles until the only sane response is sheer exhaustion.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

2011-04-11T04:02:00.000-07:00

More lovely Holmesian indulgence, this collection including some iconic business such as Irene Adler and the speckled band. This is the first one I’ve read since watching the recent TV series, and I was once again impressed about how the BBC adaptation captures the spirit of the original.
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