Books Read in 2019

Didn't quite make it to 52 this year. 

The Stowaway:  A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica—Laurie Gwen Shapiro

This was an enjoyable, interesting, and rather short book.  Billy Gawronski’s determination to get to Antarctica or bust in the company of Commander Byrd in 1928 was less predicated on specific skill or education (though he would use many of his talents, such as strong swimming and being a multi-linguist, both during his Antarctica trip and later in life) and more on sheer bloodymindedness (or perhaps more appropriately given the time and place, pig-headedness).  Shapiro has done a nice job researching and writing this exciting story of “by-your-bootstraps” self-made men and boys in a more optimistic age (though she doesn’t neglect the darker side of American culture here, symbolized by Gawronski’s fellow stowaway Bob Lanier and society’s prevention of his joining the adventure due to his color).  There are some awkward sections of prose which fly out of left field, but the book is no doubt enlivened by its primary research. 

Christmas Lights: Ten Poems for Dark Winter Nights

Overall, some excellent poems, very few of which are on obvious subjects.

The All Night Bookshop—David Belbin

An odd prose write-up bookended by some poems.

Becoming—Michelle Obama

I think candid is the best word to describe this memoir, which not only describes the Obamas’ eight years in the White House but also Mrs Obama’s entire life story.  Whomever has helped shape this book along with its author has done a good job, making it a truly accessible piece of work; from reading its pages, you feel almost like you can address the former First Lady by her first name, which is contradictory given she repeatedly states that she doesn’t particularly enjoy the public eye and does not like politics.  I have read at least one of Barack Obama’s books, and while his scholarship and erudition are unquestionable, I felt more awed by him as a person and agent for change reading about him through his wife’s eyes than in reading his own words.  It’s a powerful and worthwhile read and almost a document of faith, something to come back to when you yourself are lacking Mrs Obama’s self-avowed optimism. 

I’m Still Here:  A Breakthrough Approach to Understanding Someone Living with Alzheimer’s—John Ziesel

This is an interesting book which tries to promote the positives and potentially uplifting aspects of Alzheimer’s.  What could possibly be positive or uplifting about Alzheimer’s, you ask.  Well, according to John Ziesel, who devoted his life to creating Alzheimer-friendly living environments for his American clients, a fair bit.  His contention is that such patients shouldn’t be cloistered off and ignored, or treated like babies, until the very last stages of the disease.  He argues that even late stage Alzheimer patients will respond to a kind touch, a smile, music, visual art, and nature.  His argument seems to be that just because you have to work harder to reach people as they advance through the stages, you shouldn’t give up, get angry, or assume nothing can be done.  It’s by no means easy, which he acknowledges by saying that if you tried to do everything he advocates in the book, you would go crazy.  However, I think much of the book is valuable.  It’s perhaps too rosy a picture overall of what is still a debilitating disease for the sufferer and a painful experience for family and friends, but I think it’s well worth reading, especially alongside much darker, traditional conceptions of Alzheimer’s.

The Devil in the White City—Erik Larson

This was not your usual work of paperback history, and it’s unsurprising that it was seized upon as cinematic, for that is certainly the frame Larson has composed.  The first few paragraphs offer a shocking and compelling story, in which an architect, Daniel H. Burnham, dazzles the world with the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, which is in turn haunted by serial killer H.H. Holmes.  Larson chooses key points throughout the story which work exactly like a docu-drama would dramatize the story, such as taking an actual beginning point in 1912, when Burnham is crossing the Atlantic on the R.M.S. Olympic and hears of the tragedy on the Titanic, upon which one of his last links to the World’s Fair, Francis Millet, perishes.  The story of H.H. Holmes is almost unbelievably lurid (indeed, although Larson justifies his dramatic choices, he’s had to make some pretty big leaps of imagination in recreating the psychopathic mindset of Holmes and describing how he committed his crimes).  Despite this, the book bursts with interesting characters and is a thought-provoking portrait of Chicago at the end of the 19^th century.  I wish there had been more photos (I found that lack perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book), and it’s occasionally overwritten.  On the whole, though, I found it a very compelling read.

How to Think Like an Entrepreneur—Philip Delves Broughton

This was an interesting and enjoyable book.  It in no way promises to make you a Richard Branson or a Steve Jobs but does offer some insights into common traits or mindsets that belong to entrepreneurs.  In a way I found it quite comforting, as I have struggled with certain aspects of “get rich quick” or traditional business thinking, but the book suggests that I already have the mindset of an entrepreneur:  someone who uses the liminal properties of their existence to understand different groups of people.  It’s also interesting to me that a distinction is drawn between being a king and getting rich.  You can have a great idea, then you sell it off to someone else who can manage it for you.  Or, you retain complete creative control but risk not making a lot of money off it. 

The Light in the Dark:  A Winter Journal—Horatio Clare

I really enjoyed this book, and it was the perfect time to read it—and the perfect antidote to the winter gloom.  Clare, as a writer and a teacher of writing, has an almost unbelievably insightful perceptiveness of his own nature, particularly his failings and particularly when depression threatens to completely overwhelm him.  However, this is far from depressing reading.  In struggling against his depression, Clare can offer help to those of us who find the darkest days of winter (particularly in northern England) unbearable by reflecting on the beauties offered by nature at this time.  Furthermore, I found it a wonderfully British book, reflecting with great accuracy the qualities and eccentricities of living not only in the northwest, but also in Wales (much of the book is spent at Clare’s mother’s farm in rural Wales). 

Revolution in the Head:  The Beatles’ Record and the Sixties—Ian Macdonald

This was an incredibly good piece of writing—music journalism, potted biography (including honest but fair assessments of all the Beatles), and at times, it resounded with near-cultish love, not merely for the Beatles but for a bygone era in British history, the early and mid-Sixties when, according to Macdonald, anything was possible.  The Beatles were not, Macdonald acknowledges, great lyricists.  The power of their music was in the accessibility of the music itself; Macdonald argues that their general lack of formal musical education was actually a boon to the creation of music that felt its way along, succeeding in touching people’s hearts while at the same time being wildly innovative.  I learned an unbelievable amount about the Beatles, their musical acumen, and though I have read several lengthy social histories of the British 1960s, I learned quite a lot about the mindset of the time.  While the opening chapter was strong enough on its own, I grew to appreciate the book’s approach, which discussed, song by song, release by release, all the available Beatles material.  It was very inspiring to read this book while trying to learn how to play the guitar.

Australian Ghost Stories—ed. James Doig

I knew that I would enjoy reading this collection because the Wordsworth Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural never disappoint.  Some very obscure stuff has been rescued here by James Doig from little-known publications in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  That said, there are a fair number of mediocre tales that have been included to round out the collection.  Like the best Gothic fiction, some of the stories were startlingly original and created images and sensations that stayed with me for days.  These include “The Cave” by Beatrice Grimshaw and “The Cave of the Invisible” by James Francis Dwyer, both early 20^th century stories, “The Cave” having the distinction of being haunted by the ghost of a dinosaur (!) and “The Cave of the Invisible” having a markedly Indiana Jones-like quality to it.  “The Mystery of Major Molineux” by Marcus Clarke was a great yarn without a completely satisfactory ending; “The Death Child” and “A Strange Goldfield,” both by Guy Boothby, were also skilfully told.  I’m sure I will be returning to this book again to re-read some of the stories.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room—Gaston Leroux

It was an enjoyable if curious experience to read another Gaston Leroux novel, simply because I had gotten to know his style so well from re-reading Phantom of the Opera many, many times, and was surprised (although I shouldn’t have been!) to recognize many of the qualities of that novel in his celebrated locked-room mystery.  I had heard it dramatized on radio, as well as its sequel, The Perfume of the Woman in Black, which I had enjoyed immensely.  I have to hand it to the adaptor, Stephen Sheridan, who did a wonderful job adapting this novel which, for all its humor and brilliance, did not allow Mathilde, the redoubtable heroine, much of a voice, whereas the radio adaptation made her into a fully-fledged character in the manner of Christine, in a way I have no doubt would have pleased Leroux.  It’s difficult not to see the great influence of Conan Doyle here, but equally, I feel much of Leroux’s own personality emerges in the characters of both Sainclair and Rouletabille.  Furthermore, Leroux’s highly journalistic style, which I always assumed was part of the charm of Phantom of the Opera, is in fact (judging by this) a hallmark of all his writing.  Once a journalist, always a journalist (though in Sainclair we also catch glimpses of Leroux’s past training for the law).  Finally, this seems to have been a cheap reprint of an English-language translation with some serious typos, so I think I would benefit from reading Leroux in French originals. 

Ten Poems about Husbands and Wives

An enjoyable, interesting, and surprisingly unsentimental collection. 

How to Deal with Adversity—Christopher Hamilton

While reading this book, I thought it was great.  However, having some time now to reflect, my confidence in the accuracy of some of its messages has eroded slightly.  While the other books in this series have made philosophical ideas more accessible to a wider audience, and this one certainly tried to do this, I think it’s very hard going to be like Montaigne when looking detachedly at pain, illness, and death.  Granted, I’ve not yet had to put what Hamilton recommends into practice, so perhaps it really does help to think, when you get a serious illness, “Well, it’s amazing I got this far without having more problems.  Wow, look at the frailty of humankind.” Or maybe I just found too many difficult truths to accept in the book. Despite my minor misgivings, I feel Hamilton is an excellent writer and has tried to be as cordial, human, and convivial as his depressing subject has allowed.  He is certainly more entrenched in classical models for behavior than Delves Broughton was in How to Think Like an Entrepreneur.    

The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life—Stephanie Vanderslice

I enjoyed this book, and it taught me a lot of what I didn’t know about writing/the writing life and gave me many reassurances that, despite recent feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness as a writer, that I am and have been doing pretty much everything right.  In many ways, it covers the ambitious, deal-breaking aspects of the writing life:  how to balance a burning desire to write with making a living, how to have a family while being a writer, and even the importance of finding a soulmate who can appreciate the importance of writing to you, throughout your life.  In many senses, it simply tweaked received wisdom about writing in a way that I found quite helpful (how to actually make time to write at least once a week, which I have struggled with); validating the place of exercise in what can be a sedentary and solitary pursuit; corroborating the place of writing retreats as part of the annual writing journey; counselling caution as regards self-publishing.  It also offered much practical advice about what happens once you finally get an agent, and the gruelling process of actually getting a book published by a major publisher has given me serious doubts about pursuing the process.  The only thing I didn’t like about it was the title, which seemed to me a mere marketing ploy (as there wasn’t a self-evident title other than Good Stuff You Need to Know about Being a Writer in the Long-Term).  It was also heavily skewed towards fiction and creative nonfiction writers (rather than poets, screenwriters, or dramatists).   

Doctor Who:  The Good Doctor—Juno Dawson

The Situation and the Story:  The Art of Personal Narrative—Vivian Gornick

One of the most beautifully written nonfiction books I can remember reading, nevertheless the book left me with some mixed feelings.  In direct opposition to Stephanie Vanderslice, Gornick doesn’t think writing can be taught—you either have it, or you don’t (which does beg the question of why Gornick was teaching in an MFA program).  Similarly, her prescriptive idea of what a memoir and a personal essay should be seems somewhat limited (where is the travel memoir, the humorous memoir?).  I was also surprised at the format of the book, which seemed like an extended introduction to how other writers have done it well, rather than a nuts-and-bolts-this-is-how-you-do-it.  That, of course, chimes in perfectly with Gornick’s philosophy, and she even states at the end of the book that she can’t teach you write a personal narrative, only how to read one (and, by extension, appreciate and learn from it).  It has given me plenty of ideas of how to dust off the old personal essay (which I had great success with as an undergrad) and how to approach the memoir.  Yet, instead of boosting my confidence about where to start with either of these forms, the book actually worsened my indecision and fanned my self-doubt.  As an analysis of some of the greatest works of creative nonfiction of the last two centuries (James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, Loren Eisley, Natalie Ginzburg, George Orwell, W.G. Sebald to name a few), this book is second-to-none; as a writing aid, I’m less certain of what it has to offer.

Doctor Who: Molten Heart—Una McCormack

To the Devil – A Daughter—Dennis Wheatley

Only the last twenty pages or so resembled in the least what I thought this book was going to be like.  I have very little patience for the Satanic ritual stories that arose (chiefly) in the 1970s, but I see now that they must have been influenced by Wheatley.  Naturally, many of his conservative beliefs do not compute with a modern reader (his belief that Communism was a Satanist plot; that the postwar Labour government was going to ruin the country; his racism and homophobia).  It’s a shame that his heroine, Christina, while having a positively daring streak, is reduced to a mere (and literal) sacrificial victim.  Nevertheless, this is a real rip-roaring adventure with more in common with James Bond than you might expect, set on the rakish French Riviera.  It has some wonderful characters in it, including the delightful Molly Fountain (who I thought was going to be a weak female but actually saved the day), the very brave and capable Colonel Verney, and Molly’s son John, who entered on the scene a rather saucy, sarcastic young man but exited with (again, a literal) baptism by fire.  The villain, Canon Copely-Syle, was wholly vile, all the more so as he seems to have been based on Montague Summers!   Christina’s father, the self-made man Beddows, was less easily classifiable, and his story by far the most interesting—evidently why Wheatley had to kill him off. There were some utterly transfixing scenes (Ben Aaronovitch must have clearly taken note), and it was hard to put down.  Wheatley clearly knew how to write a thriller.

The Marriage Pact—Michelle Richmond

I would love to know whether it was Michelle Richmond or her editor who thought this book needed to be nearly 500 pages long.  There was enough plot for perhaps 100 pages at a push.  That plot was mildly intriguing but completely missed out on the opportunity to be subversive.  The story of a mild-mannered therapist with a rock-chick-turned-lawyer wife who find their way into a seemingly Northern Irish-controlled cult (the DUP, then?), Jake and Alice’s involvement with the Pact smacks ultimately of masochism and the heteronormative status quo.  Instead of using it as a vehicle to critique the institution of marriage or to become a revenge narrative on hierarchical capitalist structures, what we get are ponderous pages of paper-thin characterizations about boring people caught in an increasingly fantastical setting (Jake walking in the rain in Northern Ireland for several miles just beggared belief).  To be fair, the chief attraction of this book turned out to be its setting of San Francisco, which was richly drawn (no doubt because the author lives there).  I also did find that it occasionally surprised me, and it was very well proofread.  However, I will not be touching any of Richmond’s work again with a ten-foot barge pole.   

The Forward Book of Poetry 2019—ed. Bidisha

I enjoyed this a lot.  I always feel much more creative and poetic when I read poetry, and what a relief to find that (at least in the minds of the Forward Prize judges) current poetry can still command such a range in form and content. 

The Bees—Carol Ann Duffy

I think I avoided this book when it was first published because I thought it would be doom and gloom about the attrition of bees.  While that subject was touched on, I now understand—from having lived in Manchester—that the symbol of the bee can be much more than martyr to climate change.  It reminded me of what an excellent poet Carol Ann Duffy is, both enigmatic and intimate, with some of her more “personal” poetry resonating strongly. 

The Charioteer—Mary Renault

This is a really odd book.  I was sold by the cover blurb; what could be more interesting than a story about gay Dunkirk survivors during World War II published in 1953 and written by a lesbian?  It certainly seems significant that Renault felt the only way to creatively address her own sexual orientation was to write a series of books about gay men (an odd reversal of Sarah Waters’ inability, in my humble opinion, to write convincing male characters).  I grew to like the main character, Laurie Odell, and as the novel went on, parts of it became quite riveting.  However, it had an extremely disjointed and plodding start.  Personally, if I had been Renault’s editor, I would have cut the first two sections and gotten all that information across through flashback.  What you need to know from those first sections are that Laurie was raised by his mother after his father left them (raising some quite disturbing questions about whether Renault believed homosexual men were produced when they didn’t have father figures growing up) and that he had an intense hero worship for Ralph Lanyon at school (who left before graduating because he was implicated with another student).  The narrative then picks up with Laurie wounded from Dunkirk, recovering in a hospital.  When Laurie (somewhat naively) attends a gay party in London, the book starts to really pick up speed, and from then on it’s a reasonably well-paced story of who he will end up with—the world-weary, damaged, charming Ralph or Andrew Raynes, a winning, innocent Quaker conscientious objector?  There are some interesting debates between the gay characters about community and whether their sexuality is a choice; fairly bold stuff for 1953.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns?)—Mindy Kaling

I’ve never watched The Office so maybe I wasn’t the prime audience for this book.  Parts of it I did find amusing and even heartening, particularly Kaling’s writing on not being a size 0 in Hollywood.  Indeed, it was a stroke of genius to begin her memoir with an incident of being called a whale in high school, when she was just a chubby child.  This put us readers squarely in her corner (which is good, as it might have proved difficult to otherwise empathize with a woman whose private education from high school onwards was no doubt funded by her parents; no student loans for her, whatever privations she may have suffered after Dartmouth in New York City trying to find work).  I think I most enjoyed that section of the book, her transition from Dartmouth (where she and her two best friends found their calling as writer-performers of off-the-wall comedy) to working.  It’s never quite clear what strings she pulled to get where she got (though she entertains us with some funny anecdotes of when things went wrong and how various thinly-disguised media entities rejected her or did her wrong, like rendering her sitcom Mindy & Brenda DOA).  Still, you have to admire the wacky structure of the book, her validation of “the Irish exit” and the traditional institution of marriage, and the fact she basically predicted the female Ghostbusters and Ocean’s Eight (which is where I saw her in the first place).  And I do agree with her on Van Helsing (probably it was the editing).  

The Forest for the Trees:  An Editor’s Advice to Writers—Betsy Lerner

Of the three books on writing I’ve read so far this year, I think this one was the most helpful to me. I so often found myself nodding along with what Lerner—a writer then an editor then an agent—had to say to writers.  Lerner’s understanding of the psychological makeup of writers is uncanny (at least in my opinion; so much resonated with my personal experience as a writer).  I did find myself disagreeing with what she said about sticking to one kind of writing, given that I personally have gravitated toward multiple genres and have had success in all.  

Paul McCartney:  Many Years from Now—Barry Miles

In great contrast to the next rock’n’roll biography I read, I really enjoyed this book and found it difficult to put down.  Coupled with the fact I went to the Beatles Story in Liverpool concurrent to reading the book, by the end I was quite emotional.  Miles has done an impressive job collating Beatles lore and McCartney life story while at the same time avoiding egotistical excess (both Miles and McCartney).  For example, Miles/McCartney have remarkable clarity about what their audience wants to read about, and so the vast majority of the book focuses on McCartney’s youth through to 1980 and the death of John Lennon.  Although McCartney, very much in love with his wife Linda when the book was first published, does go into some detail about their relationship and his post-Beatles career, I still think he’s shown restraint.  Necessarily, the book is going to have a certain polemical stance; it’s reacting to Lennon’s acid take on the Apple trial and the break up of the Beatles and the subsequent Beatles lore that made Paul the bad guy, or else the superficial guy.  Again, I think it shows awareness and self-control by not really bad-mouthing anyone, certainly not his fellow Beatles even if he sometimes disagreed with them. McCartney is also represented as the most avant-garde and intellectually daring of the Beatles; Miles/McCartney make a fairly convincing case here. I read the book because Ian McDonald of Revolution in the Head recommended it as one of the two best Beatles biographies, and I was not disappointed.  To be fair, McCartney’s natural gravitation towards being conciliatory makes him a pleasant narrator.  Naturally, one of its major selling points is that it was culled from extensive interviews Miles, McCartney’s friend since the mid-‘60s, had done over long periods of time, and therefore they represent (or seem to) an authentic McCartney voice.  Certainly some of the most moving sections of the book are about John and Paul’s relationship, which is poignant and touching. 

Eric Clapton:  The Autobiography

This book made me so angry; it was a real struggle to finish it.  First of all, shame on Christopher Simon Sykes, who co-wrote the book, for not making it better.  The grammar was poor (run-on sentences like you wouldn’t believe), and it may have been an autobiography, but it was not a memoir.  It was episodic, with very little sense of narrative.  While the main part of the book was torturous simply due to the fact that Clapton was up to his eyeballs in drugs and alcohol, indiscriminately hurting those around him, once he got clean, the story lost all sense of tension (other than wondering what his second wife Melia was doing all those years he was focusing on his world tours, other than being the perfect little wife and mother).  To Clapton the person, I have to say well-done for beating his addictions and turning his life around.  Nevertheless, the story was poorly constructed, especially in comparison to equally harrowing accounts (like Educated).  I read this book because I wanted more information on the affair and eventual marriage to Patti(e) Boyd Harrison, but this was deeply disappointing.  That’s not Clapton’s fault, of course, I was just sold a romantic story that was far from the truth; nevertheless, his relationships with women were quite disturbing, despite the defense that at the time, everyone was doing it.  I feel outraged that even after all the grief he gave others, and the turning point he took in his life upon giving up alcohol, I’m never presented with a satisfactory sense of culpability or responsibility; it all seems to go back to his childhood abandonment issues (a frequent theme, I’m finding, with famous male musicians).  Again, I’m certainly not blaming him for not coming to terms with that; it seems to have taken him a lifetime to do so.  Still, emotionally crippled as he seems to have been up until the age of 50, one has to find the explanation either in a lack of empathy or the disgusting arrogance that comes with phenomenal success and gigantic wealth.  “Never touch your idols,” said Flaubert . . .

Angels and Demons—Dan Brown

This was quite a bit better than I expected and a satisfying book to read after coming back from Rome!  Despite a slow start, perfunctory dialogue, and somewhat wooden characters—surely, the only reason Robert Langdon was a swimmer was to make it plausible he could evade the assassin in the fountain, the only reason Vittoria was a yoga devotee was so she could escape, Houdini-like, from the assassin’s bonds, and so on—the thriller was well-plotted, exciting, and dared to pull the rug out from under its audience in a rewarding way (especially if you were tutting about the historical likelihood of its conspiracy theories).  Its ultimate message—rejecting fanaticism over science and religion working together—was one you could get behind, and though I got very irritated by the way Dan Brown kept explaining cultural references, I can’t really fault it, if it got people to read and be interested in history, art, and architecture. 

The Thirteen-Gun Salute—Patrick O’Brian

Naturally, every Patrick O’Brian book I pick up is a pleasure to read from beginning to end, and The Thirteen-Gun Salute was no exception.  However, I have to confess it’s probably the slowest in the series since The Mauritius Command.  While we as readers most readily followed in Stephen’s footsteps as he explored Pulo Prabang near modern-day Indonesia, participated in the political machinations of a plot to wrest control of these far-off islands from the French (including a sticky end for some old foes), and the characters were overall just left to be their entertaining and wholly historically believable selves, it was not the most dazzling of the books, especially after the bravura performance that was The Letter of Marque.  Certainly, the set-up was careful (I cannot predict what has happened to Diana on land and the fate of the Maturins’ unborn child), almost completely anticipating the cliffhanger ending and the next book, and there was a great character moment when Jack reflected that maybe His Majesty’s Navy wasn’t the be-all and end-all to perfect seafaring life.  As I’m behind by one book (I didn’t read any in the series last year), I may make a special effort to read The Nutmeg of Consolation if the suspense gets to be too much. 

Ghostly—ed. Audrey Niffenegger

I have to say I was a bit skeptical about this collection, given the presumption of Niffenegger including her own short story right after Edgar Allan Poe’s.  While I enjoyed her short story, “Secret Life, with Cats,” along with Edith Wharton’s “Pomegranate Seed” and Rebecca Curtis’ “The Pink House,” it stumbled at the finish.  Nevertheless, along with a number of stories I had already read, there were some great and quirky choices.  I tore through this (a woman on a mission), yet I quite enjoyed it. 

The Goldfinch—Donna Tartt

The back cover claims this book is a gripping page-turner, and that certainly is true.  The characters are very well drawn and convincing, which is one reason the book has to be over 800 pages long.  There are a fair few of them, spanning different locations and social classes (Theo’s mother, the moneyed Barbours, Hobie the antiques dealer in New York, Boris, Theo’s father, and Xandra in Las Vegas).  The only one who didn’t seem quite convincing was Pippa, which is unsurprising given Theo’s star-crossed devotion to her.  Very infrequently did it venture off into preachiness or clunky abstraction, despite the final few pages’ bittersweet symphony about life, art, and chance.  As an extended ekphrastic work responding to The Goldfinch painting, the real significance is not revealed until the ending, an ending I’m not altogether sure was deserved.  I did worry at the beginning of the book whether it was going to be simply about a man haunted by his mother’s too-good-to-be-true presence, then I worried whether it was merely all a campaign to show that she wasn’t the person he thought she was.  The book avoided both of these clichés, so overall I found it quite satisfying and memorable.  

Dark Encounters:  A Collection of Ghost Stories—William Croft Dickinson

Despite the inauspicious beginning—hearing readings of three of Croft’s stories from 1951 read in 1961 on the BBC Home Service that mostly failed to impress—I quite enjoyed this collection, which includes his later ghost stories and one that hasn’t been reprinted since 1963.  I take back my initial dismissal of Croft Dickinson as an imitator of MR James—it just so happened that the readings selected in 1961 were, in my opinion, not his strongest nor his most distinctive works. Croft Dickinson, as proved by one of his later stories, “His Own Number,” which featured a possessed computer, was able to progress his fiction whereas James’ will always be stuck in pre-1914, despite James’ living into the 1930s.  Aided by the introduction by Alistair Kerr, this new (hot off the press in 2019) collection makes a good comparison against E.F. Benson.  Benson’s work frequently uses Scotland as a setting, but Croft Dickinson’s Scotland is demonstrably more authentic, no doubt aided by his career as a historian.  Naturally, “The Return of the Native,” in which an American with Scottish roots goes back to Morar and Arisaig, resonated strongly with me. 

Death on the Nile—Agatha Christie

I have to say, I much preferred the outrageous elegance of the crime in Murder on the Orient Express.  Despite Christie having said her own travels to Egypt inspired the setting, the location is purely incidental, and the characters are, with few exceptions, paper-thin.  Nevertheless, the crime is ingenious, as you would expect. I was surprised that Mrs and Tim Allerton were a pair much like Molly and John Fountain in To the Devil—A Daughter, so I’m glad that their story ended happily. 

British Radio Drama, 1945-63—Hugh Chignell

A very succinct—even one might say, unsatisfyingly short—book that nevertheless fleshes out the writing of Golden Age dramatists:  Cooper, Beckett, Pinter, Rhys Adrian, with a dollop of information on others.  It’s very readable, and while it hasn’t really changed my opinion on Pinter, it has made me want to listen to some dramas I wasn’t particularly interested in before. 

The Story of the Borough—Leonard Reilly

A very readable and interesting distillation of hundreds of years of history in the Borough.  It would behove me to read the others in the neighborhood history series.

Anecdotal Evidence—Wendy Cope

Wendy Cope, one of my favorite living poets, apparently hadn’t published anything since 2011 until last year, when she published this new collection.  It’s sad, in a way, because the puckish Cope of yesteryear is only barely traceable, subsumed by a writer turning 70 and extremely aware of her advancing age.  Nevertheless, they are still (on the whole) very good poems. 

Voyage—Stephen Baxter

I’m not much of a hard SF fan.  However, I was intrigued by the Dirk Maggs’ adaptation of this on BBC Radio 4 Extra.  In finishing the long and extremely technical novel, I am left with a sense that the adaptation really got to the jugular of the emotion of the story, dramatizing all the most important scenes and cutting out all of the no doubt highly accurate, but extraneous to the story, engineering information.   Characters are not well-written in this novel, but the brilliant idea, of a space program that was able to send a crew of three to walk on Mars in the 1980s, stands as a fantastic achievement. 

Last Christmas in Paris—Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

The conceit is a good one—an epistolary novel set during World War I, the correspondence between two star-crossed British lovers who vow, after the war is over, to meet in Paris.  The writing is okay but rather boring in places, and it was hard to care a huge amount about the characters.  It seems reasonably historically accurate but a kind of superficial historical overview, very much wedded to the mud-and-blood-in-the-trenches versions of WWI.

A Very Short Introduction to Education—Gary Thomas

This was excellent.  I admire this series very much because I know how hard it is to distil a subject into its most important concepts and convey these to a lay audience.  I found Thomas’ insights incredibly illuminating—when he notes that we have become so focused in schooling on teaching people to read but not how to distinguish critically what is worth reading, I feel this is a crystallization of everything that is wrong currently in the world—and also quite depressing, as we seem to hold educational folktales about rote learning so close to heart.  Nevertheless, that people manage to learn anything is a reason to hope. 

Handel Pocket Guide—Edward Blakeman

I’m a classical music fan, but even I found the detailed delineation of all of the Handel recordings to be a bit of a tough slog.  Other than that, however, this was a very interesting and well-written guide to many aspects of Handel’s life and music.  It was not a straight-up biography, and the way it was structured was very interesting.  It certainly made me realize how much more Handel I need to listen to in order to have any grasp at all of his output. 

Twelve Poems for Christmas—ed. Amy Wack

Some superb contemporary poems in a variety of styles.

Fathomless Riches:  Or How I Went from Pop to Pulpit—Rev. Richard Coles

I was surprised at how well-written this was.  It’s hard to be entirely sympathetic—Coles was a middle-class activist with some slight musical talent who was catapulted to fame with the Communards.  When that broke up, he still had so much money he never needed to work again.  Therefore the transition into a religious life is not quite as smooth as it could be, and the ending lacks the fine prose and self-reflection of the introduction.  Still, I was highly entertained.

A Poetic Inventory of the Sandia Mountains—Amaris Ketcham

Some excellent poems in a variety of styles (although all blank verse).  

And the graphic novels:

Batman and Catwoman:  The Wedding Album—by Tom King, art by David Finch and Clay Mann, Danny Miki, Mikel Jamin & many others

It’s safe to say I am way, way out of the loop in current Batman comics.  Otherwise I would have known about this some time before and would have anticipated the cruel twist at the end.  Instead, I went in, a little bemused but overall happy because I have always shipped Batman and Catwoman, a canonical pairing as proven by the callbacks to Catwoman’s first appearance in 1940 (one can only assume she was inspired, in part, by cool-under-pressure Margo Lane).  To be quite honest, I can’t say I’m super impressed by Tom King as a writer here, considering most of these collected issues (#24, #44, #50) are mainly vehicles for great art (and indeed, although I enjoyed very much seeing all of the cover variants, I can’t help thinking it’s all a little self-indulgent).  That said, I love Catwoman’s dress, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s what counts, right? 

Harley Quinn Vol. 1:  Die Laughing—by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmotti, art by John Timms and Chad Hardin

Despite myself, despite Harley’s unladylike natural predilection towards bodily functions (she eats pizza while fighting zombies, and there is actually a panel of her straining on the toilet after having eaten TOO much pizza), despite the weirdly explicit thing going on between her and Ivy (personally, I liked it shaded a bit more subtly), despite a character who is basically Humpty Dumpty, I could get behind this TP.  Harley has left Gotham and is on her own turf in Coney Island with a family of weirdos who do her bidding, half-exasperated and half in awe of their bouncy, violent, crazy mistress.  On the plus side, at least Harley is no longer in the abusive relationship with the Joker, and in this story arc at least, lusts after others but commits to no one.  The story in which a space alien in Coney Island hot dogs creates zombies was utterly bonkers, as was the James Bond-inspired story set in India.  I quite liked the one in which Harley went undercover as a punk rocker (despite the fact she couldn’t sing), where it is inferred she will start working on the right side of the law.  I don’t really know who this Red Tool character is—obviously a nod to Deadpool although I don’t know anything about Deadpool—but he seems to suit the tone of this well.  The art is good, overall, but disappointingly is still all about the invidious male gaze shots of female characters. 

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine—by Jason Aaron, art by Adam Kubert, Mark Morales, Dexter Vines, Mark Roslan, Justin Ponsor and Rob Steen

“If I was you, I’d think about getting your back waxed too.  That Chuck Norris look isn’t really in anymore, you know?  Actually, I don’t think it was ever in.” 

As will surprise no one, despite having liked Wolverine since the Saturday morning X-Men cartoons, I haven’t really read very many X-Men comics.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a dedicated Spider-Man title (just parts of Civil War that had him in them).  This was a completely, utterly mad story (why are there ape people co-existing with the dinosaurs?!).  Nevertheless, it was written by Jason Aaron and therefore killed on the cliffhangers.  It was very high concept—Spider-Man and Wolverine both try to stop a bank heist by a third-tier supervillain but get involved in a very confusing time scoop scenario.  The bank heist included some sparkly time crystal things, and Peter Parker and Logan end up getting sent back in time to various places and scenarios.  Spider-Man talks a lot, and Wolverine doesn’t—other than the high concept, that is the main conceit of this story, which is why I was given it to read in the first place.  Naturally, Aaron’s command of twisted chronology makes him like the Steven Moffat of comics.  The Marvel universe is generally just too wacky for me, but I did enjoy this book.

Batman/The Shadow—Murder Geniuses by Scott Snyder, art by Steve Orlando, Riley Rossmo, Ivan Plascencia

This was so weird—and the attempt to force a universe where not only is The Shadow an immortal being, but he may have been Henri Ducard and in fact fostered Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman as an elaborate plan he had been cultivating for centuries, so outlandish—that I had trouble getting into it.  That said, the art is fantastic, and I think Scott Snyder did his absolute best to reconcile the opposing worldviews of The Shadow and Batman, which are quite incongruous, despite their shared origins.  For anyone familiar with The Shadow, there are a lot of nice touches, including case files being labelled 1930 and 1994.  Margo Lane is there but doesn’t have much to do, and the sensuousness I came to love about the radio Shadow was replaced by an entity who is no longer human.  But did I mention how cool the artwork is?

And the stats:

Fiction 32%

Nonfiction 43%

Poetry 17%

Graphic novels 9%

Books Read in 2018

I didn’t make it to 52 books this year, not even close.  I’m not sure what to say other than my commute got shorter and I was busier than ever.  Nevertheless, here’s what I read in 2018.

Radio Waves:  Poems Celebrating the Wireless—ed. Seán Street

This is an amusing and interesting collection (all poets necessarily writing after the invention of the radio, quite an oddity in poetry anthologies).  Sometimes it feels a little narrow—so many poems about The Shipping Forecast!—but the addition of some Brecht and song lyrics doesn’t go amiss.  Not many younger poets, though.

Autumn – Ali Smith

After a slow and rather baffling start, I found Autumn had a great flow.  It has a lot to say about the current state of Britain in a rather understated, slightly mystified, humorous way.  The more I learned about the main characters, Elisabeth and Daniel, the more I liked them, and I ached for the unrequited romance at the heart of the tale.  I wasn’t sure how well Christine Keeler and Pauline Boty fitted in, but Elisabeth’s mother’s character was deftly and accurately filled in.  It both comforted me about Brexit and made me sigh. 

Peace of Mind – Thich Nhat Hanh

Hanh’s openness, humor, and genuinely welcoming writerly voice is convincing.  I tried to practice some of the Buddhist principles he outlines, with variable success, but I do feel calmer just reading his steady, easy-to-read prose. 

Pope Francis:  Untying the Knots – Paul Vallely

I was a bit disappointed by this book at first, as Vallely’s writing is not of the calibre of the sensitive, incisive, and historically-minded John Thavis.  It’s also evident that this book was rushed into production and as such has some quite appalling typos.  It’s off to a clunky start, but the Afterword is an excellent distillation of the entire argument of the book, charting a young Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whose mission and state of being were completely transformed after his actions during Argentina’s Dirty War so that when he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he had embraced humility as an intellectual stance and the commitment to the poor (and Liberation Theology) that would ultimately make him Pope Francis.

How to Fight – Thic Nhat Hanh

I was expecting a book at least as thick as Fear or Peace of Mind; this was a tiny book. It fit in well with the previous books without being unduly repetitive.

Call Me By Your Name – André Aciman

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this was a very well-written book that beautifully telescoped one summer and how it feels to be a teenager and in love.  Not least in love with an older man in the early 1980s in a permissive household; nevertheless, Elio and Oliver’s romance is doomed from the start due to the fact they are Jewish and traditional.  The book is extremely sensual, about as sensual as a mainstream, non-erotica book can be, and it’s a wonderful exercise in living inside someone’s head, someone who is insecure, full of doubt, full of lust, and, although talented, very, very young, indeed.  I was concerned how the movie would dramatize the many interior monologues, and while it succeeded quite well in this, I was disappointed at where it left off—to me, the most poignant part of the book was later in Elio and Oliver’s lives when they met up again, still feeling much the same way for each other that they had in Italy. 

On Heaven and Earth:  Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the 21^st Century – Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka

I found this book very interesting indeed, a project convened long before Bergoglio became Pope.  I learned a lot about (reasonably conservative) Judaism as well as Bergoglio’s interesting take on Catholicism (both of them falling down, in my opinion, in terms of sexist attitudes), but otherwise very open to dialogue. 

The How of Happiness:  A Practical Guide to Getting the Life You Want – Sonja Lyubomirsky

I’m very glad that I read this book; I have been interested in the “how” of happiness since at least when I read Stumbling on Happiness some ten years ago.  It’s a well-written, humorous, honestly helpful take on happiness from a scientific perspective.  Stumbling on Happiness was fascinating and provided scientific insights, but it was also, ultimately, somewhat less positive than The How of Happiness and offered fewer practical suggestions for actually increasing your day-to-day happiness.  I scoffed at reading “self-help” books in my youth, and while I guess this might be considered an upscale version of a self-help book, I think what attracts me to its message is how deeply rooted in empirical science it is. 

The Mythology of Richard III – John Ashdown-Hill

This book was . . . something else.  Ashdown-Hill is extraordinarily bitter about the way the world has treated Richard III, and while his quarrel with the University of Leicester, the Anglican Church of Leicester, and Leicester Council seems to be justified, in part, he does himself no favors by harping on it in an excessive fashion.  Indeed, his writing would be much more effective if he could state his point succinctly and move on.  And he has many fascinating points!  He systematically dismantles all the myths and stories about Richard III, from significant to frivolous (is it such a bad thing that Richard III may or may not have ridden a horse called White Surrey?  It can hardly make much difference).  I do agree with Ashdown-Hill that Richard III most likely would have been appalled to have been buried in a cathedral that isn’t Catholic, and I enjoyed that his take on Richard and Anne left in the possibility of love (Josephine Wilkinson saw their marriage as entirely pragmatic). 

How to Stay Sane – Philippa Perry

An excellent and encouraging little book. 

Appetite for America:  Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time – Stephen Fried

This was a fantastic history book which told a huge historical saga in a very accessible and engaging way. After finishing it and observing the story from Fred Harvey’s emigration to the US in the 1850s to the disintegration of the franchise by the 1970s, I was convinced the Harvey story should be told all the way through, rather than just in the Hollywood treatment given to it in the famous 1940s film.  Fried is an excellent historian, making his subjects both human and real as well as linking them to movements in greater society.  I am certain I will re-read this book. 

Star Wars: Phasma - Delilah S. Dawson

I found this to be surprisingly entertaining and quite well-written, generally.  I can’t say, of all the characters in Star Wars, that I was really yearning to know more about Phasma, but I’ve always been intrigued to know more about the day-to-day life of Stormtroopers.  While these were First Order Stormtroopers rather than the classic variety, it was still interesting.  I liked the structure of the book, and how there was no redemption for Phasma—but there was some for Cardinal. 

Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion – Jenny T Colgan

I thought this was going to be an enjoyable bit of fluff, but it meant more to me than that:  it revived one of my favorite eras of Doctor Who, elevating a pleasant but flawed Christmas Special into something with more depth (as all good Targets should).

Adolf Hitler and My Part in His Downfall – Spike Milligan

Milligan was—perhaps not surprisingly, but disappointingly—not as a PC as the recent Radio 4 drama made him out to be, if this book is anything to go by.  While the book took awhile to get going for me, I did find many laugh-out-loud funny moments.  The absurdity of war made a deep impression upon Milligan, and this sense of absurdity informs all of his work, including this madcap history of his first years in the war.  It ends as he arrives in North Africa.

The Life Project – Helen Pearson

Helen Pearson is an excellent writer—she makes complex concepts easy to understand.  There is never a sense of her intruding as an author or puffing herself up to eclipse the material.  It must have taken a lot of stamina to cover such a large subject as the British birth cohorts (which have a history from 1946 to this day), but Pearson evidently fell under their spell, like so many other people, scientists, laymen, and the babies themselves (the 1946 cohort is still beating all others for sheer loyalty, but they are in the 70s now).  Having worked in a research group that used some of the cohort studies and things of their ilk, I found the book fascinating—what had perhaps appeared to me opaque in my previous admin work now made a lot of sense.

Strandloper – Alan Garner

I can’t say I’ve read a book like Strandloper before.  I have to say, I found it very strange.  The class war is at the heart of this story, which sees mystic bricklayer William Buckland wrongly transported to Australia for no crime at all (other than wanting to read and write).  He then becomes an Aborigine for thirty years before returning to England, though what he finds there is bittersweet.  The colloquial language was often impenetrable, and the sections set in Aboriginal Australia I found almost incomprehensible.  But maybe that’s a sign of my parochial, Americentric mind.  I did feel quite moved by the ending and felt the story earned a degree of elegance by its conclusion. 

Vita Brevis – Ruth Downie

I’ve evidently skipped a book or two, but ancient Roman soldier-doctor Ruso and his wife Tilla of the Brigantes have moved to Rome after following Ruso’s patron Accius.  They now have an adopted daughter, Mara, and are living in a tenement slum as Ruso has not found the work he was expecting to get as Accius’ attendant.  Embroiled in Accius’ wooing exploits puts him in the center of an illegal dissection ring and gets him nearly poisoned.  I love Ruso, Tilla, and this whole series, because of the wonderful characters, the effortless historical settings, and the plots are pretty good, too.  By the book’s end, Ruso and Tilla have decided to move to Gaul with his family or possibly back to Britannia. 

The Etymologicon:  A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language – Mark Forsyth

I can imagine how Mark Forsyth would be very annoying to run into in person, if his conversation is anything like this book (I mean, simply because being a know-it-all is annoying).  However, the book was very interesting and an easy, enjoyable read (though I did wonder why he referred to Boudicca as Boadicea given he was talking all about the lack of words in English that come from Celtic, which is mysteriously small).  I’m a reasonably well-informed person on the English language, with a vocabulary much more florid and erudite that your average man-on-the-street, but I still learned a great deal from the book.  I suspect it also makes a pretty good blog.

The Convert – Elizabeth Robins

This was a very serendipitous read.  It reminded me a lot of Robins’ contemporary, May Sinclair, and while Sinclair was never really an out-and-out suffragette, she was a keen believer in gender equality.  The book feels very of its time, but I enjoyed its main character, Vida, who reminded me a bit of Irene Forsyte, and the way she had been seduced as a young woman by a man now entering the highest corridors of power.  It is also an invaluable book for its from-life scenes of hectoring and speeches made by suffragettes at Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square; these are easily the most exciting scenes, and it is based on these scenes that I’d like to adapt this book for radio.

Dr James Barry:  A Woman Ahead of Her Time – Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield

I think I had been vaguely conscious of Dr James Barry for a long time, but in my young brain I think I got her a little mixed up with women who masqueraded as men in the American Civil War (because Barry died during that time period).  Instead, her life as a man began in the 1800s when she began studying medicine in Edinburgh.  I think the reason Dr Barry is also not as well-known as she should be is because there has been a lot of gaps and misinformation about her life which this book now (2016) corrects.  Her life is a mass of contradictions.  Clearly, Margaret Bulkley from Cork, a niece of once-famous painter James Barry, was ambitious and eager to leave the poverty that her father and brother had dragged the family into.  To do so, however, she had to live an uncomfortable and dangerous lie for her entire life.  She never had a chance to show her feminine side, to have fulfilling romantic relationships (so far as we know, though there is strong evidence she was in love with Lord Charles Somerset and the feelings may have been reciprocated) or children, and she cut off complete contact with her mother so that no one could discover her secret.  A visionary doctor and a greater reformer with compassion for the poor, Barry also had an explosive temper that rubbed officialdom all the wrong ways.  Yet, during her life, she got to live in far-flung places that almost no woman of her era would have had the opportunity to visit. I was a bit annoyed at the beginning of the book by the speculation the authors indulged in, although as the book proceeded and we were on firmer documentary ground, I was appreciative of the work that went into the book.  Usually I get very sad by the end of biographies when the person’s life ends, but the saddest moment of Barry’s life was when she was invalided out of the service in Canada shortly after she was due to receive her pension.  Without her work, her life was more or less over. 

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

I was, at first, disappointed to realize this was a novel, not a memoir.  Nevertheless, I found it unputdownable and quite different from the (ever-so-slightly sanitized) movie.  The voices of the protagonists were captured beautifully, with great verve, recreating in impressive verisimilitude Mississippi of the early 1960s. 

Storytelling Industries:  Narrative Production in the 21^st Century—Anthony Smith

I managed to read books by both of my theory colleagues at my university and took a lot away from both of them.  I admired the conciseness of this book as well as its breadth of examples, from comics, film, television, and games.

Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art—Scott McCloud

This study was a revelation, and you wonder what took it so long to get written.  It may not be flawless (as later criticism has revealed), but it’s a great, provocative read. 

Educated—Tara Westover

I was extremely impressed and gripped by this harrowing memoir.  It’s just as well that Westover notes at the beginning that her text is not meant to comment negatively or positively on Mormonism.  Her background is childhood off the grid with deluded, demented Mormon extremists; yet, the poor woman still loves her parents, even though she is angry with them, and of course devastated that they have cut her off after she ended the cycle of violence with one of her brothers.   Fortunately, she had the example of one of her other brothers, who helped her see that there was a way out of what she had grown up her entire life believing.  First it was college at Brigham Young University; eventually, it was England and her PhD.  It’s wonderfully written and never pretentious. 

Medieval Women:  A Social History of Women in England 450-1500—Henrietta Leyser

This was a little slow-going sometimes, but mostly it was very interesting, full of all kinds of facts about medieval English women that I didn’t know.  It was well-organized and well-written, with a generally lively voice that was never flippant.

The Incredulity of Father Brown—G.K. Chesterton

This had such a slow start, I was beginning to wonder if it had been a good gamble after all.  I found I much more enjoyed the stories with a real Gothic flavor, particularly “The Curse of the Golden Cross” and “The Doom of the Darnaways,” even if Father Brown exploded all the dark romance and hauntings as mere corporeal murders (you have to wonder at Chesterton’s skill for blood-and-daggers, even if he is debunking all the fun stuff).  The rest of it is “ooh look how modern we are in 1926” and mostly set in America.  While I won’t deny it’s shrewdly written satire of Americans, by my own caveat, I didn’t really come to Father Brown for satire on Americans, I came for locked room mysteries set in Middle England.  So, as I say, a rather uneven bunch of stories, but quite ingenious. 

The Sisters Brothers—Patrick DeWitt

I had been intrigued by this book ever since it was published (mainly because of the striking cover).  Now, having finished it, I have to confess I don’t quite know why it was nominated for the Booker Prize.  I enjoyed it, I found it entertaining (if depressing) as I read it, but it felt completely mundane, despite the somewhat fantastic turn of events.  Eli and Charlie Sisters are assassins in the West of the 1850s, who are maimed and reduced to penury all for teaming up with one of their targets to try to pan gold by using an alchemical substance.  I’m sure it probably has some great allegorical meaning, but it wasn’t obvious to me.

Broken Homes—Ben Aaronovitch

I don’t think the Peter Grant mysteries will ever top the debut novel, Rivers of London.  I was looking forward to one of the novels set, this time, sauf’ of the river in Elephant and Castle, but I didn’t feel like it gave you a real sense of what that actually means.  It was mainly set in a condemned estate, much like there is/was at the heart of Elephant and Castle, but much of it made little sense to me, and I found the first half to be rather doddering.  Nevertheless, in the second half it really got going, with some exciting twists and turns and the set pieces that have characterized every volume in the series. 

The Halloween Mask and Other Strange Tales—David Stuart Davies

It beggars belief that he arranged the weakest stories as his first four stories—especially as they ALL HAVE THE SAME TWIST.  I was really about to give up reading, but I’m glad I stuck with it, as there were actually several well-written stories, such as “Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost of Christmas Past,” “I Know What You Did,” “The Stigmata Skull,” and “The Oldest Ghost-Story Writer in the Land.”  The worst stories sounded just like fan fic. 

The Changing Spaces of Television Acting—Richard Hewett

While in many ways this book was utterly different from Storytelling Industries, it was an interesting, detailed analysis of British TV case studies across time, from the live, technically primitive productions of the 1950s to the 2000s, when rehearsal time has become almost a thing of the past.  Most impressive are Richard’s in depth analyses of performance styles and changes in acceptable standards of these styles.

The Exorcist—William Peter Blatty

This book seemed very dated, and yet the last third was rather exciting.  It was difficult to find much depth in the characters. 

The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories—Ed. Peter Haining

This was an excellent collection with considerable range.  I found very little cross over of stories that I had read before, though perhaps inevitably it began with stories that are very Edwardian in flavor, even if they are considered classics. 

They Came for Freedom:  The Forgotten, Epic Adventure of the Pilgrims—Jay Milbrandt

I was quite skeptical as I began this book, as the author comes from a law background and is not a professional historian.  I also found his bibliography slightly troubling, as he relied somewhat more extensively on online sources than I would have thought advisable for a serious (if popular) history book.  Nevertheless, he did provide useful footnotes to where he made self-admitted leaps into subjectivity and conducted some primary research as well.  Indeed, the idea behind the book—an attempt to show that the founders of what became the United States of America were escaping from religious intolerance and indeed what an absolute risk they took at every step in their process from living marginalized in England and Holland to the total unknown on a distant shore—carries through beautifully.  In fact, having read it (it’s somewhat short), I would recommend this book to anyone.  It provides an honest tally of why the Pilgrims came to the east coast of North America to settle and what they had to go through in order to make their community a success.

The Pickwick Papers—Charles Dickens

I began this book late in 2017 and then was unable to pick it up again until late in 2018.  Nevertheless, I did finish it at last.  While, at over 700 pages, it is not a book to be attempted lightly, it is an extremely rewarding read.  You cannot help but be bowled over at Dickens’ youthful exuberance, providing comedic, picaresque incidents for his wonderful characters.  Certainly, you could argue the sprawling, serialized story lacks the cohesion and maturity of his later works, but, for crying out loud, he was still in his early 20s when it was written.  Therefore, I think it’s hats off to Dickens for one of his funniest ever works.  Also, you can see many seeds for later works sown in Pickwick.   

Little Women—Louisa May Alcott

I mistakenly only read the first novel in the series that comprises “Little Women,” which continues on into Good Wives and Little Men.  I found it very charming, with beautifully drawn characters and a strong sense of the seasonality of American life mid-19^th century.  The morality is a little bit more difficult to absorb, bald as it is, though in its original function as a novel for young women to read, I’m sure it more than succeeded in influencing generations of selfless, compassionate, loving, yet morally upright and uncompromising girls.  I was surprised by how funny I found it. 

Bad Santas and Other Creepy Christmas Characters—Paul Hawkins

I enjoyed this popular history book and cultural survey of the multitude of wintertime figures who have, to some extent, coalesced into the modern Santa Claus whom, Hawkins argues, is a bit of a palimpsest—though for how much longer he will occupy this role is a matter for speculation.  I thought I knew a lot about Santa Claus and Christmas lore, but I hadn’t appreciated how little factual evidence we have for St Nicholas himself, nor the many fascinating reminders of a savage past that are extent in figures like not only the Krampus, but the Christmas Cat and many others.  I learned a lot about the origins of Sinterklaas and figures like Christkindl.  In short, I was rather impressed by this book.  Half-baked histories of Christmas are a-dime a-dozen, but Bad Santas is ahead of the crowd.   

Wade in the Water—Tracy K. Smith

Having never before read anything by Tracy K. Smith (the Poet Laureate of the United States), I was impressed with her range—not only in subject matter, which is always politically and socially conscious, but in form.  This is an excellent collection of modern poetry. 

I read more graphic novels this year than I remembered.

Doctor Who:  Weapons of Past Destruction—by Cavan Scott—art by Blair Shedd, Rachael Stott, Anang Setyawan (Titan, the Ninth Doctor, Vol. 1)

While I can easily slip back into the world of the Ninth Doctor on TV, jumping back into the world of Captain Jack (pre-immortality) and Rose Tyler (pre-Bad Wolf) is a bit harder than I expected.  The Ninth Doctor is written consistently, though his turn-on-the-edge-of-a-knife split between goofy humor and angst seems somehow more labored in print than on screen.  There was something about the story that reminded me very much of the epic yet home-in-time-for-tea scope of The Tides of Time.  The art is very good, the likenesses of Rose in particular very faithful, though the tendency to use silhouettes becomes noticeable after awhile. 

Roller Girl—Victoria Jamieson

I really enjoyed this book and the story of Astrid Vasquez, a non-gender-conforming pre-teen who decides to take up roller derby despite being a terrible skater.  At the same time, her friendship with more typically girly-girl Nicole is failing due to the pressures of growing up.  Astrid has to learn to manage her anger, not lie to her mother, be a true friend, and accept that it takes all sorts to make a world.  That doesn’t mean she has to give up her favorite color (black) or take ballet lessons (like Nicole). It’s also very amusing that Astrid’s new friend Zoey loves musicals and Hugh Jackman.  I got very personally involved in Astrid because of her gender-nonconformity, but I felt a bit cheated because, to all intents and purposes, this is a fictional story instead of a memoir (which somehow made it feel less real to me?). 

Scalped Vol. 6 The Gnawing – by Jason Aaron, art by R.M. Guéra, Guilia Brusco

In 2018, I finally began my Scalped re-read/conclusion, after having acquired all 10 volumes in 2017.  I was as astonished as ever at the first four volumes, which were stunning in their assured approach to character and narrative.  The Gnawing is extremely violent.  I realize that may seem an oxymoronic thing to say when Scalped throughout is more violent than your worst action films.  However, I felt this volume of TP took it beyond serving the needs of the story and was just reveling in it . . . because Jason Aaron wanted to?  I appreciate the insights it gave us into Red Cloud, who I did think was fast becoming the most interesting character in Scalped (more so than Bad Horse, who as a drug addict was not very interesting).  I was impressed with the way Bad Horse managed to extricate himself from an impossible situation, showing that cleaned up he has what it takes to be a double agent (which I was starting to wonder). 

Scalped Vol. 7 Rez Blues – by Jason Aaron, art by R.M. Guéra, Danijel Zezelj, Davide Furnò, Guilia Brusco, Trish Mulvihill

Rez Blues picked up a little for me, where The Gnawing had been such a downer.  First of all, we finally got to the Shunka-is-gay storyline that I had accidentally spoilered myself on, which gave us one of the greatest cliffhangers of the whole series (and Scalped dazzles with its cliffhangers) at the end of part 1 of “A Fine Action of an Honorable and Catholic Spaniard.”  This was an interesting and clever storyline, playing with narrative, again, in a way that showed Aaron was still at the top of his game.  “Family Tradition” dropped another bombshell, bringing in Wade, Dash’s father, who had been absent from most of Scalped.  It was a bit like Miss Saigon told from a slightly different point of view.  I was harping on about wanting some legitimate female characters in Scalped, and while we didn’t really get any in Rez Blues, Carol, at last, is developing beyond a nymphomaniac drug addict.  I am hoping that Granny Poor Bear’s influence on her will help her to become an even more individualized character rather than just a poster girl for abortions.  Wade returns, further complicating everyone’s lives.  At the end of The Gnawing, Catcher had a bullet for someone, but who?

Founding Fathers Funnies – by Peter Bagge

In honor of 4^th of July, I picked up this short and amusing collection by Peter Bagge, which tells (almost 100% historically accurate) tales of George Washington, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and a host of other figures (including several who are less well-known).  I was impressed with the level of historical accuracy as well as the goofy style. 

Scalped Vol. 8 You Gotta Sin to Be Saved—by Jason Aaron, art by R.M. Guéra, Jason LaTour, and Davide Furnò

I use the term “jumped the shark” advisedly, but I’m a little concerned that Scalped jumped the shark in volume 8.  Nothing about the tone or necessarily the characters changed; I just started to feel like the situations were contrived, something I’ve not felt even a hint of before.  I guess you can shrug everything Catcher has done off as “well, he’s crazy,” but that doesn’t really satisfy here.  I feel a bit like vol. 8 is treading water instead of bringing us any new story. 

Scalped Vol. 9 Knuckle Up—by Jason Aaron, art by R.M. Guéra, Igor Kordey, Tim Truman, Jill Thompson, Jordi Bernet, Denys Cowan, Dean Haspiel, Brendan McCarthy, Steve Dillon

Scalped Vol. 10 Trail’s End—by Jason Aaron, art by R.M. Guéra

I didn’t record my thoughts at the time on the final two volumes of Scalped, but I do remember feelings satisfied with the series’ conclusion.  

Of the 45 books I read this year, 36% were fiction, 42% were nonfiction, a paltry 4% were poetry, and 18% were graphic novels.