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 19th 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 19th and early
20th 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 20th 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%
