January
Emma – Jane Austen
The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
A bracing contrast as pompous fictional Emma Woodhouse and the very real alcoholic Amy Liptrot get their respective acts together.
February
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox FordRunner – Lizzy Hawker
Black Country – Liz Berry
The exquisitely articulated slow sad
adulterous self-destruction of Ford's masterpiece, nicely offset by the
wonderfully motivating and life-affirming story of mountain ultrarunner Lizzy
Hawker. With some brilliantly evocative and visceral brummie poetry from Liz
Berry stirred into the mix. Marvellous!
March
The Buried Giant – Kazuo IshiguroThe Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Shackleton's Whisky – Neville Peat
A Sleepwalk on the Severn – Alice Oswald
Virginia Woolf – Alexandra Harris
A bumper month, though a couple of titles
required a stiff drink to see me through!
I fear Alexandra Harris has worked her normal magic on me, and that I'm now
fired up to read much more Virginia Woolf...
April
Rain – Melissa HarrisonMrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Bonniest Companie – Kathleen Jamie
Three more gems; I'm particularly pleased
to finally "get" Virginia Woolf after several abortive tries - Mrs
Dalloway is an astonishing piece of writing really. And Kathleen Jamie's poetry
was a fine and fitting accompaniment to our April Scottish foray - this
collection was written in 2014 and beautifully captures the essence and mood of
that country in independence referendum year.
May
In Pursuit of Spring – Edward ThomasThe Singing Sands – Josephine Tey
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
A wonderful journey by bicycle from London
to the sea in Somerset with Edward Thomas a hundred years ago, through some
places and country lanes I know intimately, had me reaching for the maps and
memories. Followed by an elegantly sparse, understated yet addictively
evocative, 1950s murder mystery in the Scottish highlands and islands courtesy
of Josephine Tey. And finally another fantastic dose of Virginia Woolf; To the
Lighthouse is so subtle, complex and insightful it almost beggars belief,
packing so much in so cleverly that it seems entirely reasonable that she
should have suffered a breakdown after the completion of several of her major
books.
June
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible – Peter PomerantsevThe Racer – David Millar
A William Condry Reader – Jim Perrin (editor)
The reason why Orwell's 1984 doggedly
remains a top ten bestseller in Russia is writ large in Pomerantsev's chilling
account of how Putin's dystopian nation is currently run, and in particular how
the "truth" is carefully manufactured for the masses. A cautionary
tale if ever there was one.
Once again David Millar proves he can rise substantially above the usual
two-dimensional sports autobiography, and has produced a timeless and
passionate warts-and-all account of his final racing season which still leaves
him and his readers well in love with cycling and its wonderful culture.
And finally an antidote to all the worlds
current frenetic madness, in a fine compilation of the beautiful writings of
the under-appreciated late Welsh
naturalist William Condry. There are times when you need a book like this,
found hiding in a shop in Aberystwyth.
July
Cockfosters – Helen SimpsonAt Hawthorn Time – Melissa Harrison
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain – Barney Norris
All the Birds, Singing – Evie Wyld
Consistently compelling and powerful
writing from four modern authors this month, it’s been quite a ride! None, and
especially Evie Wyld, are for the faint-hearted but all are ultimately and
variously rewarding
August
Summer – Melissa Harrison (editor)Black Apples of Gower – Iain Sinclair
The Man in the High Castle – Philip Dick
While I usually avoid "pretty"
anthologies which are so often full of the same lazily selected tired old
material, Melissa Harrison's Summer really is the business. Full of
new writing by young authors and naturalists, around a lightweight framework of
smartly chosen minor masterpieces by more established names, it manages to
gradually envelope you in a marvellous summerness - to perhaps cling on to into
autumn (though there is also now an Autumn volume, just out).
And Iain Sinclair manages to beautifully
and gently expand your mind in his unique mysterious way as he eruditely ambles
through his childhood haunts on the Gower, embracing creative connections at
every turn (Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards…).
In stark contrast is Philip Dick’s sixties
sci-fi masterpiece, or should that simply be alternative history since it
describes a post-war America run by the Japanese and Germans.
Either way it disorientatingly focuses on a few ordinary lives and small scale
events, with an emerging considerable and odd emphasis on Chinese philosophy
that develops an unsettlingly power and a climax strangely reminiscent of 2001.
A very sixties example of the drug-fuelled creative process, which certainly
stays with you afterwards and keeps you pondering.
September
Addlands
– Tom BulloughSkies – Alison Brackenbury
His Bloody Project – Graeme MacRae Burnet
Three
powerful volumes this month; a beautiful moving epic tale of three generations
of farmers in the Welsh borders around Llanbedr Hill from Tom Bullough, pure
fiendish poetic magic from Alison Brackenbury in Skies, and a
brutal triple murder in the 19th century Scottish Highlands that provides the
vehicle for exploring so many things, including the nature of truth itself (but
definitely not one for the squeamish).
October
What Goes Around
– Emily ChappellEstuary – Rachel Lichtenstein
The Mirror of the Sea – Joseph Conrad
From the heart of the city to the open sea in three volumes.
I started this month with Emily Chappell’s breathless and addictive account of life as a cycle courier in central London, which had me tearing around hazard-strewn streets trying to meet delivery deadlines with her. Her intimate evocation of the marginal culture of couriers and raw enthusiasm for everything cycling (see also thatemilychappell.com ) had me well and truly hooked.
I then wended my way out of the city on the Thames, courtesy of Rachel Lichtenstein’s atmospheric homage to the Estuary of her books title and her home. A passionate and compelling capture of another marginal place, of land and water, made particularly real through the lives of many of its fascinating current occupants, often in conversation; a genuine treat. It also contains a number of quotes from Joseph Conrad that neatly reminded me of the book I had to read next.
It is a special pleasure when a book you start in the hope it will be merely good, rapidly blows your mind. Magnificent is the only word for Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea. It is rare in simply setting out to provide the reader the sense of being at sea in a sailing ship at the end of the nineteenth century, without any single underlying adventure tale or narrative. It’s the only non-fiction by Conrad and is underpinned by the experience and knowledge of twenty years at sea working his way up to captain, and the intellect and sheer writing prowess of one the greatest authors of all time. Every sentence counts for something, and the wonder, fear, psychology, atmosphere and complexity of every aspect of sailing is covered along with an astonishing level of observation and insight of human nature and the human condition. A captivating read and true classic. There is also a beautiful chapter on the Thames estuary, making for the smoothest of cross-overs from Lichtenstein’s work.
November
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret AtwoodDays Without End – Sebastian Barry
Let Them Eat Chaos – Kate Tempest
In the month that the year's imbecilic self-destruction reaches its new low point I felt the need for some robust challenging reading.
Margaret Atwood's dystopian classic on the appropriation of women’s bodies seemed scarily real, let's hope Trump who famously "doesn't read" doesn't get hold of a copy - he'd probably treat it as a user guide. One of those books perhaps largely regarded as by women, for women, but which would have greatest impact if more (intelligent) men read it.
Sebastian Barry’s new novel tracing 20 years of the Indian Wars and the US Civil War rattles along at a breathtaking pace with a gay love affair, cross-dressing aplenty, savagery of the direst kind imaginable, and a twisting cliff-hanger plot. Somehow through all of this, wrapped within exquisite descriptions of landscape and season, runs a golden thread of simple love, truth and integrity that is hugely life-affirming.
And so to Kate Tempest's necessary, vital, angry blast. A 72 page accessible poem on the state of society, the nation and the planet that I got through in a single sitting. It tells us what we all need to know at this dire post-truth, post-humane moment, where we seem to have collectively totally lost the plot. Read it. Deal with it.
December
The Essex Serpent – Sarah PerrySlaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Some Corner of a Foreign Field – James Bentley (editor)
Black Dog, The Dreams of Paul Nash – Dave McKean
Popularity and merit should never be confused, but justly coincide in Sarah Perry’s superbly brooding Dickensian (with a touch of Bram Stoker and Sarah Waters) tale on the murky Essex marshes around the Blackwater. It’s about belief versus fact; fear and need and desire, and ultimately about the overlooked power of that most modest sounding of things, friendship. A great tale to curl up with of a winters evening; frequently discomforting, and building its strength seductively slowly.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the 1945 bombing and subsequent firestorm of Dresden as a POW by virtue of being imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse in the city. It took him another 24 years to adequately distil what he wanted to say about it into his classic Slaughterhouse Five. The slim volume contains aliens, and a novel take on time (and what a lifetime is) whereby he slides up and down his own timeline, frequently from one paragraph to the next. Other reviewers have noted its potential influence on the recent superb film Arrival, if not directly then possibly indirectly on the writer Ted Chiang whose short story the film is directly based upon. For all its strangeness and often apparent randomness, Vonnegut ultimately weaves a hard-hitting work that is one of the best anti-war books of all time.
And finally, as we reach the mid-point of the centenary of the supposed “war to end all wars”, two superb devastating volumes to aid the contemplation of man's (continuing) inanity:
Some Corner of a Foreign Field is, frankly, perfect. There are many much more weighty collections of Great War poetry, and the beauty and diminutive size of this volume may fool you into thinking it is relatively trivial, but the combination of expertly chosen poems (all necessarily short to fit on a single page) and opposing striking colour artwork from the time, achieve something even greater than the sum of its considerable parts - exceptionally moving.
Graphic novels have not been my natural territory, conjuring as they do, images of adolescent boys clutching dodgy magazines with improbably busty heroines on their covers. Yet the form is getting interesting, and so-called literary graphic novels for adults have in particular started to emerge. Taking the blending of artwork and words to create powerful messages (the previously mentioned book does this after all) to a new level is intriguing and exciting. The perfect example of what can be achieved is Dave McKean’s recent stunning Black Dog – The Dreams of Paul Nash. Nash was a war artist in both World Wars, creating iconic images from each, and his life experiences before, during and immediately after the Great War are used here as a framework for a dramatic exploration of what war does to men, and what personal traits and skeletons come to the fore during and after extreme situations (black dog is of course an allusion to depression). McKean pulls no punches in page after page of dark powerful artwork and comparatively light use of text (including a subtle passing quote from Vonnegut), constantly varying in innovative style, and delivers a formidable coherent whole that simply knocks you for six.
Here's to Good Reading...
