Books I read in 2019 – and ones I didn’t finish

I spend a lot of my time reading.  My mother used to complain about it, but I have not been able to shake off the habit.  Most of what I read is ephemeral – news articles in the Economist or on the Guardian, FT or BBC websites.  At the same time I usually have two or three books going – changing from one to the other as the mood takes me.  I thought it might be interesting to look back and see what books I had actually read last year - and whether they had had any lasting effect on me. As far as I can remember this is a fairly complete list. I have made a few comments on each.

Margaret Atwood (2003) Oryx and Crake

I had previously read The Handmaid’s Tale and found it implausible and an overstatement of the feminist complaint.  Surely women have made great progress toward equality in the last 50 years (at least in “the West”) and the trend is the opposite to that portrayed by MA?  Anyway I don’t much care for science fiction. However, my partner persuaded me to give her another try, so I read Oryx and Crake.

It is about Jimmy (aka Snowman), a lone survivor of a global catastrophe that has destroyed civilisation, resulting from genetic engineering gone wrong.  His early and more recent life stories are told through flashbacks as he makes a desperate excursion into a former scientific compound to find some dwindling remaining supplies.  Crake is his former friend and colleague and Oryx a girlfriend, thus providing the love interest. 

I think it is one of those novels that one ought to have read in order to be able to converse about the modern novel.  I can’t say that I enjoyed it.

Sébastien Japrisot  (1977)  L’été meurtrier

From time to time, as a way of brushing up my French or German, I set myself the task of reading a novel in its original language.  Kindle on my mobile phone is very good for this since it has an inbuilt French-English dictionary, so you can easily look up unfamiliar words as you go along (if only this facility had existed when I was learning French at school).  Sadly, it doesn’t work on the laptop.

Anyway, I googled “best French crime novels” and “L’été meurtrier” was recommended.  It is written from the viewpoint of different characters – a technique that seemed to work in this case.  The dictionary was certainly very necessary since the vocabulary of one of the main characters is full of the sort of words that are not taught in school.

I must say this was one of the best crime novels I have ever read.  Usually, in crime novels it is possible to guess part way through what the eventual outcome might be and who might be the villain.  In this case it was a total surprise – and totally convincing.  I thoroughly recommend this book – whether in French or English.

Sébastien Japrisot (1962) Compartiment tueurs

Having enjoyed L’été meurtrier so much I tried another, earlier work by Japrisot, but have not found it so riveting.  It is more of a conventional police investigation into a crime (whereas in L’EM you don’t actually know what the crime is).  I haven’t finished it yet but will return to it and persevere. 

George Eliot (1866) Felix Holt

My partner, who is an English Literature graduate, once told me that Middlemarch is the greatest novel ever written, so I had tried to fill one of the many gaps in my education by reading it.  Unfortunately, I made slow progress with it and didn’t manage to finish it, so as an alternative I decided to try Felix Holt, as I understood that it would be interesting because of its background of the 1832 voting reform movement.   This time I did manage to finish it, but I can’t say it was a pleasure to read it.

David Goodhart (2017) The Road to Somewhere

This is an important book, and I think any student of politics ought to read it.  While I don’t agree with everything in it, I think it has some validity. The essential argument is that English politics has changed – or is changing.  Instead of economic or class based politics, in which Labour represents the downtrodden working classes and Conservatives represent the upper and middle classes, we now have politics based on cultural attitudes. “Somewheres” are people who owe allegiance to a particular area where they still live. They have not gone to university, or travelled widely abroad, or even very much in the UK.  They don’t speak foreign languages or have neighbours or colleagues who are non-English.  They are socially conservative, dubious about gay marriage.  Women adopt their husband’s name when they marry (which they still do). 

By contrast, “Anywheres” are university educated, have lived away from their parents’ home area , have travelled abroad, and are comfortable with social changes such as civil partnerships, Polish shops in the High Street. If they do marry, the wife keeps her maiden name. 

The division is far from perfect, as there is much overlap, but I think it goes some way to explain the Brexit result and why Labour lost Blyth but won Canterbury.

Tim Marshall (2015) Prisoners of Geography

This is a fairly elementary guide to world politics – that is, the way in which geography and local or regional history influences or determines the motivation and outlook of major nations and regions.  Russia, China, USA, India vs Pakistan, the unnatural boundaries imposed by the colonial nations in Africa and the Middle East. 

Josephine Tey (1948) The Franchise Affair

I was looking for some light relief from more serious reading and consulted a list of “best crime novels”, and this one seemed to fit the bill.  It appears that “Josephine Tey” was the pseudonym of Elizabeth MacKintosh, a Scottish writer who wrote a variety of novels, plays and short stories under different names.  I thought The Franchise Affair somewhat implausible and overrated, but it was enjoyable enough.

Charles Dickens (1859) A tale of two cities

Everybody knows this story – except me last year.  Now I know it too.  Not really typical Dickens.

Fyodor Dostoevsky  (1880)  The brothers Karamazov

I had read Crime and Punishment in my youth and found it quite hard going – very introspective. More recently I also tried The Idiot but didn’t finish it – too much self examination and not enough action.  So I was apprehensive about tackling Karamazov.  In fact I enjoyed it immensely.  It has everything.  A fast moving story, complex interpersonal relationships, a mystery, suspense, and even a moderately happy ending.

I also managed to find a DVD of the novel, produced in Russian, which was very good.  12 x 1 hour episodes, which just about does justice to the novel.  I thoroughly recommend this too.

Khaled Hosseini (2003) The Kite Runner

I decided to read this novel as it had been very highly praised, esp in America, had won various prizes, and had been made into a film etc. However, having found Salman Rushdie unreadable, I was somewhat apprehensive about The Kite Runner since its author is Afghan and the novel is set in Afghanistan. 

I needn’t have worried as I enjoyed the novel immensely.  The story holds the attention and the Afghan setting is in fact a great advantage as it helped me to gain some insight into the social, national and religious tensions that exist in the area between Kabul and the Pakistan border.  Thoroughly recommended.

J.K.Galbraith (1987) History of Economics

This was another case of brushing up my knowledge of previously acquired scholarship – in this case the History of Economic Thought, which was one of the courses I did at Bristol University in 1961/2.  If only Galbraith’s entertaining popular summary had been available in 1961.  It is written in a witty, slightly cynical style and explains the reasoning and motivation behind many of the economic doctrines that held sway in different periods of history – e.g. the influence of religion, slavery, the feudal system etc on economic thinking.  It inspires the reader to seek out and read the seminal economic texts in the original rather than through academic commentaries.  It is quite short, and I recommend it – especially for the general reader.

Alfred Döblin (1929) Berlin Alexanderplatz

I was looking for a substantial German novel so that I could brush up my German by reading it in the original German.  In the event I think I bit off more than I could chew as I found this quite hard going and gave up after a couple of chapters.  However, it is very highly praised and I think I will return to it soon.

Antoine de St Exupéry (1931)  Vol de nuit

I did A-level French at school, and this book was one of the optional set books for the Literature section of the syllabus.  In fact my school didn’t choose it so I didn’t read it at the time.  However, St Exupéry won the highest French awards for Literature, so I thought it worth tackling this novel as part of my “brush up your French” activity.  

 In the event, I was disappointed.  The plot itself is fairly thin – an internal airmail flight in Argentina is caught up in a storm, and the transatlantic mail flight has to leave without it.  I am no judge of French literature but I suspect that the literary value in the novel depends on its florid descriptive style, which I found hard going, and perhaps the moral dilemma of the company director, who has to decide whether to wait for the missing aircraft.  I didn’t enjoy it and struggled to finish it.

George Orwell (1931 - 1949)  Collection of essays

There are about 39 “essays” in this particular collection.  They were mostly written as articles for newspapers and magazines.  They are particularly interesting because they were of their time and throw light on the state of society at the time.  Recommended.

Aristophanes (411 BCE)  Lysistrata

I read this play in order to fill another gap in my education, although I was of course familiar with the theme (wives deny sex to their husbands until they promise to stop fighting).

Much of the pleasure of a play is in the performance (the acting, the delivery, the timing, the stage management), so simply reading the dialogue does not convey its quality, especially its humour.  I am glad I read it and I would like to attend an actual performance of this and other plays by Aristophanes, but I am not sure about attempting to read them. 

 

Michel Houellebecq (2001) Plateforme

I was slightly disgusted by this novel.  The author appears to be highly thought of – albeit controversial – in France, but the offensive background to this novel is sex tourism in Thailand and the author’s ambivalent attitude to it. I gave it up after a few pages.

Trevor Royle (2004) Civil War: the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

The struggle between Parliament and the Prime Minister in 2019, especially the attempt to shut down Parliament, reminded me of the struggle between Parliament and the King in the 17^th century – albeit the latter was more bloody.  So I thought it would be interesting to compare the two conflicts.  A little research indicated that this history by Trevor Royle is the definitive account.  It is certainly very detailed, and it is not a book that you can read at one or two sessions.  In fact after several weeks, I am only half way through.  One of the difficulties I find is that it is difficult to remember which Duke or Earl or commander is on which side, especially as they occasionally switch sides.  The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the aristocrats involved sometimes have family surnames but are also referred to by the place names of which they are Duke or Earl, and these names can then easily be confused with actual locations or sites of battles.   

Nevertheless, I am enjoying reading this book.  It brings home the fanatical obduracy of the King, with his belief in the divine right of kings, and his unwillingness to compromise.  What I hadn’t realised was that the King had actually fallen out with all three of his kingdoms but for different reasons.  So it was really three separate civil wars (with Scotland, Ireland and England and Wales) that overlapped at different times – hence the title of the book.

Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) The Sixth Extinction

The subject matter of this book is serious and important, but I didn’t particularly care for its style.  The author, a journalist, was evidently trying to interest a non-technical audience in the evidence that human activity is causing the loss (extinction) of up to 50% of all species by the end of the 21^st century.  This is related in a series of chapters that describe how a particular species has died or is forecast to die out. I found its style to be anecdotal and slightly flippant, and being somewhat impatient I only skim-read the final chapters.

©  2020  Robin Paice