Review of the year’s reading 2020
- The novel that you most enjoyed reading
To take this question as it is written I’d have to say The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. The inventiveness is off the chart and I adored the feel of flopping down into the book, which has, at the heart of the story, a deep love of books and libraries that matches my own, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best I read; that would probably be The North Water by Ian McGuire
- The most enjoyable non-fiction work
Too many to mention really. The most important book I read was KL by Wachsmann – a history of the Nazi concentration camp system which was moving and harrowing; enjoyable is most definitely the wrong word though. Tim Pat Coogan’s The Famine Plot taught me a lot about mid-19th Century Ireland, and English attitudes toward it. Vijay Prashad’s Red Star Over The Third World was interesting and informative alongside many other political books; for sheer enjoyment I’ll say Robert MacFarlane’s Underland which is an exploration of mostly forgotten places beneath our feet which takes in a wide scope of places. Honourable mention for this year’s Wisden which I think will become a collector’s edition very quickly due to the excellent writing of course, but also for the extraordinary year (2019) it reviews.
- Any novel that disappointed you, or that you simply didn’t like
I’m sad to say I felt very let down by the first Ali Smith book I’ve ever read. How to be both is a brilliant story of understanding the grief at losing a parent; that’s the first half of the book. The second half is the life of a painter 400 years previously who the characters in the first half quite liked the work of. It is cleverly done but I felt rather than being both the book was neither one thing nor the other. She has been recommended to me for so long that I was expecting to enjoy it more, alas!
- The year’s most striking fictional character
If I’d never encountered Poirot before if would have to be him, but it’s impossible to separate the books from David Suchet’s portrayal. ST in Hollow Kingdom is a nice comedy creation and flawed individual as well as being, y’know, a crow. The most striking was probably the escaped slave-girl Cora in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad
- …and the most dastardly villain
There were plenty in said boo, Underground Railroad; not least the slave catcher Ridgeway who had a sort of code of ethics but it rested on the slagheap of white supremacy. I can look no further than Henry Drax of The North Water; one of the most amoral and vicious characters I’ve ever come across in all my life.
- The best authors encountered for the first time this year?
I’ve encountered a lot of new ones this year to be honest. If I had to pick one I’d say Ray Bradbury
- The most unusual fictional work
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares was very peculiar but by the end it did make sense and I applaud the concept. Ness by Robert Macfarlane was quite odd too, and the Blue Fox by Sjon.
- The most beautifully written book
It’s hard to look past Silas Marner, but then it feels unfair to compare language across centuries. In terms of non-fiction it would be Underland again, though in places Max Adams’ The Wisdom of Trees can give it a run for its money.
- Any New Year reading resolutions?
Nope. Keep on keeping on.
- Memorable passages or quotes from books read this year
Probably loads but I’d have to cheat and look one up.
2020 Books Read
Fiction
Monica Ali – Brick Lane
Francis Bacon – The New Atlantis
Pat Barker – Regeneration
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
Jesse Burton – The Minaturist
Kira Jane Buxton – Hollow Kingdom
Angela Carter – Nights At The Circus
Adolfo Bioy Casares – the Invention of Morel
Agatha Christie – The Mysterious Affair At Styles
Christina Dalcher – Vox
Louis De Berniers – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Roddy Doyle – The Commitments
George Eliot – Silas Marner
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Joanne M Harris –The Gospel of Loki
Stephen King – Carrie
Robert MacFarlane – Ness
Ian McEwan – Amsterdam
Ian McGuire – The North Water
Erin Morgenstern – The Starless Sea
Kate Mosse – The Winter Ghosts
Sarah Moss – Cold Earth
Ellis Peters – A Morbid Taste For Bones
Terry Pratchett – Reaper Man
Terry Pratchett – Witches Abroad
Ian Rankin – Black and Blue
Ian Rankin – The Hanging Garden
CJ Sansom – Dark Fire
CJ Sansom – Dissolution
Sjon – The Blue Fox
Ali Smith – How To Be Both
Rose Tremain – Restoration
Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
Non Fiction
Max Adams – The Wisdom of Trees
Kehinde Andrews – Back To Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century
Kate Aronoff – A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal
Cinzia Arruzza – Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto
Reza Aslan – Zealot: The Life And Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Danny Baker – Going Off Alarming
Aaron Bastani – Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Grace Blakeley – Stolen: How Finance Destroyed The Economy
Lawrence Booth – Wisden Cricketers Almanack 2020
Rutger Bregman – Utopia For Realists
Jerry Brotton – The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction
Fergus Butler-Gaille – A Field Guide To The English Clergy
William Bynum – A Little History Of Science
Albert Camus – The Rebel
Tim Pat Coogan – The Famine Plot
Alastair Cook – The Autobiography
Brian Cox – The Planets
Dean Crawford – Shark
Sam Friedman – The Glass Ceiling: Why It Pays To Be Privileged
Judith Flanders – Christmas: A Biography
Neil DeGrasse Tyson – Astrophysics For People In A Hurry
Kit de Waal – Common People
Terry Eagleton – On Evil
Stephen Fry – Mythos
Amelia Gentleman – The Windrush Scandal
Rebecca Gray – The Library Book
Patricia A Halbert: I Wish I Knew That: US Presidents
Melissa Harrison – Autumn
Melissa Harrison – Rain: Four Walks In English Weather
Christopher Hitchens – The Monarchy
Jerrold Hogle – The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction
Jarrod Kimber – Test Cricket: The Unauthorised Biography
Naomi Klein – On Fire: The Case For The Green New Deal
Olivier Le Carrer – Atlas of Cursed Places
Reni Eddo Lodge – Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race
David Long – Bizarre London
Len McLuskey – Why You Should Be A Trade Unionist
Robert MacFarlane – Underland
Alberto Manguel – The Library At Night
Tom Nancollas – Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet
John Julius Norwich – The Popes
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men
Greg Philo – Bad News For Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief
Vijay Prashad – Red Star Over The World
Diane Purkiss – The English Civil War: A People’s History
Kevin Rooney – The Blood Stained Poppy
Hallie Rubenhold – The Five: The Lives Of Jack The Ripper’s Women
Frances Ryan – Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People
Guy Standing – Basic Income: How We Can Make It Happen~
Nikesh Shukla – The Good Immigrant
AJP Taylor – The First World War
Alex von Tunzelmann – Reel History
Nikolaus Wachsmann – KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
Deborah Frances White – The Guilty Feminist
TH White – The Goshawk
Slavoj Zizek – Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes The World
Poetry
Chinua Achebe – Collected Poems
Maya Angelou – Amazing Peace
John Burnside – Black Cat Bone
Gillian Clarke – The Sundial
Carol Ann Duffy – 1914: Poetry Remembers
TS Eliot – The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Seamus Heaney – Wintering Our
Adrian Matejka – The Big Smoke
Daljit Nagra – The British Museum
KY Robinson – The Chaos Of Longing
Danez Smith – Don’t Call Us Dead
Tracy K Smith – Wade In The Water
Ocean Vuong – Night Sky With Exit Wounds
Rowan Williams – The Poems Of Rowan Williams
1. Nikesh Shukla – The Good Immigrant. A collection of short essays from British people who were either born elsewhere or whose lineage is non-British in the most recent past; people who are certainly seen as “other” by middle England and it’s chattering commentariat. There are pieces from far-Eastern people, middle-Eastern, African, Caribbean etc. who all share that common description of being someone else, someone different. Some are hard hitting, some are darkly comic and all are educational to those of us who don’t have such lived experiences. One chapter covers the politics of black women’s hair which was very enlightening.
2. CJ Sansom – Dissolution. This was a re-read, which I don’t usually do but this series (The Matthew Shardlake books) is probably my favourite. I loved this first book of Sansom’s; set chiefly in a monastery at the time of their dissolution at the instruction of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. It has a wonderful claustrophobia to it as Shardlake, attempting to solve a puzzle at the request of Cromwell gets closer and closer to the truth, he also gets closer and closer to becoming a victim himself. It is historically well researched and rattles along at a good rate throughout.
3. John Julius Norwich – The Popes. A necessarily large book on the subject of the Papacy, from its first apparent incumbent, St Peter, through to the (more or less) present day. Each chapter is a short potted history of one or two of these Catholic Monarchs as the book runs chronologically through time. Norwich isn’t Catholic but also has no axes to grind so the bad popes are declared such and the progressive ones (relatively speaking) are praised. He draws short of giving them a score out of 10, but you can imagine him secretly doing this. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2883755426?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
4. Angela Carter – Nights at the Circus. My first foray into Carter’s work, after many recommendations, was thoroughly enjoyable. A fantastical journey through the life and times of “Fevvers” who grew wings at the same time she began menstruating. It begins with her being interviewed by American journalist Jack Walser and we follow his trailing of her with the circus through London and Russia with her opening up to him about her life story and he becoming more and more involved, perhaps obsessed with the woman. It’s written with great imagination and heavily reliant on magical realism with a solid feminist message at its core.
5. Kate Aronoff – A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal. In its 2019 manifesto, Labour of course had a fully costed green new deal / green industrial revolution. Sadly the voters rejected this and chose “muh Brexit” instead. I had meant to read Ann Pettifor’s book on this subject rather than this one but noticed that this author was American and the theatre of world change for the time being remains on the shores of our former colonial cousins. Other authors write different chapters so its not wholly US focused and indeed the challenge is global, and so must the solution be. Anyone who wants to understand more about the immediate need for action on the climate crisis would do well to read this book.
6. Greg Philo – Bad News For Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief. Again a multi-authored work from the acclaimed Glasgow Media Group who expose press hypocrisy and have a proven track record of accuracy and fairness. What this book shows is that the scandal of anti-Semitism in the Labour party was vastly exaggerated for political gain by both the political right, and the enemies of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party, and indeed that far from being champions of the political other, those doing the accusing were far more likely to be reactionary bigots themselves whether the victims be Jews, Muslims, Gay people or some other imagined threat. The smears worked, and the results are in but this is a vital book showing the power of propaganda, and while Herman and Chomsky showed years ago how all this stuff works, people still haven’t learned to tell truth from fiction. A depressing if necessary book.
7. CJ Sansom – Dark Fire. I recaught the Shardlake bug with Dissolution. This second book kis much more sprawling, spread across Tudor London in search for the recipe for Greek Fire, an ancient and devastating weapon wanted by Henry VIII to settle his wars abroad. Shardlake himself grows in this novel from being a fairly parochial snob and ardent reformer to being a more progressive character. We learn more about him and his new accomplice Jack Barak is a terrific foil for lawyer and investigator.
8. Robert MacFarlane – Underland. Beautifully written exploration of what lies beneath; be they catacombs, caverns, scientific research facilities, oceanic fathoms or vaults of seed banks saved with the hope that they will never be needed. Macfarlane always deeply interrogates his locations and connects them vividly to the human experience. He shows our ability to create, to collaborate and to plan for what might be while at the same time recognising our role in the course of events and why a much deeper understanding of our world and the damage we are doing needs to be at the forefront of progress. The book is at times personal and at time mythical and magical while at all times being wonderful and poetic throughout.
9. T.S. Eliot – The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems. I don’t really know where to begin in analysing briefly this masterpiece. I’m not afraid to say it is somewhat beyond my ken but at the same time special to read. From the banality and ruthlessness of war to the questioning of the self, this short collection does give the reader pause and plenty to ponder. I read it as the fear of the Covid illness was rising, though not yet in any way clear about the impact it would have and there are pieces here that would speak to that on re-reading.
10. Seamus Heaney – Wintering Out. As always with Heaney this work moves between the deeply personal and the extraneous matters of politics and history to create a theme of great power wrapped in the subtlety of experience. I started to read it because I like seasonal poems, pastoral poems and some are here but they are enveloped by the grand nature of being and the desolation of truth while remaining utterly beautiful to both the eye and the tongue.
11. Reza Aslan – Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a fascinating account of the life of the man who would come to be known as Christ; the head of a Jewish cult and later the Idol of multiple faiths under the banner of Christianity. Historical sources are pieced together to give us a picture, not of a pacifist miracle worker and good samaritan, but of a revolutionary hero in the style of Fidel Castro or Vladimir Lenin. Controversial and convincing, a polemic perhaps but a very good one and taught me a lot about the general history and geography of 1st century CE Palestine. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3184976851?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
12. Louis De Berniers – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Recommended to me by multiple people over the last 10 years I finally plucked this from our laden shelves and found it to be an enchanting book. Set in WWII on the Greek island of Cephallonia we find loveable and eccentric characters a-plenty before the title character shows up, an Italian Captain there as part of the Axis annexation of the island, and what starts as a war novel becomes a love story and a tragedy of sorts, certainly in terms of what happens to the people of the island, and the soldiers of the Italian army as they eventually come to change sides once Mussolini meets his grizzly but entirely justified fate. No spoilers but despite the wonderful prose, character development and narrative arc I found the ending of this book to be one of the most infuriating I have ever encountered.
13. Len McCluskey – Why You Should Be A Trade Unionist. A short book from the General Secretary of Unite the Union which does what it says on the cover, explaining to the reader the benefits of being in a trade union. It’s partly that and partly autobiographical as Len uses his own work experience as a Docker to show how being in a trade union has always been part of his working life, and how without it he and his colleagues would not have had the jobs and lives they did. It’s no secret that union membership has dropped from it’s 1970s heyday and while this book is a timely reminder of why trade unions are important you can’t help thinking that the only people who are going to read it are those people who are in trade unions already.
14. Hallie Rubenhold – The Five: The Lives of Jack The Ripper’s Women.
One of the finest works of history and investigative journalism I’ve ever read. Everyone can name Jack the Ripper (at least by this moniker) but very few people can name even one of the five canonical victims. This books sets out to redress that by taking each name and working back through their lives via their interactions with the state and institutions as well as key relatives and witnesses from the time; their statements found in various archives around London and elsewhere. What we find are pictures not of wanton women but women who have lead lives containing both love, happiness and feeling, eclipsed by the myth of Ripperology and let down by the time in which they lived, the people who should have helped them and ultimately by the state which was only too happy to wash its hands of those in need; something we are still yet to fully remedy. A wonderful book that I cannot recommend highly enough. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3235799197?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
15. Terry Pratchett – Witches Abroad. I started reading this a few years ago and misplaced the copy I was reading. I found it again, dog-eared page still turned down but restarted to make sure I knew what was what. Witches and Wizards for many adults are just something they can’t get their heads around, however I’ve seen some of the most curmudgeonly sorts light up at the mention of Mr Pratchett so if you’ve not ready any you may be surprised at how much you laugh along with the rag-tag bunch of characters assembled in any of the books. This is the 12th in the Discworld series and third of the Witches books and while it wouldn’t be my favourite of his there are few week links I’ve come across so far.
16. Frances Ryan – Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People. Don’t let the Americanised spelling of “demonization” fool you, this book is about the treatment of disabled people in our own country over the last decade or so. Unsurprisingly it is very difficult to read at times, so upsetting is the subject being dealt with. It was written at the end of 2018 and covers first the Coalition government and then the Conservative majority and minority governments from2015 and there seemingly unbelievable lack of care for the more vulnerable members of our society. Over three and a half million people have been hit by callous cuts leaving them destitute, malnourished, at their wits end and at risk of self-harm or worse. It’s harrowing and entirely necessary to understand the way the Conservatives treat those less comfortably off than themselves.
17. Sarah Moss – Cold Earth. A very atmospheric book set on an archaeological dig in a coastal region of Greenland which once harboured a Viking settlement. The team are excavating a site while back in the world of gas cookers and televisions a pandemic has started to make its way across the world; the dig team are unaware of what the current situation is with their home countries and their families. Odd things start to happen around the dig site at night and some members of the team become convinced that something otherworldly is responsible. The stress begins to take its toll and members of the team begin to show mistrust of one another. It’s a very tense book set against a brutal terrain and locale and shows how quickly the human can move from friendship to mistrust when put in situations of stress. Ironically I started reading it thinking it was some escapism from the beginning of Covid lockdown, not realising that the book was partly concerned with an unknown global pandemic.
18. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451. I’ve just discovered I’ve been spelling Fahrenheit wrong for a long time (without the first H). This is one of those classic near future dystopian novels such as 1984 or Brave New World and certainly deserves to be considered alongside Orwell and Huxley, and I think we can add Atwood into that canon now. As a librarian this book strikes home more than most of the genre given that it is chiefly concerned with the abolition of the printed word; and shows how unrooted man becomes without it, and how more easily coerced by the state. As stated above Captain Corelli was infuriating by the end; this was quite the opposite in its sheer simple genius.
19. Gut Standing – Basic Income. Guy Standing has long been advocating a universal basic income and for a long time it has been an idea totally ignored. However in recent years there have been some interesting trials, in some rather unexpected places that have shown the benefits of such a system. The key elements of this book for me were the debunking of the myths around UBI; not just from the right are their seemingly endless droning on about incentives and natural laziness of the worker – but from the left too where some critics feel this is a way of replacing the welfare state or undermining collective bargaining – both of which it nestles alongside rather than drives a battering ram through. I really do think it is an idea whose time has come and this is a great introduction to the philosophy behind it.
20. Agatha Christie – The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The first book featuring legendary detective Hercule Poirot. It is charmingly written in the language of the upper class; sometimes seriously and sometimes satirically. Poirot maintains his Belgique access in the text and it is impossible to not picture him as David Suchet mincing along to his own rhythm as he solves (of course) the murder of elderly lady who had a large pile to leave to someone, and two recent wills written. It’s short and fun and shows clearly how well the ITV team behind the adaptation got the tone absolutely bang on for their wonderful series.
21. Dean Crawford – Shark. I’ve always had a fairly healthy obsession with sharks since seeing Jaws when I was little. Unlike in the film we are a much larger threat to them than they are to us. This book takes us through the physiology of the shark, its history, geographic spread and species differences with details of human encounters and the necessity for both conservation generally and the ending of the fin trade specifically. Very few things show the dangerousness of the extremely wealthy than status symbol of shark-fin soup. The apex predators of the ocean are being wiped out, doing unknown damage to food chains worldwide. This is primarily a book of biology but it is also a passionate defence of the shark.
22. Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Invention of Morel. The oddest book I read this year I think. The story follows a fugitive who has escaped to an island; it is unclear which but seems to be somewhere in the Mediterranean near Sicily and on this island he becomes infatuated with a woman he sees on a daily basis but who refuses to respond to his presence or later his introductions. He tries to discover why he is as good as invisible to this woman and discovers that there is plenty more to their meetings than it at first seemed. It’s a brief book, written in descriptive language reminiscent of some of the masters of magical realism; Borges himself referred to this book as a masterpiece akin to some of Henry James best work.
23. Amelia Gentleman – The Windrush Betrayal. Written by the Guardian journalist who broke, or perhaps stumbled on the story of the Windrush scandal, this book charts what Gentleman thought was a few isolated cases amounting to a human interest story to being one of the biggest scandals of the last 10 years in British Politics; ultimately claiming the Secretary of State for the Home Office; though Amber Rudd is certainly not the victim of this titular betrayal. Chronologically delivered and using interviews and journalistic prose to emphasise the horror and Kafka-esque nature of the Home Office and how they treat and deport people from this country is nothing short of shocking. More shocking still is that the vast majority of people caught up in this, who had their lives overturned (some of whom are no longer with us) have still not received a shred of compensation for what has been done to them – the story began to unravel in 2017 and the government still digs its heals in over three years later piling misery upon misery on to the BRITISH citizens they have tortured. An important book and an important narrative that sadly, will no doubt have several new editions with shocking details caught up in rewritten epilogues.
24. Erin Morgenstern – The Starless Sea. The second novel from the author of The Night Circus, it is beautifully composed and the language richly decorated. Yes, this is a novel set in a deep fantastical “other” place for the most part but certainly has a literary element to it. There are cloak and dagger aspects, conspiracies and mistrust that sit alongside the dreamy prose and fairy-tale like quality of the narrative. Plenty of darkness beneath the shimmering veneer with a meta-approach to storytelling. Lovers of physical books and of libraries themselves will welcome the worshipful tone and will probably wish they could sit and just exist for a while in somewhere we know does not exist.
25. Naomi Klein – On Fire. A follow up to the hugely successful and important book This Changes Everything we are in the territory once again of climate change, climate denial and the lengths states and multi-national corporations will go to, to avoid having to change. Klein is an expert investigator and digester of scientific reports; she has the ability to relay these to the reader in an understandable way. Readers should note that while the introduction and conclusion/ending are new writings, much of the book is a collection of syndicated pieces from Klein’s various columns over the last decade or so. If you are a keen follower of her work, chances are you will have read much of what is printed here; not that it isn’t worth reading again of course.
26. Rebecca Gray – The Library Book. There are two books with this title released almost at the same time; this one concerns mostly British experiences of libraries, the other is largely concerned with American ones. Rebecca Gray has assembled a talented bunch of pieces written on the love of public libraries; of visiting them as children, as adults, of taking your own children, of being among the stacks, of the characters who work in them or the whacky patrons those of us in the profession have all encountered. The commissioned or collected works are by names such as Alan Bennett, Caitlin Moran, Anita Anand, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Stephen Fry, Val McDermid, Zadie Smith and more.
27. Patricia A Halbert – I Wish I Knew That: US Presidents. One of these short digestible trivia books. Each of the 44 presidents up to Barack Obama have a few pages devoted to them; the things they may have achieved in office, the scandals associated with them or the funny bits of throwaway information about them or their spouses that occasionally make the running order of QI. It’s a breezy book with a lot of the worst aspects of the presidents really mentioned; many of the earlier presidents owned slaves for example, that didn’t make it past the editing stage but being informed that John Adams had a dog called Satan was valuable knowledge that is included. There are some good sections on First Ladies though who are often missed out of these things.
28. Melissa Harrison – Rain: Four Walks In English Weather. This slim volume of travel writing is very pretty. Harrison seems to agree with Billy Connolly in the sense that there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. She conveys beautifully the minutia of her strolls in the (mostly) Southern countryside invoking the ghosts of her own past alongside the gentle pastoral scenes she moves through. Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor are the areas of focus and anyone who enjoys the likes of Richard Mabey or Robert MacFarlane will be pleased with this book.
29. Ian Rankin – Black and Blue. The 8th Inspector Rebus novel is one of the most wide ranging geographically and is haunted by the memory of the real serial killer Bible John, who murdered at least three women in Glasgow between 1968 and 1969 and has never identified; in this novel he’s back, or perhaps a copycat killer and it’s Rebus’ job to find him alongside being roped into a related investigation on the oil rigs of the far North Sea while being watched by a very bent detective and an increasingly peaked media who are digging into an old case of his after the suicide of an old mentor. Excellent crime fiction
30. Ian McEwan – Amsterdam. McEwan books are very easy on the eye; the cliché of a page turner but delivered through the emotive narrative rather than plot twists and thrill-rides. It captures the neuroses of the upper-middle classes perfectly when dealing with grief, loss and betrayal culminating in a tragic-comic climax that is creative, dark and hilarious. Each character is a fully developed three dimensional being and it’s even possible to feel sorry for the Tory MP Julian Garmony at times; quite a challenge when I’m the reader.
31. Reni Eddo Lodge – Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race. A counter-intuitive title if ever there was one as since the publication of this, Reni hasn’t stopped talking to white people about race; on panel discussions, at publisher events or public lectures such was the demand for her time that came about after publication. It’s a terrific polemic written from a very personal perspective at times but always grounded heavily in research and data. It’s not just complaining about racism, it is also the beginnings of a framework to deal with racism at a systemic level and will be one of the most important books of the 2010s when such lists come to be written.
32. Roddy Doyle – The Commitments. It’s so rare to hear working class voices in literature, this was a welcome salve and so much of the language, the way the characters speak to one another was evocative of my own youth, albeit in a different land. The story of a group of people starting a band in Dublin; it’s a hilarious fly-on-the-wall of a book detailing the little rivalries and squabbles that are carried out in search of some form of stardom and recognition. It’s very relatable and having never read any Doyle before I can definitely now see the appeal.
33. Terry Eagleton – On Evil. One of the great contemporary philosophers, Marxists and literary critics turns his attention to the concept of “evil” here and primarily explores the idea of whether it exists or not, whether it is something inevitable in the human condition or something we are merely capable of and can move beyond. At times it becomes bogged down in the literary concept of evil, and the handful of characters chosen to represent it; only fleetingly do we come to the theological argument and the seductive nature of doing wrong compared to the banality inherent in being good. Always interesting and written with a dry sense of humour.
34. Nikolaus Wachsmann – KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. I think it’s fair to say this was the most important books I read this year. There has been so much written about the second world war and the Holocaust in particular but this is surprisingly the first full history of the Nazi run KL; Konzentrationslager or concentration camps. Note that this differs from an account of the Nazi death camps such as Sobibor or Treblinka; while these are mentioned it is the work camps, that still killed people in vast numbers, that are focused on; Auschwitz gets a lot of coverage in its unique position as both a labour camp and an extermination site. Understandably there are some horrible first-hand accounts that are hard to stomach, alongside which an astonishing level of research and statistics that give a gruesome anonymity to the lives they represent. The author gets the balance right between research, opinion and comment for the author must comment on such atrocities and tell us what they think and one couldn’t in good conscience disagree with him summation. A great work. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3254145790?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
35. Stephen King – Carrie. King has been recommended to me for years and I finally thought I’d dip my toe in with one of his early novels. Carrie is the story most people know of a bullied teenage girl who has certain powers that ultimately she loses (or gains perhaps) control of after a particularly cruel stunt which tips her over the edge of a cliff called vengeance. I wasn’t expecting the book to be structured how it is; it is laid out as a series of interviews with the principal survivors after the event, combined with supposed news reports and academic articles which lends a realness to the story and eases the pace of the book.
36. Adrian Matejka – The Big Smoke. This collection of poetry of Matejka is written from the point of view of Jack Johnson, the man who became the first African American heavyweight world boxing champion. Born to emancipated slaves in the South, Johnson became a fighter out of necessity and his career his mapped by the poems chronologically. It details his early bare-knuckle fights, his great moments and his issues with alcohol and women, particularly with regard to his beating of women; hero worship this isn’t, rather it is a tinted window on to the life of a complication man who millions adored but who was a vicious misogynist in an age of viscous misogyny. The poetry captures all this and more.
37. Grace Blakeley – Stolen: How Finance Destroyed the Economy and Corrupted Our Politics. This is the first full book from this author who has long been a champion of progressive economics, but she is also someone who speaks with great authority given her own educational background. Stolen details what happened in the financial crash 10 years ago and how it was utilised by conservatives to engage in a huge transfer of wealth from the poorest in society to the richest. It also details how this country particularly has become over-reliant on financialistation and how it represents a fundamental change in our economy in terms of who wields power, and who they wield it on behalf of. Towards the end of the book Grace details a way out of the mess, though any book like this has largely been made redundant in terms of a solution now that Covid will leave a legacy of financial problems even larger than those we faced in 2008.
38. Christina Dalcher – Vox: I really liked the concept behind this book in its banal horror, that women are given a quota of words they can speak in one day and what happens if they exceed that limit. It fits in with the feminist dystopian canon alongside the likes of Margaret Atwood; while it isn’t as polished, it is a terrifically told tale of how something so simple can be so destructive on a national as well as a local and familial level. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3372030740?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
39. Carol Ann Duffy – 1914: Poetry Remembers. An edited collection which the Poet Laureate contributes to. It’s well put together with a modern poet writing something related to war and also picking a piece they like from a dead literary figure; often a poem, sometimes a letter or a piece of prose. Thanks to Duffy the collection isn’t just the same old World War I poets, there are some lesser known gems here from a good spread of both men and women and other races.
40. Dalgit Nagra – The British Museum. These poems from Daljit are generally concerned with how a migrant child, a migrant family fit in to Great Britain and how our heritage becomes his heritage, or whether indeed it can. There are some great poems on ethics and a honed political edge with the title poem at the end of the book being particularly punchy.
41. Max Adams – The Wisdom of Trees. Hundreds of generations of humans have regarded trees as a source of wisdom: they have been consulted by holy men, by kings, queens and wise women. They have been thought of as sacred, as embodying the spirits of dead ancestors. They are deployed as metaphors for youth and old age; for solidity and sagacity; for fertility, virility and sterility, and for ancestry and evolution. This is a magical book that focuses on the spiritual connection between humans and trees but there is a practical side to the book to, almost a “how-to” guide for the wannabe woodsman and what different trees can give us, and what we can give them in return. The potted history and meaning of different varieties of tree are particular highlights.
42. Oliver Le Carrer – Atlas of Cursed Places. Essentially a list of places which carry a certain weight to them, or history; something ethereal or unknown or perhaps the site of a tragedy or a war crime. Some are more well known than others and there are locations that I’ve not come across. The one I recall most vividly is the description of an ancient Leper colony in a stone’s thrown of some of the most beautiful locations in Venice which very few people are willing to visit for fear of what the small island holds.
43. Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad. A brilliant fictional novel grounded in the reality of slave-era USA. The book relies heavily on literal metaphor to tell the story of the escape from the plantations of the deep South to the seeming freedom of the Northern states via the famous Underground Railroad. As you would expect there are questions of morality, law and ethics run right through this text and there are some well crafted characters who stir the blood in pity, wonder and spite. One of the best novels I’ve read this year.
44. Tom Nancollas – Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History From Eddystone to Fastnet. I don’t know about you but I’ve always been fascinated with lighthouses; long before I even understood what they were for. On family holidays to the East Coast I would see the slowly turning light of Flamborough or Whitby Lighthouse. This book though is principally concerned with “rock lighthouses” those weather-beaten structures built on small lumps of rock that are fully submerged at parts of the day and briefly available at others. Nancollas details how they were built using cases studies of a handful of the buildings; the problems they encountered which were many and not always practical as well as short biographies of the amazing people who advanced these buildings beyond a theory into life-saving beacons of hope.
45. Sjon – The Blue Fox. This follows the tale of an 1883 hunt for the legendary Blue Fox by Icelandic priest Skugga-Baldur. At the same time naturalist Friðrik B. Friðriksson is trying to build a life for Abba, a foreign child with Downs Syndrome he has taken in to his care. The author has a unique voice in their ability to tell other-worldly stories that somehow have an earthly grounding in their quality.
46. Kehinde Andrews – Back To Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century. This excellent book by Midlands born academic Kehinde Andrews has become very relevant in light of the advancement of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Written prior to the most recent instalments of police brutality in the US this provides a history to black radicalism both in the US and the UK which have been linked through the common history of slavery. Andrews details where the disparate liberation movements have failed and where they have progressed before moving onto what the future holds for the advancement of black people in the Anglosphere.
47. Terry Pratchett – Reaper Man: I think my favourite character in the Discworld series is Death so I was happy to pick up the next in the series and find he was the central character. In this Death is essentially made redundant and a new Death takes its place. Death heads to the Discworld to take up a life of farming and keeping a low profile and some of the “fish out of water” scenes had me laughing out loud as Death comes to grips with the very human concepts of friendship, love, alcoholism and depression. Imaginative, hilarious and rockets along at a pace; Terry at his best.
48. Danez Smith – Don’t Call Us Dead. This poetry collection is from someone who is a Black, queer, non-binary, HIV-positive writer, it’s fair to say they have built up quite a backlog of material to write about. Some of these poems and tender and beautiful, others are angry and punchy while there are further pieces that are devastating in their humanity and despair. It’s a powerful collection of urgent poetry that opens with a single epic poem with shorter follow ups that simply desire to be read.
49. Ocean Vuong – Night Sky With Exit Wounds. Heavily decorated Ocean Vuong brought their debut novel out earlier this year to wide acclaim; this poetry collection shows the depth of thought that flows through his writing. There are some poems that are difficult to read here; not in their complexity but their subject-matter. It’s not for those that are easily troubled by the darker side of life and the trauma of others.
50. Sam Friedman – The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays To Be Privileged. This excellent study details in depth how the myth of meritocracy that we are told we live in is just that, a myth. It is clear from data shown here, and elsewhere for this book builds on much prior work, that a level playing field our society is not. While the differences in outcomes for people born into the middle class, who attend public school no longer surprise me, what did impress me with this book was the attention to intersectionality in the data and the doubling down of the hardship people face. So while it is true that a white woman from a council estate has less privilege, they still have more privilege than a black man from the same estate etc. It’s something it’s easy to be aware of and I think many people, certainly those on the left are, but the facts and figures are raw and uncomfortable to read at time. An important investigation.
51. Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser – Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto. The three authors are the organisers of the International Women’s Strike movement and have written a working document for the advancement of feminism and feminist goals which are timely, intersectional and inspiring. It details different movements around the globe, drawing on experiences from the people behind them and the importance of solidarity for the feminist movement in the 21st Century. They annihilate the concept of “board room feminism” where by some magic trick all women’s lives will be improved is a few more rich white women make it into the CEOs office or the Board of Directors; feminism is nothing if it isn’t intersectional and the great con is that a rising tide lifts all boats? I say why be boats when you can be the wave and this book agrees.
52. Kira Jane Buxton – Hollow Kingdom. This was one of those “just pick it up and read books”, it hadn’t been recommended and I knew nothing of the author or what the story really was and I’m so glad I did. The concept sounds nuts and also sounds like something I might have hated were it not told so well – it concerns a domesticated crow called S.T. whose owner has started acting very strangely, as have all humans as a result of the zombie apocalypse. S.T. is determined to get to the bottom of what is going on and why his master has started walking into walls and bits of him are falling off. It’s incredibly funny at times and heart-warming in others with genuine jeopardy along the way. Yes, odd but well worth the read.
53. Joanne M. Harris – The Gospel of Loki. The author of Chocolat writing under her Sci-Fi/fantasy name with the additional M, ala Iain Banks has written a sort of fictionalised biography of the Norse mischief-maker Loki. It’s told in the first person with Loki being a brash, confident and at time pitiable soul as he moves from one myth to the next with an irreverent outlook on eternal life and a boredom that verges on the insubordinate as Asgard in all its perfection provides little entertainment for those fleet of mind as opposed to foot. Ultimately this is the story of Loki’s eventual fall, but there are further books in the series so it’s not quite a spoiler alert and if you didn’t know then that’s on you as the stories are several millennia old.
54. Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood – Ness. A short, eerie story, or prose poem, illustrated with splendid sketches. Ness is a tail of a ritual propelled by the human death drive and the forces of nature that it is either conjuring, or that are acting to stop it, these are the “more than human forces” defined by the pronouns it, he, she, they and as pitted against the botanist, the ornithologist, the physicist, the engineer and the physicist. It’s inventive with a genuine tension, erudite without being pretentious and beautifully drawn.
55. Tim Pat Coogan – The Famine Plot. Some might call this book a revisionist look at the Irish potato famine; the author begins by describing histories of the period already written and which were written by anglophiles and sycophants as he sees it. He makes a convincing argument and then moves on to the political story of the famine, laying blame firmly at the door of the political class, particularly the English establishment. Robert Peel is absolved partly only due to the horrors to come under his successor, Lord John Russell. However, the man firmly in the crosshairs is the civil servant whose period traversed both Premiers, Charles Trevelyan, a name still revered around Whitehall and a seemingly heartless, genocidal maniac when it came to the Irish. A great work of history. Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2281730534?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
56. William Bynum – A Little History of Science. A spate of these books came out after the reissue of A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. This fails to catch his child-like wonder at what he is writing about and at times drifts beyond the ken of most “young adults” which the book was probably written for. It is immensely broad as you can imagine, taking the earliest scientific treatises from the pre-Christian era up to modern day and cherry-picking what are mankind’s greatest achievements in short easily digested chapters.
57. Rutger Bregman – Utopia for Realists. The author came became notorious a few years ago at Davos where he broke ranks and called for massive tax rises on the global rich, something economists aren’t supposed to do. It was an effective guerrilla PR stunt for this book and a terrific pulling-down-of-pants at the global elite’s playground. The book suggests that while utopia may be impossible that shouldn’t mean we should stop reaching for it. Principally the ideas here are not new but they expand on existing research and contain the most recent data on things like the 15-hour week, universal basic income, migration and it’s positive elements as part of a wider approach to eliminate global poverty. It’s ambitious, funny at times and full referenced with plenty of positive case studies.
58. Ellis Peters – A Morbid Taste For Bones. The first book in the Cadfael series starts rather oddly with two short stories introducing the character before jumping into the meat of the main novel which is ultimately a murder mystery set against the backdrop of an English monastery trying to acquire the remains of a Welsh saint from a small town over the border in the medieval period. It’s a series I will definitely revisit having not expected anything from it; Cadfael himself is a likeable hero; modest, modern and intelligent.
59. Fergus Butler-Gaille – A Field Guide To The English Clergy. A compilation of the eccentrics of the Church in England. A series of vignettes which show people entirely unsuited to their station in life and yet, for the most part, seem to carve out a life for themselves between the vestry and the cloister. Whether drunks or addicts, or fools or intellectuals they are all quite extraordinary including one priest a few hundred years ago who believes himself to be a mermaid.
60. Diane Purkiss – The English Civil War. A People’s History. I feel this title mis-sells the book. While it claims to be a “people’s history” aside from the odd mention of a peasant here and there this remains a history of the war from the point of view of senior parliamentarians and royalists. While no study of the Civil War can ignore them this certainly isn’t a fresh look at the period from the point of view of the downtrodden ala Christopher Hill, whose own works remains unsurpassed. Rather it is a standard history, well written but not what it claims to be.
61. Ian McGuire – The North Water. One on of the best novels I’ve read this year. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize a few years ago and I find such books can be hit and miss but I’ve never read a book that gained the attention of that gong that moved at such a quick pace; it’s thriller-like in the way it moves but so terrifically written at the same time. It follows the story of a whaling boat and its crew that sets sail from Hull in the Victorian period as the blubber market is starting to decline. Aboard the ship is one of the finest villains I’ve come across in all literature called Henry Drax (not, a spoiler, it’s clear from the first couple of Chapters set in Hull). The fate of those on-board contains a great deal of drama but of everything they encounter, they’ve never come across anything like Drax. It’s vividly violent at times and not one to read if you struggle with animal cruelty or sexual violence.
62. Neil DeGrasse Tyson – Astrophysics For People In A Hurry. The author has a joyous way of putting complex ideas into very simple to understand terms. This book is quite entry level, which benefited me I don’t mind admitting, and as a result will have mass appeal. It’s broken up into short digestible chapters which explain the theory behind black holes, planetary motion, the life of stars, how the periodic table explains the extra-terrestrial and plenty of other interesting things that are mind-boggling in scope but very simple to follow when explained properly. There is a lot of humour in this text too and the author isn’t afraid to say when something comes up that we, as a species, don’t yet understand fully.
63. Kevin Rooney – The Blood-Stained Poppy. This book was written around the time of the centenary commemorations of the beginning of World War I. It’s written as a pacifist rallying cry and takes aim at the industry that has developed around the symbol of the red Poppy which annually benefits the British Legion. The argument is that the poppy isn’t and indeed never was a symbol of peace but rather a way of making people proud of Britain’s violent past. Its title and target is deliberately provocative and controversial. I am someone who buys a Poppy every year (in fact several as I lose / destroy them by accident) but I agree with the central thesis here that Britain’s sentimental view of the armed forced absolves the political leadership that have wielded them of responsibility for the atrocities carried out in our names. The best part of the book is the final chapter which rattles through the recent list of those atrocities overseas; there are plenty of them and it remains a selection rather than a comprehensive list and it shows that we are a people who are still trying to come to terms with our collective past.
64. Gillian Clarke – The Sundial. The first collection from the Poet Laureate of Wales is very different from her more recent work but there is still a pastoral quality which I first fell in love with when I read Ice nearly a decade ago. It’s occasionally quite raw but evocative and filled with potential which was fully realised.
65. K.Y. Robinson – The Chaos of Longing. This is a fairly large collection of poems arranged in for parts but more often than not they are very short, sometimes four or five lines at a time and I think it’s hard to convey the point in such short works; you have to be very clear or very, very blunt and I don’t feel most of these poems are either. While it’s clear there are some difficult themes such as trauma and shame and the general feel can be fathomed, the finer points are sometimes frustratingly just out of reach.
66. Alastair Cook – The Autobiography. I don’t read many sport autobiographies but I felt the record run scorer for England, only the second opening batsmen in test cricket to score over 10,000 runs, deserved to be an exception. It is ghost written by Michael Calvin and is probably better for it; while Cook was an efficient batsman it’s rare such talents transfer well to the page. There is a short section on his early life but the meat of the book is his England career and his period as captaincy as you might expect. There is a lot on mental health and the growth of awareness in the sport as well as a frank admission that Cook could have handled certain moments differently. It details well the difficulty of being England Captain and the pressures that come with the roll and as Cook was both leader and member of teams that beat Australia it’s always nice to read about those moments.
67. Rose Tremain – Restoration. A book long recommended by a close friend which deals with the changes in society in the period of Charles II’s kingship. We follow Merivel who is asked to do a favour for the king, a big favour which he endeavours to fulfil, followed by the change in his circumstances and outlook on line following his ability or perhaps lack thereof to keep his promises to the king. The author claims she wrote the book originally as an allegory for Thatcherism and the rejection of it in terms of materialism and the “greed is good” age of the 80s, which makes a lot of sense when you close the book for the final time.
68. Monica Ali – Brick Lane. A book I’d been meaning to read for some time – there seemed to be quite a few people spring up in post-colonial English literature around the same time as Monica Ali and this book was one of the most celebrated at the time – it’s easy to see why. It tells the story of a woman from Bangladesh who is subject to an arranged marriage to an older man who lives on a council estate just off Brick Lane in London. The way Nazneen adapts to like in England is well drawn and the sense of community on the estate among 1st generation migrants is touching. Themes of loss and betrayal run through the book alongside the omnipresent unfulfilled potential of her husband, Channu. It’s warm on many occasions and shows the complexity of family life and never reduces the characters to a crude goodness or badness.
69. Deborah Frances White – The Guilty Feminist. Published as a tie in with the now famous podcast of the same name which is always introduced as “a podcast where we explore our noble goals as feminists and the hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine them”. The book, like the podcast, explores the big questions of feminism an injects humour where necessary to humanise the theory. It is part biographical on the part of the author and part exploration of current-wave feminism addressing some well-trod concepts as well as some currently thorny ones such as trans-rights (the author, rightly in my view, is firmly of the view that trans-women are women). It’s enjoyable but I would have preferred to have read two separate books – one tied into the podcast as a wry look at feminism and a wholly separate biography of Deborah; having both condensed into one volume feels slightly rushed.
70. Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed For Men. The woman who led the campaign to have a woman on the latest round of banknotes has written an excellent, scientific look at how women in the modern world are discriminated against through information flows and our data-driven technologies. While the potential is there for big-data to be used in a way that keeps equality of sex at the centre, it is all too often the case that it is men inputting the data into our modelling, giving us only half a picture from the results. Examples such as every mobile phone thus far has been designed with the larger male hand in mind or that while female-body crash test dummies exist, car companies never test the safety of their cars with women in the driving seats which has lead to female drivers being unnecessarily paralysed or killed. There is a lot here and shows how far the science and technology world needs to travel to start treating women as equal. At times Criado Perez falls into the trap of thinking more women CEOs is the answer which in reality never seems to solve anything without commensurate women-recruitment at other levels in organisations, and there is a lack of intersectionality in the text which is a missed opportunity as some of her thesis would be strengthened with an interpretation of this angle.
71. Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other. The Booker Prize judges in 2019 bottled it and chose joint winners of the gong; this was one of them and I’m sure anyone who has read both novels would have been happy had this been the sole winner. It’s a wonderful exploration of women’s lives. It crosses racial lines, challenges gender conformity, explores sexualities, interrogates class barriers and themes of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and substance abuse through a series of biographical snapshots and histories of the characters which are then woven together at the end with the expert hand of a Savile Row tailor, or tailoress. A terrific novel that lasts long in the memory and gives you plenty to think about.
72. Christopher Hitchens – The Monarchy. A short polemic written in the early 1990s and were the author still alive you would think he would stick to these arguments and be even more baffled as to why the country seems more in love with the royal family than it did towards the end of the 20th Century. It seems to be a peculiarly English fetish, this royal masochism we subject ourselves to. The arguments for keeping the royal family are dissected here one by one and despite being nearly 30 years old, the counter-arguments remain relevant for there are no new reasons to keep the royal family and the old ones are still trotted out today, usually around tourism; as though people won’t still visit Buckingham Palace if there isn’t a tiny pensioner living in a handful of the rooms. Written with verve and passion and before Hitchens became closer to the establishment than his earlier self would have liked.
73. Francis Bacon – The New Atlantis. One of the classic novels of Utopia, The New Atlantis gives us a vision of the ideal society as envisioned by Francis Bacon. Like Thomas More around a century earlier he has to couch his desire in the shroud of allegory so as to not raise the ire of the censors and the oppressors of the day who would not look kindly on the concept of equality and liberty. It is a wishful story of its time and difficult to follow, such is the language but its brevity is welcoming.
74. Slavoj Zizek – Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes The World. Zizek brings his witty and intelligent eye to the Coronavirus global crisis in this short volume which seems to be a return to traditional themes of solidarity and potential for a revolutionary moment. This was written in the early part of the crisis and I believe there is now a second book to accompany it. Zizek is less concerned with the science and how it happened than he is with what comes after and how can progressives utilise this moment. He is right to say that the only to defeat the virus is through solidarity and cooperation; there is nothing like existential threat to make everyone become a socialist. Looking at the nationalisation of key industries that had to happen shows it can be done, it is just a question of political will. The point that sticks in my mind most vividly concerns the deniers and conspiracy theorists from both extremes of politics “Both Alt-Right and fake Left refuse to accept the full reality of the epidemic, each watering it down in an exercise of social-constructivist reduction, i.e., denouncing it on behalf of its social meaning. Trump and his partisans repeatedly insist that the epidemic is a plot by Democrats and China to make him lose the election, while some on the Left denounce the measures proposed by the state and health apparatuses as tainted by xenophobia and therefore insist on continuing social interaction, symbolized by still shaking hands. Such a stance misses the paradox: not to shake hands and isolate when needed IS today’s form of solidarity.”
75. Melissa Harrison – Autumn. This is a lovely collection of prose, diaries and poetry concerning the autumnal season. There are some gems here from some of our best living and dead pastoral writers. Melissa Harrison has collected a wide-ranging look at Autumn going back to the 16th Century right up to the present day with coastal areas, towns, cities and countryside all taken in. My only slight critique would be it seemed to be heavily weighted towards writers from the south of England; but I may have my own bias at play there.
76. John Burnside – Black Cat Bone. This collection is at times haunting, particularly during the lengthy piece, The Fair Chase, which is perhaps not for vegetarians but explores the emotions of a hunting pursuit among a farming community. There is a natural noir the work as a whole, embedded among gelid streams, teeming woodland and open fields. Burnside has been compared to Poe which is probably unfair to both authors but it demonstrates the high esteem in which he is held by the American literati.
77. Tracy K Smith – Wade In The Water. A collection that concerns itself with the forgotten peoples of America. There are roots here that move beyond European calendars and into deep time. Contemporary protest is set against ancient folktale and the clash of worlds holds a story for which the poetic is occasionally sacrificed. It was written when the author was US poet Laureate and as such carries a weight that it would otherwise lack; brave in its controversy and holds firm in its solidarity.
78. Maya Angelou – Amazing Peace. A single poem in a single volume written for the 2005 White House tree-lighting ceremony. It is never over-sentimental and while seasonal doesn’t fall into a “Christmassy” vibe, inclusive of other faiths but at the same time seems to be crying out to be set to music in a modern carol to be played alongside previous generations In The Bleak Midwinter and the Holly and the Ivy
79. A.J.P. Taylor – The First World War. Often referred to as the greatest historian of the 20th Century, largely due to his Origins of the Second World War which is still in print, this volume takes us through World War I from start to finish and locates the evidence which coined to the phrase “lions led by donkeys” which so many revisionist, conservative historians have tried to deny. The truth is the war was stumbled into, hopelessly mismanaged and enforced by grand men of an era best forgotten who knew nothing of the situation on the ground. Haig himself is framed as a war-mongering fool responsible for the deaths of millions of British and allied servicemen. Lloyd George brings some sensibility to the war but really it is a mess for all combatants and their representatives. The most interesting parts are probably those that explain the thinking behind the decisions of the foreign commanders and politicians – Britain certainly wasn’t alone in getting things completely wrong, and the vindictiveness of the “victorious” allies in the Treaty of Versailles are criticised heavily, which ultimately laid the tracks for the Second World War.
80. Ian Rankin – The Hanging Garden. The ninth Rebus novel finds a new Mr Big in Edinburgh who is making a name for himself in criminal circles. Rebus’ own family are violently brought into the power struggle between the upstart and his old nemesis Ger Cafferty, now settled into Barlinnie Prison but still running things from inside. Alongside this is the case of an old retired professor who Rebus has been told to investigate for potentially being involved in Nazi war crimes during World War II. Entertaining as always, fast paced and brutal in places.
81. Alex von Tunzelmann – Reel History: The World According to Movies. A very funny and informative collection from Alex who is both a historian and a film critic. The books moves chronologically through time from prehistory to the (just about) present day and marks films on their historical accuracy as well as their entertainment value. It’s wry and sardonic and takes directors to task strongly while never getting too serious; it’s not the bar room bore style of critique, but it also includes the films that got it right and praises them highly, proving at the same time that well researched films are usually more enjoyable too. Spoiler alert, Mel Gibson doesn’t come out of it looking good.
82. Jerry Brotton – The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. I thought this would be a book on renaissance art; actually there is a VSI concerned specifically with that but this volume is concerned with the whole renaissance period, incorporating philosophy, mathematics, exploration and the early enlightenment alongside the traditional renaissance skills of painting and sculpture. There are some enlightening analyses of Holbein and others and a general theme of advancement, throwing off the shackles of superstition despite the counter-revolutionary forces of reaction. It is a good introduction to the period.
83. Jessie Burton – The Miniaturist. Sat on my shelves for a while and picked up at random really. Set in 17th Century Amsterdam, we follow the newly married Petronella who struggles to adapt to her strange new surroundings in her rich Husband’s home; ran by her Mrs Danvers-like sister in law and two servants. Her husband never seems to be there and she struggles to work out where she fits in to his life. In the meantime she has a model house given to her by her husband as a wedding present and proceeds to fill it with beautiful miniatures from a mysterious nearby craftswoman who seems to know more about her life than she does. It’s eerie and well-written and is well-researched in terms of the religious fervour of the time which becomes all too relevant for the characters.
84. Danny Baker – Going Off Alarming. The second volume in Danny Baker’s memoir follows on in feel from the first one; it’s hilarious and tells stories in machine gun fashion from a man who has certainly lived a life. It begins with the story of him being shot, twice, which had been accidentally left out of the previous book because “he forgot”. This goes largely through the mid to late 80s and into the 90s where Danny was rarely out of the public eye. It finishes as TFI Friday is about to launch and during the period there are all manner of strange tales that help you warm to the writer (surprisingly for some). The real star is, again, Spud, Danny’s father who stalks the pages like a comedy battering ram; the one about him meeting Harry Enfield lives long in the memory.
85. George Eliot – Silas Marner. I felt I hadn’t read much “classic” literature lately so thought I should embark on my first foray into Eliot. I understand this is one of her more accessible novels but not well regarded among Eliot scholars, which surprises me. It may be over-sentimental at times but that lends a humanity to the narrative which can be absent among mid and pre-Victorian novels. The title character is likeable and someone it is easy to empathise with in his travails. It’s a clear and entertaining story with twists and turns that many modern authors would envy while at the same time providing some sterling commentary on the class divisions of the time.
86. Kit de Waal – Common People. A compilation of pieces that speak about class, the working class particularly and individual memory of the contributors. I found many of the chapters evocative of my own childhood, particularly those concerned with the quirks of council estates and working men’s clubs. There are poems mixed in among the personal histories which are few but welcome and it has given me some writers to look up in terms of the fiction they have written. There are so many modern novels that focus on main characters who are themselves writers, or lawyers, or politicians, or doctors, or accountants etc ad infinitum. It will be nice to catch up with the writers contributing to this and read about characters that speak to me, and to my class; they are still few and far between.
87. Aaron Bastani – Fully Automated Luxury Communism. I think much of this book is what Aaron would have written post-financial crash 10 years ago. It’s one of many books from the left which is still answering questions posed by Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama which have already been addressed. Beyond the historical analyses it becomes an interesting book on what the future holds and how automation and robotics alongside genetic modification could be harnessed by the powers of progress. The dark side is the likely reality that large corporations will gain control of the levers of advancement and we will all suffer; nothing about our current politics suggests that is wrong.
88. Albert Camus – The Rebel. A lengthy philosophical treatise on what constitutes a rebel, or rebelliousness among a people; what indeed does rebellion mean and how is it identified? At times this is complex and dare I say overlong, but the central message of power held within the bosom of revolutionaries the world over is a strong one. Camus is an admirer of revolt, knowing his role is the narrator of such activities rather than an actor himself. It’s a thesis that is beautifully analysed and enjoyable to read while requiring your full attention as you do. Camus remains and inspiration to many but here we discover the ideas that inspired him.
89. Lawrence Booth – Wisden Cricketers Almanac 2020. An annual read for me but this is one of the finest editions of Wisden that I have encountered. It is a collectors edition immediately due to the exploits of the England cricket team in 2019 which this tome reviews, but some of the commissioned pieces are full of life and the editors notes on cricketing matters are both controversial and welcome, addressing the predicaments of a cricketing board that seem entirely at odds with the public they are trying to entice.
90. Jerrold E. Hogle – The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. As a recovering goth I’ve always been interested in anything associated with the movement. Its amusing that the word has so many connotations. I remember a literary exhibition at the British Library on the Gothic in literature which was quite special and this book lends an academic bent to that visual extravaganza. Most people agree that Walpole’s Castle of Otranto is the beginning of the literary gothic, but no one seems to know where it ends; after all Kate Mosse and Elizabeth Kostova in the 21st century continue well trodden themes of the gothic; some say the swan-song was the year without a summer which brought us Frankenstein and The Vampyre but the truth is the Gothic remains an influence worldwide and while it may have waned in the mid1800s here, it was gaining ground in France, Germany and as far afield as America through Poe and Lovecraft, A thorough examination of the genre and very informative – the bibliography has been copied and saved.
91. Vijay Prashad – Red Star Over The Third World. I have read several books on the October Revolution of 1917 but none that explained the impact on the third world, the global south and the revolutionaries that cut their teeth on the ideology they saw succeeding in Russia which combined the Marxist ideal of a workers revolution alongside a peasant movement that had a huge impact on history. One can see with how it is still demonised and propagandised against how scared the global ruling class worries about it. This book has given me plenty more left heroes to look up and movements to become familiar with. I remain convinced that the worst thing to happen to the global working class, and the global poor in my lifetime is the collapse of the USSR.
92. Ali Smith – How To Be Both. The book that has disappointed me most this year I am afraid. It is two novels cut and shut into one book. The first concerns a teenage girl who has lost her mother to illness and how she comes to terms with it with frequent flashbacks to when they last went on holiday together to Italy where they viewed the work of a little known artist. The second half of the book is the story of the artist and how he lives on through his work, observing our modern girl and how everything across space and time is connected. It’s highly conceptual and well put together but I was left wanting to know what happened with the girl when the story suddenly leaves her without any real explanation. It feels like the kind of novel that book reviewers love and that readers are frustrated by.
93. Stephen Fry – Mythos. Fry takes a look at the subject of Greek myth with his wry, sardonic wit in a retelling that is enjoyable and easier to follow than Graves, unsurprisingly. The stories are all here from Gaia to Kronos to Zeus etc. in all their brutality and imagination. There is some excellent cross-referencing too so you can easily go back and find when a certain god or goddess was first mentioned, to remind you of where they fit into a family tree that is more complex than a Medieval monarchy.
94. Brian Cox – The Planets. I’ve always been fascinated by the make-up of our nearest galactic neighbours and this book has told me plenty of things I didn’t know, particularly about which Russian and American probes went where and what they were sent to discover, with contributions from the scientists involved. It’s arranged from the nearest to the sun outward which seems logical and has some excellent diversions on planetary moons which are fascinating in their own right and could swallow volumes on their own given Jupiter and Saturn have approx. 150 moons between them alone. It’s also sumptuously illustrated, dotted with actual photographs from various telescopes and historic probes as well as artists impressions for those planets where we haven’t yet penetrated the gaseous atmospheres.
95. Alberto Manguel – The Library At Night. I didn’t know this author but it seemed to be a love-story to libraries; in particular his own, so I thought why not. It’s a really nice exploration of what libraries are, what they mean, their importance to history; not just as repositories, but places of study, of advancements in architecture and space for the echoes of the human mind to penetrate each new generation. There are some lovely anecdotes here, personal and historic, that explain why the library always adapts to each changing time and geography. It’s a great book to read at night oddly enough, perhaps surrounded by other tomes in a comfy chair with a glass of something friendly at your side.
96. David Long – Bizarre London. Not quite the folkloric study I was looking for but an interesting collection of hauntings and strangeness in our Capital city. It’s one of those bathroom books really that can just be read a couple of pages at a time and lose nothing for it. It’s fun and grizzly in places but not a serious look at the mythology of London and its people which goes back for Millennia.
97. T.H. White – The Goshawk. I want to read Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk but I know she references this a lot so I thought I would read this first and hopefully get to Helen in the new year. It’s a touching, well-written description of the act of taming a bird of prey. The book is several decades old and is really in touch with country practices and lore and that help to move the text along. A really pleasant book to read, though perhaps not one for vegetarians when looking at the diet of a hawk.
98. Judith Flanders – Christmas: The Biography. A history of Christmas, put simply. This takes us from the early days of Christmas which piggy-backed on Saturnalia and the Winter Solstice to carve out a Christian feast which, despite the best efforts of the men in black at the top of the church(es), has pretty much always been about feasting, drinking to excess and being generally merry. Bring back the Lord of Misrule and the Bean King I say.
99. Jarrod Kimber – Test Cricket: The Unauthorised Biography. Kimber is one of the best cricket writers of this generation. He follows on well from Gideon Haigh and at times has the flourish of a Cardus or a Swanton while at the same time maintaining a less serious side to his writing that is welcome; after all cricket is a ridiculous game. This starts at the very beginning, when America were a force in cricket and when AC Milan was founded in Italy as a cricket team and tracks the whittling away of nations inducted into the pantheon of test cricket we have today. It covers developments and innovations, scandals and triumphs. It’s a brilliant book from a man hopelessly in love with the game, as indeed am I.
100. Chinua Achebe – Collected Poems. Few people have read Achebe’s poetry output, being understandably more concerned with his fiction and prose but there is real quality here and subjects which provide a great deal of troubling material such as the Biafra War and corporate lynchings alongside the all-too-usual colonial and racial problems. Alongside there are love poems and wide horizons written in a unique voice that time will not let us forget.
101. Rowan Williams – The Poems Of Rowan Williams. The Church of England possibly robbed the world of a fine poet when Rowan Williams entered it and ultimately became Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s no secret he was an intellectual during his time in-post and remains a literary figure now. It’s easy to dismiss such figures as wannabes but these poems would surely have been worth publishing regardless of his exposure or position in society. They aren’t all godly verses but you’d be surprised if he didn’t crop up from time to time; it’s very readable regardless.
102. Kate Mosse – Winter Ghosts. A good novel for the Christmas period, however I was too engrossed and finished it in a few days. It’s the story of a man who by accident rather than design stumbles on a small village in the South West of France where a tragedy seems to have occurred some years back; our hero notices the gloom in the town as he has only recently begun to accept his brother’s death in the Great War He meets an enchanting young woman who he realises needs his help; but not the sort of help he realises. I have several other books by Mosse but this is the first I’ve read; I’ll definitely explore her more substantial works now.
103. Pat Barker – Regeneration. The first in a trilogy of books that go by the same name. This book focuses on Craiglockhart War Hospital where patients are treated for shellshock and various other mental health complaints as a result of their exposure to trauma in the Great War. War poets Sassoon and Owen are patients being treated by W.H.R. Rivers, the famous pioneer who began treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. There are some imaginatively constructed conversations between the characters and through another patient, Prior, themes of class distinction are explored alongside contemporary masculinity and gender roles. A complex work, worthy of its historic praise.
Politics & History 