More

All consuming (Neal Lawson)
Contempt (Alberto Moravia)
Roughing it (Mark Twain)

I think I’ve forgotten something…

Three more

Roberto Bolano – The Skating Rink
Eric Nisenson – John Coltrane and his Quest
Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Invention of Morel

The Bolano is excellent (of course), Nisenson’s Coltrane book was very good as well.  I was a bit underwhelmed by the Casares, but it was a very quick read.  It wasn’t bad or anything, just not quite the perfect book I’d been lead to expect.  Good though.

Two more

50 people who ruined football, by Michael Henderson – A+, grumpy old man reading for football fans.

Ross MacDonald, the Doomsters – loved it.  He really does see shades of grey rather than black and white.  Not up with Chandler but to me he’s better than Hammett.

Three more

Raymond Chandler – the lady in the lake (re-read).  Chandler’s best?   Everyone knows The Big Sleep because of it’s name and the films, but I would argue that this is a better book.  One of the Chandler’s that has it all.

Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood.   Fantastic!   I like Jim White (the singer) and O’Connor’s his favourite writer, and it’s so bloody obvious.  I have the lovely Library of America complete works volume, so plenty more to come.

Ross Macdonald – The Drowning Pool.  Lew Archer’s not far behind Philip Marlowe.  This is good stuff.

Tally

I think that’s 41 so far this year.   Let’s see if I can get another 11 down before the end of December.

two more

Susan Jacoby – The Age of American Unreason

David Peace – Tokyo Year Zero

Couple of crackers. The first about dumbing down in America was a terrific, page-turning read.  The second, a sluggish juggernaut of misery, David Peace on fire.

Ross MacDonald – Black Money

There’s something excellent about noir-era California.   Here Ross MacDonald’s PI, Lew Archer, is on the case of a mysterious Frenchman who turns out not to be French and who has stolen money from various shady characters.   Great stuff!

Also read:  Christopher McDougall – Born to Run.  Which is about running, specifically long distance running, and includes much talk of strange Mexican tribes where people can run forever.  Great book.

Oh

Also, Carlos Ruiz Zafon – the Angel’s game

Loved it.  He has a way of doing this that allows you to ignore the fact that his plot has got way out of control.   Good, honest, fun reading.

two more

Why England Lose by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

Almost the best book on football I’ve read for a while, but only half of it really works and in the end I was left thinking that we’re still a couple of years off a genuine “this is how football works” book.   Close, and very good, but no cigar.

The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham

A terrific read. Wadham moved to France and brought up a family there, and in this excellent book tells us why France is like it is (to her anyway).   Really, really interesting – she’s not, like so many English authors writing about France – reliant on cliche and humour to get through.  This is a very deep explanation of many phenomena, and one of the best books I’ve read this year.

More again

Grant Wahl – the Beckham Experiment.   Pretty good. Easy read, fairly generic sports book in the end I suppose, but revealing and interesting.

Paul Auster – hand to mouth.  Good stuff.  And I’ve never enjoyed his fiction.   (this is his fairly brief story of living lean before making it as a writer)

Much else on the go, hence lack of updates – I’m at about p600 of Don Quixote, and have about five other bigguns on the go…

More

The manual of detection – Jedediah Berry

Bah.  I read a good review for this in the London Review of Books magazine, but in all honesty I thought this poor.  It’s sold as detective fiction, noirish, but the author has taken it upon himself to go all Kafka and also to employ lots of confusing dream sequences.   I am not often negative about books but on this occasion I feel the author was trying to be a bit too clever and more interested in pleasing himself than the reader.

The day of the barbarians – Barbero

Short history book, quick read, interesting stuff.   About the fall of the Roman empire and how they eventually stretched themselves too thin, ignored immigrant rights and eventually came a cropper.  I had no idea that there was a Barbarian tribe called Alan.   How about that?    I sometimes felt the author was contradicting himself and, while appreciating the short format, it did seem a bit rushed on occasion.  Still, good airport read.

Quick updates:

Paul Kingsnorth – Real England: The Battle Against The Bland ***1/2
Christopher Hutt – The Death of the British Pub ***
Roberto Bolano – Amulet ****
Saul Bellow – More Die of Heartbreak ****1/2

Jim Dodge – Not Fade Away

Re-reading.   This is one of my favourite books, by one of my favourite writers.  The story of Floorboard George Gastin, who gets involved in an insurance scam and spends most of the book hot-footing it across America in a stolen cadillac with a vintage record player in the back seat.   He doesn’t sleep for days on end, owing to a massive supply of amphetemines, and by the end of the book his brain is fried and the characters he meets get stranger and stranger, or at least it seems that way.   Like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in some ways, but as Dodge himself put it, without the meanness of that book.   Brilliant.  Dodge is a poet and his writing just sings from first to last.  Wonderful, and in my opinion a much better book than “Fup”, which made him famous.

Roberto Bolano – Nazi Literature in the Americas

This is terrific.  Typical Bolano, a broad, plausible, ridiculous gallery of the fantastic.   Here he writes profiles of 30 odd made up writers, all of whom, to some degree, have far right sensibilities.   Some are deadly serious, some playful, but all are wonderfully real.   The range of characters is phenomenal.  Not all of them can write (many self-published) but there’s something good on almost every page.   I”m starting to figure out Bolano’s world too – there are characters in here who feature in 2666 and probably some of his other work too.  Crazy.

Colin Dexter – Last bus to Woodstock

I knew I’d forgotten a book!

The first Morse story.  A few years ago I bought a box set off ebay, which arrived with a massive hole in the back.  I wasn’t very pleased about that, but the seller said it had been fine when it left him so that was that.  Anyway, Hade and I were in Woodstock the other week so I decided to read the book when we got back.  Quick read, some fun bits, and a ludicrous conclusion.   Diverting enough though, and I’m a big Morse fan, so I’ll keep ploughing through them.

Jason Epstein – book business

Jason Epstein is/was a publisher in the States for 50+ years, and here he ruminates on the industry past, present and future.  It’s written in the early part of this decade so we find him considering the internet as a novelty rather than the fully entrenched force it now is, but the book’s a darn good read anyway, if only for the brief name-drops throughout (lovely little portrait of William Faulkner, for instance).   This, like the Brautigan below, is a re-read, and I enjoyed it more this time.

Richard Brautigan – an unfortunate woman

Written a couple of years before he killed himself, this is half-fiction half-memoir, and, being Brautigan, it’s very hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  It’s in many ways a journal, filled with reflection and consideration for the world he finds himself living in.  Why would we care?  Well Brautigan was hugely successful for a time in the 60s, but by the early 80s, when he shot himself, the world had stopped caring.  His books weren’t of interest.  So here we get brief mentions of lectures and odds and ends, but it’s a sad book and you can well imagine how the author was most of the way down a steep downward slope.   Unique, a treasure, and sadly no more.   Brautigan was a rare treasure.

Miranda July – No one belongs here more than you

A collection of short stories.

I sometimes think that my imagination goes into weird places and that nobody sees what I see.   Richard Brautigan’s mind did the same, and while much of what he wrote was dismissed as childish drivel (as much of it was), there’s a beauty in his ability to go off track, and a deep, deep sadness in his writing.   “So the wind won’t blow it all away” is amazing and probably couldn’t have been written by anyone else.

Except Miranda July.  These stories aren’t all great – I skipped a couple – but they’re unique and wonderful.  A bit too much, at times – you can’t eat chocolate all day – but this is pure bliss and hugely, hugely recommended.

PS I am currently reading Don Quixote and a Mark Twain biography with tiny printing, hence the slow updates.  I may be some time… added to this I’m sure I’ve forgotten my first book of the year (I thought I had two to write about tonight).  Ho hum.

By night in Chile – Roberto Bolano

My first non-epic Bolano, this one’s 130 pages and, unlike his monsters, takes a bit of getting into.  This is a little strange:  he can make 898 pages of 2666 feel like a sprightly read but here we must struggle through something must smaller.   Perhaps this is a translation issue (Natasha Wimmer only started on the big books; the rest are all Chris Andrews) but I doubt it.   This is a death bed monologue from a priest and former literary critic, who happened along the way to teach Marxism to General Pinochet (among other things), and spends the book streaming these experiences at it without a single paragraph break.  Kafka, of course, did this, and that troubled me too.  Bolano scurries along and while the writing is frequently poetic, it’s only at about page 60 when something clicks and you feel that you’re reading something coherent.  (that’s what I felt anyway; Bolano would no doubt be scornful of my limitations as a reader).    In the end it’s another good read, but 2666 was an A+++, Savage Detectives an A+, and this perhaps a B-.  Hence the relative disappointment.   As with several books I’ve read lately, I suspect I’m going to have to read it again to get full value though, in which case I may realise what I’ve missed the first time around.B

How to read and why – Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is a curmudgeonly literary critic and uses this book to make me very aware that I’m not spending enough time on the classics.  His view seems to be that we have Shakespeare and then, some way off, a few other writers who are occasionally quite good.   He is, though, persuasive on the merits of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (and I’m reading Edith Grossman’s translation of this now) and also the likes of Thomas Pynchon (who I’d previously written off), Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner and various others along the way.   So there is some modern writing in there, and it’s interesting to understand what a professional reader makes of it all.  I’m not sure what I really learned, but I love reading about writing so this was a good pickup.

Night Haunts – Sukhdev Sandhu

This is really good.  The author spends time in London at night, talking to people who are awake when the rest of us are asleep.  This includes fox terminators, boat drivers, nuns, sleep deprivation investigators, cleaners, Samaritans, all sorts.  It’s a fascinating look at a world we never see, a tribute to this great and frightening city.

Roberto Bolano, 2666

Every bit as good as it’s meant to be.   896 pages, or whatever it is, but I didn’t want it to end.  Frankly it didn’t have to, Bolano could happily have spun this out for another few sections had time and inclination been on his side.

There are all sorts of reviews (and theses) being written on the subject of 2666, and it’s a book that demands your attention.   There is so much to say…. it even makes the idea of a book group seem worthwhile (and I’ve never thought that before).    I’ll have to give this a proper going over at some point.

Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senslessness

A short one this, suggested by Bolano translater Natasha Wimmer in an interview somewhere.   The story of a man losing his marbles in an unspecified central american country.  He is ostensibly there to edit a 1,100 report into various military atrocities, then catches an STD from a Spanish girl with a military boyfriend, then gets a hideous persecution complex, then runs away.

Another one I need to read again to appreciate fully I think.  My days of whizzing through books have to be numbered as I’m just not getting full value from the really good stuff.   Hmmm.

Brodie’s Report, Borges

I’m currently reading “How to read and why” by Harold Bloom, and one of his things is to read things slowly, and possibly more than once.   I did read a few of these stories more than once, and all were much better for it.  No, they weren’t better, my enjoyment of them was.   So I think I need to read the whole lot again.

Which would be no hardship because this is all good stuff, tales of South American hard men, in short.

This Craft of Verse by JL Borges

A short, pleasing read.  Borges comes across as a self-effacing, interesting, interested, man, the type who has much to offer the world after what must have been years of deep and wide reading.   I suspect Stephen Fry would have enjoyed Borges’ company.

This is mainly about poetry, but is perhaps describable as a general rumination on creativity and literature from someone who has much of value to say on the subject.

Bearded Tit by Rory McGrath

Sorry for lack of activity, I’ve been reading Roberto Bolano’s 2666, Mark Twain’s Roughing It (itself 600 pages) and various other things, so nothing got finished.   “Bearded Tit” is the first of my peripheral reads to get done, so here we go:

An enjoyable read.  This is more of a nature book than anything else, with McGrath giving it some narrative drive by weaving in some personal backstory and trademark comedy.   The author, famous on TV for being a somewhat blundering fool, is a lot sharper than given credit for, which is why I picked up the book in the first place.   In no time I learned that he had been to Cambridge University, which confirmed my suspicions that his TV persona is largely made up for the purpose of his ‘roles’.   Sure enough we learn about a fairly sensitive man who is deeply interested in ornithology and has now found a vehicle for sharing that love.

It’s not going to change the world, but it was never meant to.  A light-hearted, funny, informative read:  sometimes you need books like this.

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin by David Nobbs

If you liked the old sitcom you’ll love this.  First part of three in this omnibus, I’ve paused after the first book in the series for fear that I might go completely Reggie on the world.

Perrin is a middle manager at Sunshine Desserts, leads a dreary life that goes over and over and over and over.  Nobbs had to be careful: comic novels can get dull quite quickly, but there’s a darkness to all this, as Reggie thoroughly falls apart, which really helps to counter the very funny passages that Nobbs puts together.    It’s brilliant stuff, and while I’m not going to rush back to parts 2 and 3, I can’t see that Nobbs could’ve done this much better than he did.

Tove Jansson – The Summer Book

Brilliant.  Another Crockatt & Powell find, this.  I started reading in January but stopped for a while.   I may be lapsing into cliche here, but reading this was like reading poetry, or eating the finest chocolate known to man.  You just have to take it slow and enjoy every single word.   I am not always a careful reader, so will have to go through again to do it justice, but my word what a lovely book.

It’s the story of a young girl and her grandmother on holiday on an island, which 99% of the time is something I wouldn’t bother reading.   But no, a lovely, lovely book.  To be treasured.

The writer’s face is a good indicator of what you’ll get.  Smiley mischievous happiness.

Richard Ford: Independence Day

More real than Updike, more readable than Roth, but somehow less interesting than either.   This said, I would rather read Richard Ford than most writers, it’s just… well I don’t know.   First, I want more to happen.  This is a very well observed book, but you read it and keep thinking “yes, good, he notices well doesn’t he?” and in the end it half gets in the way.

Second, Frank Bascombe, is not as strong a character as he might be.   He’s drifting through life, sure, but he has a lot of money in the bank, he doesn’t appear to have hurt anyone’s feelings, and, well where’s the conflict?  There’s an ex-wife, a girlfriend, a son, a daughter, a few friends, but it’s all very jovial.   Which is fine, it is a very realistic book, but somehow fiction’s meant to be more than that.   He gets away with it because he’s extremely good at what he does, but you find yourself wanting more from him.

More of the same after The Sportswriter then, and I’ll read The Lay of the Land soon and enjoy it, but perhaps it’s time for me to find his short stories because the novels aren’t to me, quite what they’re reputed to be.

John Naish – Enough

The cental premise being that, as a race, we now have enough of everything.  Food, work, stuff… interesting book, although not particularly life changing in that I’ve thought much of this for some time.  Which isn’t a criticism, he’s just very much preaching to the converted, which limits the wow factor I suppose.   A competent and interesting book though, no doubt.

Tom Hodgkinson’s How to be Free might be a good companion to this.

The dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

Oooh. Liked this. Best Wallander I’ve read so far I think (I’ve done four now). Usual stuff, Wallander has problems, existential concerns, but finds himself in the midst of a giant Latvian conspiracy. Quite John Le Carre, but in a good way. I get the feeling I wouldn’t much like Henning Mankell – not sure why – but his books are a joy to read. Sometimes you just get stuck in your reading, have about six books where you’ve got to page 23 and no further. At times like these you wander to the crime shelf, pick up something like this, and belt through it. Hurray!

Underworld, Don DeLillo

I hadn’t stopped writing this, I’ve just been reading Underworld.  Damned if I know what it was all about, but I enjoyed it a lot, all 800+ pages.

David Lodge – The Picturegoers

David Lodge – The Picturegoers

David Lodge’s first novel.  He wrote this when he was 25.  That’s impressive.

It’s the story of a fictional South London suburb, and centres on the local cinema.  Everyone goes to the cinema, and Lodge introduces us to a dozen or so of the audience early in the book.

I’m going to have to stop here for now, the prick upstairs has Ian Dury on loud and the bassline is doing my head in.  More tomorrow.

Marcus Trescothick – Coming back to me

Marcus Trescothick – Coming back to me

Hmm.  This won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, beating CCN favourite Musa Okwonga in so doing, so I had high hopes.

And it is a good book.  The voice is, I imagine, bang on.   Ghost Peter Hayter has done well with that.  Trescothick comes across you’d expect, a player of his time: part laddish (but inoffensively so), part serious athlete (but reluctantly so), and generally a good egg.   He plays the game the way he is.   See ball; hit ball.

Then, of course, comes the depression, which fills the second half of the book.  At first I thought “come on, there’s nothing to be afraid of, depression is common these days”, but soon realised that this was unfair.  Would I, for example, venture to take time away from my own job for a mental illness?   I would find it very hard.  And I am a nobody.  Marcus Trescothick is a somebody.   It must have torn him apart.

He is very good at describing this.   We see how helpless he became, how Duncan Fletcher, Michael Vaughn and others just couldn’t get to grips with what was happening, didn’t see the disaster unfolding before their eyes (although Andrew Strauss comes across as a particularly caring teammate, which is encouraging given his recent promotion).  It all spun out of control.   I felt extremely sorry for Trescothick and his family.

So yes, a good book.  We rarely see anything of our sporting heroes in their autobiographies, perhaps because there is nothing to see, but Trescothick’s horror show is a brave, presumably honest account of a terrible period in his life.   I suspect a better book could be written by the same duo in another decade or so – the depression does occasionally feel like a flash flood that is pretty much sorted, which presumably it can’t be – but a good read for now and again, credit to the man for telling his story.  It can’t have been easy.

Stephen Oppenheimer – Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World

Stephen Oppenheimer – Out of Eden; The Peopling of the World

That rarest of books: I understood about half of it, but still read on.  This is the story of how man left Africa 85,000 years ago and filled up the world.  In a nutshell, from Eritrea, out over the middle east, then things split up: some went on round the coast to Australia, some cut back and ended up in Europe, some kept going, up through Russia (as is) and over to America, down through there and into South America.  The dates, roughly:

Modern man becomes: 150,000 years ago
Through Arabian peninsula: 85,000 years ago
Some people went to South-East Asia: 75,000 years ago
Australia reached: 65,000 years ago
Europe entered: 46-50,000 years ago
Beringia (land between present Russia and Canada): 22-25,000 years ago
USA covered: 15-19,000
Chile: 12,500 years ago.

Puts things in perspective doesn’t it?

So like I say, very hard going, but a vital book if only to explain how on earth (ha) all this happened.

Cormac McCarthy – The Road

Cormac McCarthy – The Road
Bloody hell.  One of the best books I have read.   Frightening.  Sparse.  Frightening.   I am not clever enough to talk about books like this.   Bloody hell.

Lewis, Amini, Lannon – A General Theory of Love

Lewis, Amini, Lannon – A General Theory of Love
No really. What is love?  It runs our lives, one way or another.  And this book explores how and why we develop this emotion, whether it is present outside humans (it is, of course), and what it all means for us under different circumstances (being alone is not healthy, etc).    Falls away a bit in the end, but generally a riveting read.  I felt weird reading this on the tube though.

Kay Redfield Jamison – An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison – An Unquiet Mind
Hard reading, but not because it’s a bad book.  On the contrary, it’s a very good book.  A very powerful first-hand account of depression.  Has that American way of over-intellectualising everything, but this perhaps goes with the territory.   What do I mean?  Well, as a people, it does seem that Americans are very interested (and indeed capable) of talking about feelings, the inner world.   Much more than we are anyway.  And the constant probing into this can be hard work.   But again, that’s the whole point of the book isn’t it?   So perhaps the fault lies with me, the reader.    A bit like complaining that a horror film was scary.

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