BOOKS 2013: September
88. Angelmaker - Nick Harkaway
Joe Spork, son of the infamous criminal Mathew 'Tommy Gun' Spork just wants a quiet life, repairing clockwork in a wet, unknown bit of London.
Edie Banister, former superspy, lives quietly and wishes she didn't. She's nearly ninety and the things she fought to save don't seem to exist anymore. She's beginning to wonder if they ever did.
When Joe is asked to fix one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. The client? Unknown. The device? A 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis. Joe's once-quiet world is now populated with mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe. The only way he can survive, is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she gave up years ago, and pick up his father's old gun...
89. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin - the new guest at The Coach and Horses - Is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of his old friend Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however - and when Kemp refuses to help, Griffin resolves to wreak his revenge.
90. A Certain Slant of Light - Laura Whitcomb
In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen-terrified, but intrigued-is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.
91. Goodbye To All That - Robert Graves
An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in Penguin Modern Classics.
In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life. It also contains memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy, and covers his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson. Goodbye to All That, with its vivid, harrowing descriptions of the Western Front, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.
92. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.
93. The Little Mermaid - H.C. Andersen
The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father, the sea king; her grandmother and her five elder sisters. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance…
94. The Hunting Wasp - John Crompton
Unlike social wasps, hunting wasps fill their life with action and battle. Crompton describes their lives like a veteran war reporter.
95. Some Do Not... - Ford Madox Ford
Parade’s End is the great British war novel and Ford Madox Ford’s major achievement as a novelist. Originally published as four linked novels between 1924 and 1928, it follows the story of Christopher Tietjens, as his life is shattered by his wife’s infidelities and overturned by the mud, blood and destruction of the First World War. Tietjens, with his old-fashioned Tory values, is already out of step with the corrupt political culture of Edwardian England: his experiences at the Front and his developing relationship with the suffragette Valentine Wannop force him into a radical reconfiguring of his values as he participates in the post-war period of national re-construction. Parade’s End is both a subtly perceptive psychological novel and a richly descriptive chronicle of ‘the public events of a decade’. Through Tietjens, his beautiful (and unforgettably cruel) wife, Sylvia, and the principled Valentine, Ford draws us into the world of the English upper class as it goes through a period of crisis and transformation.
96. No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford
97. Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front - Richard Holmes
The first history of World War I to place centre-stage the British soldier who fought in the trenches, this superb and important book tells the story of an epic and terrible war through the letters, diaries and memories of those who fought it.
Of the six million men who served in the British army, nearly one million lost their lives and over two million were wounded. This is the story of these men - epitomised by the character of Sgt Tommy Atkins - and the women they left behind.
Using previously unseen letters, diaries, memoirs and poetry from the years 1914-1918, Richard Holmes paints a moving picture of the generation that fought and died in the mud of Flanders. He follows men whose mental health was forever destroyed by shell shock, women who lost husbands and brothers in the same afternoon and those who wrote at lunchtime and died before tea.
Groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed, this book tells the real story of trench warfare, the strength and fallibility of the human spirit, the individuals behind an epic event, and their legacy. It is an emotional and unforgettable masterpiece from one of our most important historians.
98. A Man Could Stand Up- - Ford Madox Ford
Roundabout the end of August I watched the recent TV serialisation of Parade's End and loved it. I loved its talkiness; its complexity; its willingness to assume the viewer is an intelligent human being capable of extracting information from nuances rather than anvils. I fell, to my surprise and confusion, totally in love with Christopher because intelligence, integrity and moral fibre do it for me even when converged together to form a point-of-view I completely disagree with. I also fell in love with Sylvia - less confusedly, this time, for "self-centred, ferociously cunning historical women" are characters I repeatedly go for: think Becky Sharpe, Scarlett O'Hara etc. Needless to say I immediately snapped up the book. Or four books, I should say, as it is a tetralogy.
I managed the first three this month - the only three worth knowing about, if you consider the opinion of the likes of Graham Greene worthy of listening to - and was again surprised by how much I loved them. They're very... talky: lots of thought-streams and little action. A post-modern addiction to ellipses. I wonder how I'd have reacted had I not chosen to watch the series first. I'm glad I did, because I think in this case that helped: I had a clear image of the characters before I went in which helped me keep track of the names which I'm appalling at usually, in both reading and real life. By watching the series first I could relax back, appreciate the luxuriousness of it, marvel at the intricacy and detail of this fictional characters that, somehow, seem more real than some people I know. There's a real pleasure, something voyeuristic almost, about being allowed to delve that deeply into someone's head, even if that person is not in fact real. These are the kinds of characters I would like to write, the sort that you are convinced are living or have lived because the alternative - that someone has created them out his own brain - is just too ludicrous.
Aside from having me read the books that it was based on, watching Parade's End re-ignited that interest I have in WWI literature and non-fiction. There's something about WWI that I think resonates in European - certainly English - minds the way that WWII does not. While for us (that is, English) the mythology of WWII is at least something that, in some way, we might be proud of - fighting the Nazis, Blitz spirit, etc. - the mythology of WWI is one of sadness, wasted life, an entire generation of men murdered or mutilated in minds and bodies. Unlike WWII there's no obvious villain, just cold bones, and an image of white crosses on green fields. It's an irresistible backdrop, and perhaps the reason that the literature surrounding WWI is so superior to that of WWII. I don't know. I've neither the knowledge nor the intelligence to even begin to elucidate. What I do know that what I get from WWI literature - both fiction and non- alike - is a sense of poignancy that no other period in history evokes. How awful people can be to one another - but, also, how good. It's the stories of random acts of kindness and decency that really get to me most of all, because not only can people be awful to one another but they can be uncommonly good even while being under the worse kind of stress and misery themselves. I don't want to say anything trite that belittles the absolute horror of WWI but there is, when you read about those moments, a part of you that feels a twinge of hope for the species. Because face it, we're a fucking awful species at times.
Unusual ways to get book recommendations: because it's mentioned on a film and you liked the title. Aside from reading Stuart: A Life Backwards in August I also watched the film and, in both, a book called The Hunting Wasp is mentioned. I looked it up on Amazon and, lo and behold, it exists! Only two hardback copies available so I snapped one up and wondered what I'd receieve. What I get was dust-jacketless and yellow-paged book that smelt evocatively of libraries, and within two paragraphs I was in love. It's one of my favourite books on natural history ever. The author is not an expert but what he lacks in scientific rigor he makes up for in writing style, which is so pumped with enthusiasm and visuals you can't help but be carried along by it all. There's nothing of the scientific method here, and his insistence on casting moral judgements on, y'know, bugs, probably makes real naturalists foam at the mouth (as would my incorrect use of the word "bugs") but I myself cared not a jot because, whatever, it was perfect. And interesting! If you can get a copy of this do so. You'll not be sorry, regardless what your feeling about "them little summer things."
Finally read A Brief History of Time. Yeah, that made me feel stupid. I'll stick with Brian Cox for the time being I think.
IN OTHER NON-BOOK NEWS I am going on holiday next week! This is exciting!
Also exciting: the new Hobbit trailer came out! Now, I've made no bones about the fact that I didn't like the first one. It was far too long, full of pointless extraneous information, and the bit with the hedgehog was so cringeworthy I actually shut my eyes at a point. So really I shouldn't be excited about this. And yet:
This is too embarrassing. I am so, so easy. I've looked forward to seeing Smaug on the big screen for, oh, ten years or so because hey I love dragons? But then this trailer happened, he spoke and it was like "Oh, are you actually going to do this? Really? You're actually going to fancy Smaug?"
Apparently yes.
I gotta surround sound this bitch.
Joe Spork, son of the infamous criminal Mathew 'Tommy Gun' Spork just wants a quiet life, repairing clockwork in a wet, unknown bit of London.
Edie Banister, former superspy, lives quietly and wishes she didn't. She's nearly ninety and the things she fought to save don't seem to exist anymore. She's beginning to wonder if they ever did.
When Joe is asked to fix one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. The client? Unknown. The device? A 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis. Joe's once-quiet world is now populated with mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe. The only way he can survive, is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she gave up years ago, and pick up his father's old gun...
89. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin - the new guest at The Coach and Horses - Is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of his old friend Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however - and when Kemp refuses to help, Griffin resolves to wreak his revenge.
90. A Certain Slant of Light - Laura Whitcomb
In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen-terrified, but intrigued-is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.
91. Goodbye To All That - Robert Graves
An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in Penguin Modern Classics.
In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life. It also contains memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy, and covers his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson. Goodbye to All That, with its vivid, harrowing descriptions of the Western Front, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.
92. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.
93. The Little Mermaid - H.C. Andersen
The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father, the sea king; her grandmother and her five elder sisters. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance…
94. The Hunting Wasp - John Crompton
Unlike social wasps, hunting wasps fill their life with action and battle. Crompton describes their lives like a veteran war reporter.
95. Some Do Not... - Ford Madox Ford
Parade’s End is the great British war novel and Ford Madox Ford’s major achievement as a novelist. Originally published as four linked novels between 1924 and 1928, it follows the story of Christopher Tietjens, as his life is shattered by his wife’s infidelities and overturned by the mud, blood and destruction of the First World War. Tietjens, with his old-fashioned Tory values, is already out of step with the corrupt political culture of Edwardian England: his experiences at the Front and his developing relationship with the suffragette Valentine Wannop force him into a radical reconfiguring of his values as he participates in the post-war period of national re-construction. Parade’s End is both a subtly perceptive psychological novel and a richly descriptive chronicle of ‘the public events of a decade’. Through Tietjens, his beautiful (and unforgettably cruel) wife, Sylvia, and the principled Valentine, Ford draws us into the world of the English upper class as it goes through a period of crisis and transformation.
96. No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford
97. Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front - Richard Holmes
The first history of World War I to place centre-stage the British soldier who fought in the trenches, this superb and important book tells the story of an epic and terrible war through the letters, diaries and memories of those who fought it.
Of the six million men who served in the British army, nearly one million lost their lives and over two million were wounded. This is the story of these men - epitomised by the character of Sgt Tommy Atkins - and the women they left behind.
Using previously unseen letters, diaries, memoirs and poetry from the years 1914-1918, Richard Holmes paints a moving picture of the generation that fought and died in the mud of Flanders. He follows men whose mental health was forever destroyed by shell shock, women who lost husbands and brothers in the same afternoon and those who wrote at lunchtime and died before tea.
Groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed, this book tells the real story of trench warfare, the strength and fallibility of the human spirit, the individuals behind an epic event, and their legacy. It is an emotional and unforgettable masterpiece from one of our most important historians.
98. A Man Could Stand Up- - Ford Madox Ford
Roundabout the end of August I watched the recent TV serialisation of Parade's End and loved it. I loved its talkiness; its complexity; its willingness to assume the viewer is an intelligent human being capable of extracting information from nuances rather than anvils. I fell, to my surprise and confusion, totally in love with Christopher because intelligence, integrity and moral fibre do it for me even when converged together to form a point-of-view I completely disagree with. I also fell in love with Sylvia - less confusedly, this time, for "self-centred, ferociously cunning historical women" are characters I repeatedly go for: think Becky Sharpe, Scarlett O'Hara etc. Needless to say I immediately snapped up the book. Or four books, I should say, as it is a tetralogy.
I managed the first three this month - the only three worth knowing about, if you consider the opinion of the likes of Graham Greene worthy of listening to - and was again surprised by how much I loved them. They're very... talky: lots of thought-streams and little action. A post-modern addiction to ellipses. I wonder how I'd have reacted had I not chosen to watch the series first. I'm glad I did, because I think in this case that helped: I had a clear image of the characters before I went in which helped me keep track of the names which I'm appalling at usually, in both reading and real life. By watching the series first I could relax back, appreciate the luxuriousness of it, marvel at the intricacy and detail of this fictional characters that, somehow, seem more real than some people I know. There's a real pleasure, something voyeuristic almost, about being allowed to delve that deeply into someone's head, even if that person is not in fact real. These are the kinds of characters I would like to write, the sort that you are convinced are living or have lived because the alternative - that someone has created them out his own brain - is just too ludicrous.
Aside from having me read the books that it was based on, watching Parade's End re-ignited that interest I have in WWI literature and non-fiction. There's something about WWI that I think resonates in European - certainly English - minds the way that WWII does not. While for us (that is, English) the mythology of WWII is at least something that, in some way, we might be proud of - fighting the Nazis, Blitz spirit, etc. - the mythology of WWI is one of sadness, wasted life, an entire generation of men murdered or mutilated in minds and bodies. Unlike WWII there's no obvious villain, just cold bones, and an image of white crosses on green fields. It's an irresistible backdrop, and perhaps the reason that the literature surrounding WWI is so superior to that of WWII. I don't know. I've neither the knowledge nor the intelligence to even begin to elucidate. What I do know that what I get from WWI literature - both fiction and non- alike - is a sense of poignancy that no other period in history evokes. How awful people can be to one another - but, also, how good. It's the stories of random acts of kindness and decency that really get to me most of all, because not only can people be awful to one another but they can be uncommonly good even while being under the worse kind of stress and misery themselves. I don't want to say anything trite that belittles the absolute horror of WWI but there is, when you read about those moments, a part of you that feels a twinge of hope for the species. Because face it, we're a fucking awful species at times.
Unusual ways to get book recommendations: because it's mentioned on a film and you liked the title. Aside from reading Stuart: A Life Backwards in August I also watched the film and, in both, a book called The Hunting Wasp is mentioned. I looked it up on Amazon and, lo and behold, it exists! Only two hardback copies available so I snapped one up and wondered what I'd receieve. What I get was dust-jacketless and yellow-paged book that smelt evocatively of libraries, and within two paragraphs I was in love. It's one of my favourite books on natural history ever. The author is not an expert but what he lacks in scientific rigor he makes up for in writing style, which is so pumped with enthusiasm and visuals you can't help but be carried along by it all. There's nothing of the scientific method here, and his insistence on casting moral judgements on, y'know, bugs, probably makes real naturalists foam at the mouth (as would my incorrect use of the word "bugs") but I myself cared not a jot because, whatever, it was perfect. And interesting! If you can get a copy of this do so. You'll not be sorry, regardless what your feeling about "them little summer things."
Finally read A Brief History of Time. Yeah, that made me feel stupid. I'll stick with Brian Cox for the time being I think.
IN OTHER NON-BOOK NEWS I am going on holiday next week! This is exciting!
Also exciting: the new Hobbit trailer came out! Now, I've made no bones about the fact that I didn't like the first one. It was far too long, full of pointless extraneous information, and the bit with the hedgehog was so cringeworthy I actually shut my eyes at a point. So really I shouldn't be excited about this. And yet:
This is too embarrassing. I am so, so easy. I've looked forward to seeing Smaug on the big screen for, oh, ten years or so because hey I love dragons? But then this trailer happened, he spoke and it was like "Oh, are you actually going to do this? Really? You're actually going to fancy Smaug?"
Apparently yes.
I gotta surround sound this bitch.