Fifty Book Challenge 2008 List

Below is a list of the books I read whilst undertaking the 2008 Fifty Book Challenge. I've included a short review of each.

Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, by Sarah B Pomeroy. An early classic of its sub-genre (one might call it 'seminal', but that would probably be risking a clout round the ear), this thorough and well founded study represents an attempt to fill in the missing pieces in the historical record where women are concerned. Pomeroy does a solid job, neatly identifying her sources without detracting from the readability of the narrative. Most readers will find it reasonably accessible and it remains essential reading for Classical historians.
The Man who was Thursday, by GK Chesterton. I had been meaning to investigate Chesterton's work for some time as he's a favourite of some of my smarter friends, so I figured I'd start with this classic, also important as one of the originators of the spy novel. I'm afraid it really didn't work for me, though. The author is clearly a man of considerable intellect, but to me that only makes his trite story more frustrating. That it should be contrived is acceptable in accordance with the nature of the genre, but less so when it happens at the expense of believable characters, particularly when those characters are given so much representative weight. I shall state honestly that few things irritate me more than a repetitive plot, and this one is transparent from chapter three, excepting its Deus in Machina ending which, whilst constituting an interesting departure, in certain ways rather lets its characters off the hook, reducing its moral impact. It's also written in such florid prose that only Chesterton's winking reference to Bulwer-Lytton and his brief flirtation with cyclopean architecture can save it.
The Law of the Playground, by various artists, including contributions from my friend Susanna Krawczyk. I initially approached this as a linguistic resource but it's a very easy thing to get drawn into. A collection of stories about people's experiences at school, it should be considered essential reading for children, parents, teachers, anthropologists, prison officers and Philip Zimbardo. Anything you need to know about primate group behaviour you can find exemplified here. If certain US senators are right and the primary goal of schooling is to teach socialisation, reading this should mean that one doesn't actually have to go.
The Pigeon, by Patrick Süskind. A hauntingly beautiful modern fairy tale; a humble story made remarkable by Süskind's understanding of the importance of detail, by his poetic writing and by his humanity. The hero, Jonathan, is a man who has devoted his entire life to establishing stability, certainty and, thus, security, but everything is turned upside down when the course of an ordinary day is interrupted by the arrival of a pigeon. So great and so convincing is his torment that at times this is really hard to read, but at the same time it casts a spell under the influence of which one cannot tear oneself away from the page.
Ivan the Terrible, by Henri Troyat. I'm only surprised that this volume doesn't have a gorier looking cover. It's a bloodbath from start to finish. According to scholars, an immaculately researched and accurate biography of Russia's famous tyrant tsar, it nevertheless reads very differently from the average history book, being highly descriptive, energetic and empathetic. There are lots of interesting passages about international politics and cultural developments in between the torture scenes, but it's certainly not for the faint-hearted.
The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. Despite his popularity as a mystery writer, I always think Greene is at his best - and, perhaps, his most mysterious - when writing about love. This perhaps ranks as his most personal work, written as it was around the time when he ended a years-long affair with a woman who had been one of the great loves of his life. The insight he provides through his fiction must have been painful then, but is sharper for it. Perhaps it's hard to like the hero, bitter as he is, but it's easy enough to sympathise with him. As always the characters are vividly realised, complex and subtle, full of apparent contradictions which only make them more real. This isn't Greene's most powerful work, but it's masterful nonetheless.
Authority and the Individual, by Bertrand Russell. I used to read Russell's work when I was small and I retain a certain fondness for him, even if this particular book has more to offer as a historical document than as educational matter. A collection of six lectures, it provides an intriguing insight into postwar Britain and its visions of the future are delightful, sometimes far-fetched, sometimes surprisingly accurate. Many of the examples Russell cites in support of his various theories are now evidenced as being quite wrong, yet his theories themselves have generally stood the test of time.
James and the Troublesome Trucks, by W. Rev. Awdry. I read this because it was the best thing available during a visit to my doctor's surgery. My brother, being called Thomas, had all the 'Thomas the Tank Engine' books when he was a kid, so I know them well. Percy the Small Engine was always my favourite. Anyway, this is a fairly sympathetic tale of James, who is in trouble essentially because he rebelled when told he was going to be painted blue. He has to prove his loyalty and fortitude in order to win back the Fat Controller's esteem. This seems rather unfair, but I guess at a deeper level it's also about James wanting to prove something to himself.
Kingdom of Fear, by Hunter S Thompson. Reading this book was saddening, because the great man is no longer with us, yet in other ways I felt glad he didn't live to see the further extension of the tendencies toward social authoritarianism in Western society that he laments here. Like most of his work, it's a wayward book, with flashes of genius mixed in with ramblings which are at heart pretty dull and keep one reading only because of the elegant way in which they're styled. When he gets to geeking it's almost unreadable, but then, out of nowhere, he'll break into one of his incredible 'true' stories ("it's certainly true that is was a story") and it'll be the most fun since cake was invented. It's just a shame that he still spends so much time touting himself on the strength of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas instead of recovering the spark which allowed that book to happen.
Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginnings of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, by John Boswell. A groundbreaking work from Boswell, this was mostly pretty familiar stuff for me but will amaze many readers with its revelations about the real history of anti-homosexual prejudice, something which is often blamed unfairly on the church. Although it uses homosexuality as its focus, it explores social prejudice in a wider sense and considers how it has affected, in parallel, groups like the Jews. As with all Boswell's work, it's immaculately researched and is annotated in such a way that the curious reader can go off and access most of its sources directly. It's incredibly thorough but very accessible, even to the non-academic reader. And packed with detail as it is, it certainly held a few surprises for me - for instance, that the church once forbade growing plants indoors!
My Lives, by Edmund White. Eloquent as all his works and sometimes shockingly self-absorbed, White's first straightforward biography is fascinating to me for the very reasons that some readers might find it off-putting. The author is fastidious in exploring his own weaknesses and unpleasant traits, providing a much more rounded human portrait than we are used to seeing. It represents - perhaps unconsciously, on his part - the sort of shift I've been expecting in twenty first century interpersonal relations, wherein our enhanced communicative and observational abilities lead us to know more about each other than we might traditionally have wanted to, in turn challenging us to adjust the way we acknowledge one another's humanity. Beyond this, of course, White lived in interesting times (though he seems overall to have been pretty sheltered - he has odd ideas of what constitutes poverty), and his record of social and artistic developments in the latter half of the twentieth century could fascinate anyone.
The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill. One of the most important philosophical contributions to early feminism, this makes a fascinating read today. Mill was certainly an enlightened man by the standards of his time, yet it's really hispolitical differences and his subtle prejudices which make for such interesting reading. A surprisingly rational set of observations about women sits side by side with absurdly unquestioned notions about assorted national characters, for instance. He's an energetic writer, and perhaps there's a reason for that. Much of his thinking appears to have it origins in the influence of one particular woman. It's quite charming to encounter the work of a famed thinker so overwhelmed by emotion.
Shame, by Salman Rushdie. An oblique companion piece to Midnight's Children, this novel examines the Pakistani experience in the aftermath of Partition, fictionalising it and then taking a further step away into fantasy in order to express what is difficult to anunciate with mere facts. History through the lens of magical realism, it draws on mythic tradition to examine the doomed cycles of power in an unstable and frequently tyrannised state, yet much of it reads, on the surface, as a family soap opera. It's on this level that, whilst scoring plenty of jokes, it is weakest, with the author taking on more characters than he really has time to flesh out. As myth, howevrr, it's a delightful read, and a novel which reaches beyond itself and really has something to say.
Biko, by Donald Woods. Somehow I'd never got around to reading this, although I used to work for an English publication which campaigned against Apartheid and I had occasional correspondence with some of the figures who appear in it. It's quite startling to read it now and to feel the great gulf of years between then and now, the way that notions of what's normal and what can't be changed have themselves changed. Of course, Apartheid seemed shockingly primitive then, but now it seems utterly alien. And now, after so many other things have changed, one can appreciate the true magnitude of the impact which Bantu Stephen Biko has had on the world and all of its oppressed peoples. Few other figures have even come close to achieving such a profound social impact on history. This book, for those of you who don't know, is the story of Biko's conflict with the South African regime, of his death at the hands of the police and of the dream he had for his country. The author was a friend of his whose daring escape from the country afterwards and whose publication of this very book inspired campaigners around the world and helped to bring an end to that brutal regime. It's a tremendously important work and very readable besides. Nobody with an interest in politics should be without it.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon, by Gideon Defoe. This latest adventure of the pirate crew eschews the usual formula and opts instead for a more prosaic adventure set on the island of St Helena, where the Pirate Captain hopes to keep bees. It doesn't altogether work. Defoe is beginning to look like a man running out of ideas (given how closely the Pirate Captain's life mirrors my dear Stuart's, I sometimes get paranoid as to where they have come from), and he doesn't really have the confidence or the skill with dialogue to carry off the story in their absence. That said, there are several extremely funny bits here and the book is still hard to put down. Napoleon is a great character, highlighting the Pirate Captain's own major flaws, and we do get to meet some ponies. I just hope this doesn't mark a permanent decline in the series, as I'd love to read more fun pirate adventures in the future.
Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control, by Dominic Streatfield. A very thorough and often fascinating history of work by the British and US secret services to try and develop truth drugs, take over the minds of enemy agents, etc., this also takes into account religious cults, false memory syndrome and similar phenomena. It's written for the general reader and expects a level of naivety which sometimes makes it frustrating, and sometimes it works just a little too hard to pretend it's utterly neutral, but overall I enjoyed it very much. Of course, in just one volume, it can't go into great depth on any one case, so some accounts feel slightly insubstantial, but it's a great introduction to the subject.
The White People, and Other Stories, by Arthur Machen. Deeply influential, gloriously poetic and a technically excellent writer, Arthur Machen was one of the founding fathers of 20th Century occult fantasy horror. How is it, then, that a collection of his works can be as singulary boring as this one? Though it contains the exquisite Ornaments in Jade, and though there is at least a hint of something special in The White People, the rest of this book is leaden, clumsy and repetitive. The only thing which kept me from falling asleep was the offensiveness of Machen's weak arguments, particularly his continual use of straw men. He had no right to take such a smug stance against rationality when he clearly failed to comprehend the basics of logical thinking. His mysteries might as well have been solved by rolling dice. The biggest mystery is how this ever saw print. My partner Donald advises me that it's because of its popularity with Call of Cthulhu GMs (it's published by Chaosium) - when they want to quote something obscure, insane, and rambling, it's just the thing.
Midnight All Day, by Hanif Kureishi. A collection of short stories musing on human relationships, somewhat grimly, but with an elegiac beauty. Better balanced than Intimacy, Kureishi's novel on the same theme, but with the same intensely personal quality. I wasn't sure that the final story, The Penis, worked, despite its cute idea - as he's got older I think he's become less successful at writing comedy - but overall it's an impressive volume full of interesting characters. The children, in particular, stand out vividly, struggling to exist within the crumbling matrix of adult relationships. Their vitality helps to prevent the more self-consciously artsy pieces from becoming smug.
The Wave, by Todd Strasser. This is a children's book, but we're about to run an interview with the director of the German film version (Die Welle) at Eye For Film, so I wanted to check it out. It's a fictionalisation of high school teacher Ron Jones' possible exaggerated attempt to educate his students about authoritarianism by demonstrating it in action, persuading them to become part of a group called 'the Wave'. Easy reading for ten year olds, this isn't particularly gripping for an adult, and the picture it paints is of a high school which is uncannily polite and gentle to begin with; but it's a curious tale nonetheless.
Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by Robert A Schmidt and Barbara Voss. An interesting collection of pieces which seem disparate at first but gradually fall into accord with one another, demonstrating the ways in which archaeology has changed over the past few decades to take account of an intensified cultural awareness of sex and gender possibilities. I found the chapter on early Soviet archaeology and consequent future planning particularly fascinating, uncovering areas of political history which are seldom discussed (in general, I have a developing interest in constructions of heterosexuality, something too easily taken for granted within our society). Hardly comprehensive, but insightful and a strong introductory piece, let down only by its twee adoption of dialogues as a method of expressing the interaction of ideas, which makes it seem more like a misconceived schools social project than a volume of intellectual merit.
Against Nature, by Joris-Karl Huysmans. I'd been meaning to read this for over fifteen years, and I'm glad that I eventually did, though I won't claim it wasn't hard going. One line of Huysmans' prose contains as much information as a whole page of the average novel. It's overindulgent, grotesque in style and form, bloated, pretentious and absolutely fascinating. Its solitary character, an ailing man who goes into deliberate isolation outside Paris at the end of the 19th century, undertaking an introverted quest which manifests bizarrely in the material world, has all of the former qualities and only intermittently the latter. It's hard to care about him and yet, on occasion, his cultivated wit proves incisive. This is not so much a novel, in the ordinary sense, as an overt exploration of unlikely ideas taken to extremes - it's a book which had to happen in order to make room for the century of work to come. It almost feels like a sacrifice on Huysmans' part. Even when it's hard to enjoy, its value is unmistakable, but the end result is rather like being stranded in the desert holding a bejewelled golden jug with no water in it.
The Outsider, by Albert Camus. Camus' sparse, deceptively simple prose came as a breath of fresh air after Huysmans'. This is a brilliantly crafted novel which grips throughout, even when its events seem inconsequential, and which does its think with confidence and elegance. I found that I could identify strongly with the central character, having been in some serious trouble myself because of my refusal to bend the truth to provide people with what they want to hear, and though I imagine that many readers will find him more alien I think they will still find themselves sympathetic to his plight. This is also an important book about atheism and what it means to simply not believe in any religious dogma, not willfully or spitefully, but simply because that is what one's reasoning faculties decree. It was a brave statement in its time and it's surprising how daring it still sounds today.
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Here was a third book which I really should have got round to reading twenty years ago! I despair of living long enough to catch up with all the great literature the world has produced - and yet, on the other hand, that's rather delightful. This is a book which Ursula K Le Guin has described as the greatest piece of science fiction yet written, though it strikes me that people are always more willing to make such statements about political science fiction than any other kind, perhaps because it seems more daring. Zamyatin's work was certainly daring in the context in which it was written, and it's extraordinarily visionary, having made observations in 1924 which seem up to the minute today. Gracefully, poetically written, precocious in its literary style, it's a moving story with a central character whose naivety makes him no less endearing. It was the inspiration for 1984 and has had a significant effect on our expectaions of modern socio-political structures. I would recommend it to anyone.
Skyfall, by Harry Harrison. A typical piece of trashy Cold War era science fiction which now really shows its age, but which has some good hard science ideas thrown in there, as one would expect from this author (who seems far smarter in person than his work suggests, but that's probably true of a lot of us). All brusque American heroes and icy Russian heroines, it's essentially a soap opera about a group of startlingly dysfunctional people stuck on a satellite which might crash out of orbit. Why anyone thought they were the best choices for the job in the first place is unclear, and there's a limited amount of real narrative potential in the process of them pressing buttons, so they have to be leading scientific geniuses as well, stretching credulity by the minute. Anyway, I read it because it was lying on Stuart's bed and he was working and I was bored. It passed the time.
The Fratricides, by Nikos Kazantzakis. A powerful novel by the author best known for Zorba the Greek, this is the story of a lone priest wrestling with the moral complexities of the Greek civil war in the late 1940s. Tempted by the causes preached by each side, he is desperate to protect the villagers who mock and sneer at him, and he must gradually discover the light of the divine within himself in order to determine the right course of action. Though it's full of the trappings of religion and rich with its flavours, this is essentially a much simpler moral tale about a man endeavouring to remain honest in a dishonest time, a man refusing to compromise his humanity and, thereby, perhaps saving the one soul to which he really owed his title. Though unrelentingly grim for the first several chapters, which you'll need a certain toughness of your own to soldier on through, it latterly breaks into descriptive prose of tremendous beauty, vivid and passionate and demonstrating that there need be nothing dry about intellectual rigour. An excellent book for anyone with an interest in moral responsibility and human potential.
Gothic Short Stories, ed. David Blair. Don't be put off by the embossed black skull on the cover, a publisher's hook - these are gothic stories in the true, literary sense, and this is a superb collection, featuring such classics as Berenice and The Yellow Wallpaper alongside little-known early manuscripts and some of the very different, experimental writing from the latter part of the period. Luella Miller was my favourite, without a doubt, though I also enjoyed the haunting The Lame Priest, and the lurid gore and melodrama of some of the early tales was a delicious indulgence. Highly recommended.
Kormak's Saga, Anon. Of all the ancient Scandinavians whose histories I've read, Kormak was the biggest dick. Moping around over the ex girlfriend who seems to pity him but really isn't interested in his sexual entreaties; picking fights over trivial things; trashing other people's stuff and whining to friends and relatives to bail him out whenever he's in trouble, he's a thoroughly modern figure making people miserable in the wrong time period, and he never seems to have learned. Curiously enough his poetry, which he's endlessly smug about, is actually not bad, and his adventures, such as they are, are quite entertaining to witness from a distance. He'd probably have been thrilled to know people would still be reading this, entirely mistaking their motives.
The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, Anon. A neat introduction, via one man's biography, to the arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia. I had read about Norway's famous King Olaf before but it was interesting to see him humanised like this through the medium of Hallfred's encounters with him. Hallfred has quite a few remarkable adventures in the course of this story, but they're not especially wittily told, and ultimately it's not the most compelling of sagas, perhaps because - aside from his disputes over a girl - he's generally quite a calm and reasonable man, which makes him less intersting in the context of this kind of tale. Not really troublesome enough.
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, by William Blake. I'd read quite a number of these before (as I imagine most of my educated readers have) but this was the first time I'd approached them as a set, arranged the way Blake intended and accompanied by his own painstakingly crafted copperplate illustrations. This combination of literary, artistic and engineering skill is a true testament to the man's genius and has resulted in a fascinating book. I found myself looking at the poems rather differently because of their new order. They're not all brilliant, but together they provide a fascinating insight into one man's spiritual journey. His writing is no less beautiful when pessimistic.
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, by Ari Thorgilsson the Learned. Here is another tale of a nice young man whose life is unfairly knocked off course when the girl he's been ignoring is seduced by someone else. It's also a tale about loot and about acquiring status, each adventure reported with relish. Yet the best parts are Gunnlaug's beautifully crafted skaldic insults. He would have been a master of internet forums.
The Sociological Imagination, by Charles Wright Mills. We were required to read this for my Current Issues in Social Theory class, which is kind of cute given that it's from 1964, and very much of its time. Of course the big themes still apply today, but they're rather obvious. This is probably a good introduction for people new to sociology and philosophy; otherwise it's really just a bit of fluff. Mills wants to say deep things about our understanding of history but rather undermines himself by getting caught up in Golden Age fantasies, and he has a slightly distasteful inclination to save people from themselves whether they like it or not, pretending they'd be better off enlightened when really it's he who'd be more comfortable then. Understandably so, but still, since he must then be reckoned to be either dishonest or dim, it's difficult to condone the accepted view of him as a great thinker.
Doctor Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, by Philip K Dick. What joy! I'd thought that I'd read all of Philip K Dick's work over a decade ago, and then I found this lying on Stuart's bed - a whole undiscovered novel. it's classic period Dick, too, when he'd matured as a writer but before he began to get into his final serious psychological difficulties. An enormously entertaining piece of writing, vastly inventive, addressing all sorts of complex issues in Dick's usual playful way but notably less pessimistically than usual. It also contains what is, by his standards, an unusually well developed female character. I won't bother introducing the story, as it pretty much says it on the tin, but I do recommend it as a great piece of work.
Risk Society, by Ulrich Beck. Another one for my course, but more interesting, especially as a snapshot of a period before the full risks of global warming were understood by most people. It's curious, looking back, to see what the great threats to our civilisation were then perceived as being. Beck has some interesting ideas - not revolutionary, but practical, systematic, well organised. His theory of reflexive modernity, introduced here, is a useful one, and the lay reader should find this book relatively accessible.
Modernity and the Holocaust, by Zygmunt Bauman. "This is the dark side of Sociology," said my tutor, as if that should put me off. It's an important work because it represets the first time the disclipline of Sociology deigned to consider the holocaust as anything more than an aberration. Apparently they didn't remember the Armenians... Probably less shocking now, at least to the educated reader, this remains interesting because it's told with such clarity and brave attention to detail by a man who lived through some of the worst of it.
Bjorn, Champion of the Hittardal People, Anon. A curious story which is really as much about Bjorn's rival as about the man himself, but I guess his was the bigger name. Arguments over girls, robbery, fighting, lots of ambushes, concerns over the management of property, local politics and rude poetry form a touching portrait of medieval Icelandic life. It's the sort of tale that puts modern sociey firmly in its place, making clear how little we've grown.
Culture and Society, by Raymond Williams. Williams' seminal work remains tremendous fun to read, and is a treasure trove of well organised information about the great thinkers of post-Enlightenment England. I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in literature, sociology or philosophy. It also makes some impressive arguments of its own, passionately formed and buoyed up by a strong sense of optimism, a rarity in this context. Something to draw on when one wants to think better of human potential.
Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siecle, edited by Kate More and Stephen Whittle. A little out of date now in some of its politics and observations (things are moving very fast in this area), this is still an interesting introduction to transgender issues - a small book with an impressively large range. Most of it would be immediately accessible to the average intelligent reader, though there are sections that positively revel in academic obscurantism. Importantly, it leaves plenty of room for readers to make up their own minds about things.
Keywords, by Raymond Williams. A sort of dictonary tracing the origin of various cultural keywords and the ways in which they've changed over time, this impeccably researched little book is an excellent thing to have by one's side in an argument and a very entertaining read. Highly recommended.
Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism, by Raymond Williams. A highly readable and rather charming collection of personal essays on those aspects of modern society which the author feels give most cause for optimism. I was particularly fomd of his essay in support of public political demonstration, but perhaps that's just because I have often found myself making the same arguments. perhaps I am biased toward Williams' work because we have so much in common politically and in our approach to writing, but I think anyone would find his prose engaging and the case he makes at least worthy of consideration.
The Long Revolution, by Raymond Williams. Sometimes when I read a book I get the feeling I've already written the same things myself, before. Raymond Williams does that too me a lot, though of course, being born rather earlier, he was the one who really got there first; I just didn't know it. Anyhow, in this book he details an approach to live which pretty much matches my own, and I found it intriguing to observe how an individual from such a different background went through the process of arriving at the same conclusions. This is, as the title suggests, a book about social and cultural change and the means by which it might be brought about so as to cause the least harm and deliver the greatest benefit. On one level it might be seen as a political manifesto (and there are then some points on which I'd differ); on another it's a guide to living a useful life.
Television: Technology and Cultural Form, by Raymond Williams. The first major work of its kind, this is both impressive in its predictive value and intriguing as a historical piece where it misunderstands certain situations. It's an analysis of the development of television programmes and the changes their existence brought about (and was expected to bring about) in society. Now, when television seems so small and pointless, it's worth remembering what the world was like before it and what a difference it made, enabling us to move forward culturally as well as technologically.
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, by Judith Halberstam. Everybody wants to talk about goth these days, so it's kind of interesting to read a (comparatively recent) study which doesn't include it! ;) As usual, Halberstam has a lot of interesting points to make. I think she is herein a little naive about the various means whereby women might express masculinity, and she seems reticent on the subject of the neutrally gendered (like so many writers - I think it's just not convenient for most theories, or not meaty enough), but nevetheless she has a lot to say about varied and complex transgender identities. She writes with wit and energy and is plenty of fun to read.
The Country and the City, by Raymond Williams. This glut of Williams' work, incidentally, is because I wrote an assignment on him for my Social Theory class - I left several more half-read books in my wake, but ain't that always the case? This one is a satisfyingly thorough analysis of the tropes of rural and urban life as presented in literature over the past few centuries, revealing how that model has changed. I didn't personally need much convincing as I'd made my own observations before, but should I ever need to argue the case, Williams has herein supplied a wealth of supporting evidence. So meticulously researched, it's a fascinating book.
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, by Peter Hoeg. What can I say about this book? It's one of the most involving I have ever read, and I keep coming back to it. Once you've encountered Smilla, you'll never get her out of your head. She's a Greenlandic woman, living in Denmark, who becomes determined to discover the real reason why a boy she loved ran off a roof one night and fell to his death. She's also a rare female character who reads like a human being, and both she and the author exhibit a rare intelligence, an unwillingness to waste time on bullshit, and a gritty determination to see things all the way to their conclusion, no matter what. Hoeg's fantastic icebound setting grows ever more intriguing as the tale progresses, an element of our own world which will be, to most readers (including me), entirely alien. This time I was delerious on codeine whilst reading this book, and the ice sloughed through my fevered dreams.
Out at the Movies, by Steven Paul Davies. This is one I read for work, as I was interviewing the author - at last, that's why I started reading it. It didn't take long for Davies' easy prose and affectionate wit to captivate me, and I ended up staying up stupidly late to finish it. It's a history of lgbt films, not completely comprehensive of course, but covering every major work i could think of, and well balanced. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the cinema, regardless of their sexuality, because it's extremely accessible and all the films covered are worth watching in their own right, quite independently of their characters and themes. Importantly, it illustrates the capacity of cinema to bring about cultural and even legal changes. It's a little naive when it comes to transgender stuff, but one can't expect such an ambitious project to get everything right, and overall I liked it very much indeed.
Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov. Towards the end of his career, Nabokov disowned this book, but I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with it- I rather fancy that he experienced that awkward feeling anyone who's been witing for a while has upon realising that the public still assume their early work represents who they are today. Obviously Nabokov's work developed and improved a great deal over the years, but he was no mean talent in his youth, and there's some delightful prose in this book, his little asides full of characteristic wit, his characters pleasingly ambiguous (at least early on). It's the tale of a man who leaves his wife for a much younger mistress, leading to disaster - and that's pretty much the whole story - but as the author says, it's the details that make the telling compelling.
Kingdom Come, by JG Ballard. "Why did you read another new Ballard book when you hated the last ones?" Donald asked me. "Because the same people hated this one who loved those," I explained. I had hoped that his abandonment by the chat show wing of the literary establishment might signal a return to form for the man who was once one of the UK's most interesting surrealists, but sadly that's not the case. Though this is indeed far better than Cocaine Nights and its clone, Supercannes, and though Ballard has clearly tried to do something a little more ingenious with the ideas he was working with there, he's still not saying very much that George Romero didn't say thirty years earlier. The plot is transparent to anyone who knows his work, his prose is mired in self-parody, and his female characters are weaker than ever, whilst his observations on masculinity seem rather tired and self-limiting. It's a shame, because he's clearly trying to do something important. In non-fiction he comes across as much smarter than this. The main reason to read his fiction now is for its unintended amusement value.
Trauma, by Patrick McGrath. I decided to bookend this year's Ballard with two novels I was more likely to like; McGrath's work is usually intelligent, well observed and broadly satisfying. Though I think this is actually the weakest of his books that I've read (I thought his early work was much stronger, perhaps because he was less rushed when writing it), I still enjoyed it. It's the tale of a psychiatrist trying to deal with his patients' rather routine problems, failing to notice the real issues affecting his loved ones and struggling with his own private trauma. No doubt I'm a bad person for failing to understand, when it was eventually revealed, why his solitary bad experience was such a big deal to him (in fact, I would have expected the related neglect he suffered to have had a bigger impact), but I suspect I've been around too many real traumatised people for it to make much of an impression. Overall, the narrative seems rather heavy-handed, seeking to justify itself at the expense of more intriguing character possibilities, but it's sill well drawn and eminently readable.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. I like to re-read this fairly often, as there really are few children's books that come close to it. When I'm also reading thousand-page tomes on a frequent basis, it seems to me quite fair to list it here. For the uninitiated (if such exist), it's the story of a caterpillar who eats through lots of different foods - making holes in the pages - until he gets really fat (the best bit) and goes into a cocoon. I won't spoil the ending. ;)
Me and the Yellow-Eyed Monster, author unknown. Arriving at Erith's Hogmanay party, I said "Dude, I am one book off completing my fifty book challenge for this year. I only have an hour and a half to go. Can you help?" "Yes," said Erith, and he gave me this, which was a book about him and a crocodile called Zap saving Giffnock ("Why would anybody want to do that?" Stuart asked). I read it aloud for everyone to enjoy and there was much amusement. So that's me at fifty!

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Last updated 10th January, 2009