For no sensible reason I can conjure up in my defence I was disappointed in 2017 to read (just) under two books a week. Well, 2018 went that little bit better: as it happened, I read 107 compared with 2017’s 102. Ok, I entirely accept that doing such sums is strange, maybe a little worrying.
Of the 107 volumes I consumed – and I do seem to need to purchase books (I like to ‘possess’ them) – 52 were novels and four collections of poetry, leaving 51 in the non-fiction category. As usual I took pleasant refuge in sport: 10 books, mostly autobiographical, fell into this cell, though once having read these I do tend to pass them on either, if their focus is rugby, to a friend in Mickleham, or otherwise to Dorking’s terrific Oxfam bookshop. Sadly this does not mean any meaningful clearance of our bookshelves.
But the point of this blog is to settle on recommended reading to friends and colleagues. As far as fiction is concerned I should openly declare my admiration for Simenon, and not just for his Maigret novels. Twelve of the 52 novels were by Simenon, though two or three did not feature his Parisian hero. I have now read (and re-read) around 60 of Simenon’s re-issued Maigret series. He writes so well! Moreover he satisfies my need for references to both cafes and bars. Let me record at this point a non-fictional work of his, When I was Old, a set of autobiographical or journal notes. What did I learn? He was ever reflexive; lived extremely well off his endeavours (extending to household servants); offers pertinent observations of similarly ego-oriented personna like Gide and Chaplin; and proffers interesting and respectful narratives/rationalisations around, for example, routine visits to French sex workers for uncomplicated, ‘reciprocal’ sex.
Of the fiction what would I pick out, Simenon and other lively thrillers – notably my long term favourites like James Lee Burke and Donna Leon – apart? Well, like Mike Savage, I enjoyed McGreggor’s prose poem of a narrative of village life, Reservoir 13; and I would add Giorno’s more eccentric The Man Who Planted Trees, Hermans’ An Untouched House, and Isherwood’s A Single Man. Markine’s Le Testament Francais, however, was something else, for me in another category altogether: please read it! Boyd as ever was good with his Love is Blind (he’s a natural storyteller), and even more so Faulks’ Paris Echo (I have an abiding affection for Paris, which recalls to my mind, schooled philosophically in the late 1960s as I was by the uncompromising existentialist café–going theses of Sartre and de Beauvoir, a mode of writing I find irresistible).
You should – must – read Motion’s collection of poems entitled Essex Clay, constructed around the deaths of his parents.
There’s something about David Attenborough. He writes so engagingly: I enjoyed his Adventures of a Young Naturalist (and will purchase the next volume when it’s issued in paperback some time in 2019). Hawking too is a great communicator: his Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published posthumously, is an inspiring as well as informative read.
English and Burns’ When Lions Roared appealed, possibly because I love sport in general and rugby in particular. It comprises players’ honest and heartfelt comments and gives a real sense of what it is to participate at the top level.
I loved Billy Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, to my mind the supreme (only) truly ‘great’ jazz singer.
As a sociologist committed even in retirement to ‘reading and writing non-fiction’, I must mention and comment on a handful of texts.
First, an admission! When I deliver a book –-this year Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society and, as editor, Sociology as Applied to Health and Medicine – I read through the ‘products’ to check what I/we have said and to see what I think. I did this in 2018. I’m not in consequence suicidal.
Forget Wolff’s Fire and Fury (nothing we don’t know – Trump is indeed an narcissistic idiot) and Douglas Hurd’s awful, sycophantic Elizabeth II. I read two volumes on Oliver Cromwell, Horspools’ precis and – over a significant period, and too often in the loo – Antonia Fraser’s more extensive and sympathetic biography. What an historical juncture: the 17th century was a turning point. Alex Nunns’ The Candidate entertainingly captures the emergence of Corbyn as a political phenomenon, and Hannah’s A Party with Socialists In It is engagingly informative, as is the John McDonnell-edited Economics for the Many. Davis’ Reckless Opportunists is good on the changing nature and composition of elites (I blogged about it). Allen’s The Political Class was interesting and solid without shifting my perspective. In a different category, Schimpfossl’s Rich Russians is a fascinating and addictive compendium; and Wallerstein et al’s Does Capitalism have a Future? is a wonderfully informed set of ‘big sociology’ conjectures about the 21st century, the consensus being that the present and largely unopposed era of (financial) capitalism is likely to implode by mid-century, though who knows what will displace it (sociologists are no good at prediction).
I must comment specifically and pointedly on Heath’s Social Progress in Britain, an atempt to appraisal degrees of ‘progress’ over my own babyboomer lifetime (I was born in 1948). On the one hand he is rightly and commendably cautious on available UK and comparative secondary data bases. I enjoyed his book even whilst finding his analyses and conclusions unnecessarily and inappropriately constipated. He: (a) only takes into account quantitative – and mostly positivistic at that – research and data; (b) compensates for the crude inadequacies of the kind of ‘variable analyses’ condemned long ago by American interactionist Blumer and others by ‘filling in the gaps’ with apologetic ‘guesswork’; and (c) seems to share John Goldthorpe’s (critical realist) understanding of causal mechanisms, but like Goldthorpe only allows inference to them via quantitative investigations, in the process excluding/condemning qualitative and ethnographic input. Ah well. I have considerable respect for Goldthorpe, just wish he would chill methodologically.
I did it: two books a week. Roll on 2019.