The significance of small things: "The Hare with Amber Eyes" by Edmund de Waal

I suppose I would have picked up on the phenomenon that is Edmund de Waal's singular book sooner or later myself. Since I started reading it, I seem to see it everywhere. But I was actually put onto this by two great friends, not as far as I know particularly coordinated in their reading habits, enthusing in equal measure about this "extraordinary" book as we sat around our regular Monday night dinner table in Strasbourg. I was left unclear about what sort of a book it actually was, but very clear about the fact it had to be read. After all, these were two understated Englishmen (OK, one of them is understated) showing almost Latin fervour about something.

Oddly revolutionary reading: "The Last Hundred Days" by Patrick McGuinness

This one was an impulse buy in Brussels Waterstones, where I had gone for something completely different. My eye was somehow caught by the grainy black and white cover photograph of a motorcade of large boxy black cars progressing through a wide urban boulevard. It seemed to me to be something to do with 1960s America, but turned out on closer inspection to be a scene from 1980s Romania, and to be a novel about the end of the communist bloc's most capriciously despotic regime (save perhaps Albania), that of Nicolae Ceausescu and, to an extent I came to appreciate, his pseudo-scientist and fellow head-case wife, Elena.

Authentic thriller reading - "Rip Tide" by Stella Rimington

I feel a connection with Stella Rimington. Her Mum used to live in the same street as my Mum, in a house to which I, as a boy, regularly delivered the village newsletter, though not, I think, at the time that the aforementioned mother lived there. That came later, and was surrounded by some wonderfully naive gossip about the special protection laid on by Britain's security services for the mother of the head of MI5. Well, this was pre-9/11 and not a lot happened (or indeed happens now) in this place, so it's entirely reasonable that the occasional unfamiliar car parked in the street should provoke a little flurry of excitement about "heightened security". 

Zeitgeisty reading? - "A Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes

I feel a strong sense of guilt about this book, which is perhaps I haven't got round to reviewing it before completing the next book (following review). This is a slim volume, barely 160 pages in its hardback manifestation, and should be one of those novels (some have even called it a "novella") which you digest quickly in satisfying chunks. The guilt comes from the fact I read it in an itsy-bitsy kind of way, distractedly, and now I can't work out if that is entirely my fault, or has something to do with the book itself. 

Overwhelming reading: "Gomorra" by Roberto Saviano

For non-Italian readers, you need to know that Gomorra is one of those rare books which really changes public discourse across an entire country. This book caused a massive stir in Italy and made a household name - and marked man - out of its author, Roberto Saviano, who can now go nowhere without bodyguards and is probably wondering when, not if, the killers will get to him. 

Estonian reading: "Purge" by Sofi Oksanen

The first thing to do here is to acknowledge and thank Kristiina Randmaa for this book, which she brought as a gift to the works party we had at the end of last year. This is the second book I received from a colleague this way (the other being the Kappillan of Malta, from Marie-Claire, reviewed in the very first of these reviews) which has enlightened me considerably about a country which which I was almost wholly unfamiliar. Incidentally, Kristiina and Marie-Claire shared an office for years, so, who knows, perhaps the idea was in the air somewhere.

Seriously bleak reading: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel may indeed be the bleakest thing I'll ever read... Certainly there is no doubting the extraordinary evocative power of this book. It draws you wholly and unrelentingly into its nightmarish post-apocalyptic world, which, though never made explicit as such, appears to be the nuclear winter following an atomic war.  This is a world without a sun, without colour, without life beyond the few human remnants of a civilisation which has destroyed itself. The world has been ravaged by fire, the air constantly bears grey ash which mixes with frequent snow and covers everything. No animals, no plants (except at one point for some miraculous morel mushrooms), so no food beyond that which can still be scavenged from the old world, in the form of canned produce, a constantly depleting resource. 

On form reading: "Sunset Park" by Paul Auster

Devotees (!?) of this  blog will know that Paul Auster novels are automatic queue-jumpers in my waiting list of books-to-read,and may have been a little surprised that Sunset Park did not appear earlier. The truth is, unaccountably, that I managed to miss the appearance of this one, to the extent it was out in paperback before I cottoned on. (Just as well, because the beach/pool reading venue left this little book rather crinkled with damp and crunchy with grains of black Strombolian sand.)

Berlin reading, part 3: "The Berlin Wall" by Frederick Taylor

So to the last of the three Berlin books in my little spate, this a history of the famous Wall. (For the record, the previous ones were "Berlin at War" by Roger Moorhouse and Hans Fallada's bleak 1947 novel "Alone in Berlin.) 

Taylor writes a straight, well-paced, indeed gripping, history of the wall. It is not so much a beginning, a middle and an end but an origins, beginning and end book. He takes a fairly long run-up, starting with a potted history of the Prussian state (to which he subsequently refers to make some perhaps rather rhetorical comparisons with the GDR), and then a much more detailed account of the stresses and strains in four-power Berlin which, combined with the Stalinist obsessions of German communist leader Walter Ulbricht, led to the erection of the Wall. The planning and execution of the initial installation, which reveal the formidable organisational talents of Erich Honnecker, bizarrely shows the GDR system at its "best" - an extraordinary nocturnal exploit, wildly successful in its own terms, stopping the haemmoraging of population from the GDR in its tracks. 

Out of Print reading: "Dead Man's Bluff" by Bernard Dunne

The point of writing even one of these short reviews might be questioned, because this is of a book it is extremely unlikely any reader will come across. But there's a story behind it.

This work of crime fiction, published as a slim hardback in 1980 by Robert Hale of London, was the first book to be published by someone I actually knew, and indeed was related to. Bernard Dunne, aka Uncle Bernard, was not actually an uncle in the strict sense, but I suppose a great uncle, the husband of one of my grandmother's sisters, alternatively, my father's cousin's father. Now that may sound a little distant, but these were relatives we saw often when I was a child, and I have a very vivid recollection of this ramrod straight, moustachioed and, to a child, slightly intimidating former military man. By the time 1980 came round, and I was sixteen, I could see there was rather more to this rather taciturn individual than immediately met the eye, and I was by then equally picking up on family talk to the effect that he had a rather exotic past.

The publication of a crime novel, beginning in Istanbul, traversing the continent to end in southern England, seemed to confirm the impression. I have a distinct recollection of the book arriving, with the modest and typically laconic handwritten dedication in front of me now: "I enjoyed writing this, I hope you enjoy reading it". I remember my Dad reading it and his slightly non-committal answer to my question about what he thought of it, which induced me at that stage not to get around to reading it. I now suspect my father may have considered it unsuitable reading for me (they were different times...), with what may now appear to be a modest collection of prostitutes and other unseemly types populating its pages. Of course, this did all rather confirm the air of mystery which surrounded my uncle in straight-laced Lincolnshire...

Why I picked the book up now is really related to more recent family matters, with my Mum being in a clearing out frame of mind and threatening to give away, sell or otherwise discard what she sees as the clutter in the house. So, having randomly spotted Dead Man's Bluff on a shelf, and still in possession of the idea that I would one day read it, I grabbed it.

The book itself is an admittedly slight stout-British-policeman-meets-nasty-drug-dealers crime novel, but it is well-paced and contains some nice plot twists and turns. As a story, it would do perfectly good service as a post 9.00 pm TV cop show, which is a reasonable achievement in itself. Of course, much of my pleasure in reading it came from its interest as a period piece, and for the association with my uncle, whose pre-sixties, stalwart British attitudes, flavoured with that experience of places exotic, foreign and possibly rather louche, hinted at in knowing looks in the family, are clearly on display. Words like "swarthy" referring to dodgy Turkish gangsters are bandied about - though both menacing Middle-Eastern hitman and doughty Turkish policeman are given serious respect - while British hippies, pimps and lowlife probably attract the greatest disdain from the author. Yes, the attitudes are old-fashioned, but not tainted with the, say, casual racism one so often encounters in products of that period. I was pleased about that.

The language too seemed rather quaint, many Americanisms we now take for granted being completely absent and the punctilious use of the apostrophe in the words 'phone and'bus actually being quite distracting, as well as a reminder of how much the language has changed in only a few years.

This was a personal read and a recommendation would be pointless (though I did find a second hand book dealer through Amazon offering the book at over twenty pounds - original cover price £5.25). I enjoyed it though, and am pleased that, albeit rather late in the day, I read my Uncle Bernard's one literary emanation.

Pre-holiday - but ideal holiday - reading: "Imperium" by Robert Harris

I am reading Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy out of order. First, about a year ago, I read "Lustrum", the story of Cicero's consulship in the Roman Republic and its aftermath; now, I have recently finished "Imperium", which tells the tale of how he got there. Although, I suppose, in an ideal world these books should be read in the correct order, in reality I found it didn't matter too much.

Sort of nostalgic reading: "State of Emergency: How We Were - Britain 1970-1974 by Dominic Sandbrook

I have over time read a number of political biographies, memoirs and diaries of the people who helped shape the Britain of the 1970's, but this is the first time I have read a genuine history book about a time I personally lived through. The first thing to say about Sandbrook's book is that this is a genuinely scholarly record of the period. You might guess that from the length - 768 pages to cover four or five years! - and from the endnotes, which account for a 6 or 7 millimeters of the book's thickness. This is the third in a series of histories of recent modern Britain, following "Never Had It So Good" which covers the period from Suez to the Beatles, and "White Heat", an account of Swinging Britain in the late sixties. (I learn this from the cover blurb; I haven't read either of the others.)

Culture and violence: "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple

First, disclosure. This book was not read, but listened to in the form of an audio book. The four CD set took four and a half hours and was thus (nearly) perfect for a drive back from Strasbourg this week. Obviously, that means it was abridged, so this can't be a 100% review. (By the way, a good audio book and cruise control on the car help the time of a journey go by extremely well, as well as disinclining you to stressful competitive driving.)

Perhaps surprising reading: "Provided You Don't Kiss Me - 20 Years with Brian Clough" by Duncan Hamilton

Despite the inordinately large place it occupies in my life, I am not a particular football fan. If I am ever really passionate about a football team, it is undoubtedly the red-shirted St-Michel, in its under-15 and under-13 manifestations. Yet, like anyone else, I am not immune to the pull of the big match, or entirely able to ignore the vicissitudes of the top national teams.

All that said, I never thought I'd be reader of football books.

That kind of inspirational reading... "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson M.D.

I've been quoting the title of this book for several years, without ever having read it, so when I saw this (very short) book on offer for almost nothing in a Washington DC bookshop last January, I thought I should buy it. I read it in the span of a crossing in the Channel Tunnel a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it is that short.

If you know anything about what this book says, about its central, genuinely good idea, I suggest you leave it at that - actually reading the thing is enough to put you off for life. 

Enough said.

Short. Should be shorter.

More Berlin reading: "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada

I am aware this might seem dangerously obsessive, but "Alone in Berlin" is just the second in a series of books I have bought recently about Berlin (next is a history of the Berlin Wall). What can I say, the history of this city is just fascinating…

Here we are in the realm of fiction, a recent translation into English of the 1947 work of Hans Fallada (of whom, I confess, I had never previously heard) fictionalising the story of an improbable and slightly oddball resistance couple who wrote anti-regime postcards to leave lying around in stairwells. This decidedly low-key (and in reality only semi-literate) form of dissent, hoped to subtly instil anti-Hitler feelings in the populace, like an early, insidious form of social media. In Fallada's novel, and, one guesses, in reality, the cards achieve nothing, with the enormous majority instantly handed in to the authorities by the terrified "victims" who are unlucky enough to pick them up.

Amiable erudition: "At Home" by Bill Bryson

As one goes through life, one comes across many people to admire, to respect, to be grateful to, to idolise even. But it is a rarer thing to encounter (albeit across, say, a TV screen or the pages of a book) a person one would actually like to be. Two public figures (private figures are ruled out, one simply knows too much about them) fall into this category for me.

Tapas thinking: “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell

I realize that this is the third book by Malcolm Gladwell to feature in these Facebook notes (or on this blog, depending where you are reading this), something I don’t think applies to any other author. Interesting, because even if I retain rather ambivalent feelings about Gladwell, I keep coming back for more, don’t I?

Back to history: "Berlin at War" by Roger Moorhouse

A while since I picked up a meaty history tome as the next read, but I had been looking forward to this one since reading a glowing review in the FT's "books and arts" section. (I probably shouldn't own up to this as work pays for my daily FT, but the Saturday edition is definitely by far the best thumbed of the week. But I digress.) Berlin at War had been surprisingly hard to track down in Nottingham's Waterstones last November, but I had finally found it and it sat on the shelf for a couple of months waiting for Freedom and the filler-manqué One Day to get read.

Light-weighty reading: "One Day" by David Nicholls

6 January 2011 at 14:30

This was one of those books, adorned with the "3 for 2" sticker, purchased on a whim from a very high stack in Waterstones, Nottingham, which was supposed to "fill in" between the weightier tomes queued up on my bookshelf. The cover and the blurb yell Hornby/Parsonsesque chick-lit at you; I duly expected light, quirky, moderately satirical, sort-of romantic comedy out of this.

And, indeed, that's what I got. But not only.

Great American reading: "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen

1 January 2011

With a book like this, I really wonder if there is any point in me saying anything at all. "Freedom" is that rarest of books, the literary fiction super-hit, mega-bestseller, opined about by anyone who has any interest in writing,  at least heard of by millions of people who have not, and perhaps never will, read it. This is a book which has not only generated myriads of reviews, but spoofs of reviews, such as one I saw in the Washington Post which cited the New York Times' view that the main, if not the only, reason some Chinese eunuch invented paper 4000 years ago is so that one day "Freedom" could be printed on it. (In this Slate video: http://www.slatev.com/video/book-reviews-way-outside-box/)