Books of the Year, 2018

I know - who publishes a top four? The answer: people who only read four books published this year that are worth mentioning. Apologies to the thousands of other authors I neglected because I got distracted by football magazines, music autobiographies, Orwell's wartime essays and diaries, and the instructions to my bluetooth speaker (still haven't worked it out).   

4. The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard (Vintage)

Nicky Beard, the skinny nine-year-old kid on the front cover half-covered in a beach towel and crouching on a rock, looks just like I did in the 1970s. A few hours after it was taken, on August 19th. 1978, he drowned off the Cornwall coast, watched by his helpless older brother, Richard, who only just managed to pull himself free of the same treacherous undertow before running for help. 

The novelist uses this memoir to re-explore a day that his family had conspicuously ignored for 40 years. It will resonate with anyone who's experienced grief the British way. Exactly a week before this tragic drowning, my own favourite uncle died in a domestic accident. After the funeral, we didn't talk about it either. I remember my mum running out of the living-room to cry sometimes in the following months. But the emphasis is that she ran out of the room. No one said anything. No one ran after her. Meanwhile, she felt unable to subject us to her raw, raging feelings for her lost brother. It just wasn't done.

Beard goes back in time to piece together what happened that day and in the following weeks, juxtaposing his own memories with those of his family, the coast guard who pulled his brother's body from the water, the official records, and the banal condolence cards that even in the days just after death suggest it's maybe time for everyone to move quickly on. Who was this boy, what remains of his identity in the minds of those who knew him, and why do we live in a culture so scared to properly grieve that we blank out those who've died as though they never lived at all?

Books of the Year, 2011

Here is a list of the ten best books published in the year 2011. Admittedly, there are a few thousand others I didn’t get round to, so you’ll just have to trust me that these ten are the best. Though I’m happy to entertain alternative views.

Water matters

10. Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian Fagan (Bloomsbury Press)

What it says on the bottle – an accessible account of how various past civilisations engineered water sources to irrigate their crops, flush away their shit, supply themselves with drink and, when supplies were abundant enough, prettify their gardens and public spaces. Being mankind, though, we’re on the way to exhausting our natural supplies through illogical idiocy like too many golf courses, gardens and swimming pools in places like California, Phoenix, Texas and Arizona, resulting in a chronically cost-ineffective use of energy and precious H2O. Sample quote: “The Owens River turned Los Angeles into a megalopolis, located in an arid landscape where, by the rules of common sense, no city should ever stand. Los Angeles hefts enough political clout to capture any river within 600 miles. Today, the city receives water not only from the Owens River but also via aqueducts from the Colorado River and the California Aqueduct, which runs from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Lake Perris, in Riverside County, 444 miles to the south.”

9. Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy by John Julius Norwich (Random House)

This is an objective but entertaining chronological rundown of everyone who’s ever claimed to be Pope, how they got there, and what they did when adorned with the office of the Papacy. It wasn’t always good and godly things, you know. Sample quote: “Hadrian’s successor, John VIII (872-882), was at least energetic, but he also had the dubious distinction of being the first pope to be assassinated – and, worse, still, by priests from his own entourage. According to the Annals of the Abbey of Fulda, they first gave him poison; then, when this failed to act quickly enough, they hammered in his skull. The enthronement of his successor, Marinus I, in 882 is said to have been marked by the murder of a high Roman dignitary, that of Hadrian III two years later by the victim’s widow being whipped naked through the streets. On Hadrian’s death on his way to Germany in 885 foul play was also suspected. The next two popes, Stephen V and Formosus, died in their beds,

Books of the Year, Part 2 - Non-fiction

Some books,
 earlier today.

I used to read nothing but novels. Then I veered in the other direction, until I realised that much as I enjoyed biographies and history books, I could never remember much about them once I’d finished. So now I mostly read fiction again, and the non-fiction I pick up is only stuff that I really, really want to read. And that’s why this list is shorter than the Fiction list. And why I don’t know as much as I should do about important historical events, but I can tell you the names of all the albums that The Raincoats released on Rough Trade records.

Document and Eyewitness – An Intimate History of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor (Orion Books)

Clearly you’d have to be more than interested in British indie-pop in the late 70s and 1980s to get much out of this. But the anecdotal rewards are deep if The History of Rough Trade would be your chosen specialised subject on the fading leather jacketed saddo’s version of Mastermind. Once you’re past the ponderous intro (and I’d rather have had an index than the footnotes), the stories and their characters take you right back to a time when you didn’t have to give a shit about anything besides drinking, music, and appearing to know what you were on about (I gave up on that one in the end).

Books of the Year, Part 1 - Fiction

Not yet a Kindle convert

I’m usually about three years behind current releases, but due to a more conscious effort to read The New York Times Book Review (rather than putting it in a pile to be ‘read later’ - another phrase for ‘recycling’), and a couple of nice presents, I somehow managed to read a lot of novels this year that actually were published in 2010. Before this thrilling news completely overwhelms you, let me get on with recommending them, in approximate order, and adding a sample quote from each book that may lure you to further exploration:

Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books)

I like post-apocalyptic books, if they’re not too apocalyptic. This book takes place in a tiny southern Indiana town after a flu pandemic has wiped out millions worldwide, and follows Cole Vining, a 13-year-old orphan of liberal, urban parents, in his new life with ex-alcoholic, self-appointed Pastor Wyatt and his kind but ill-educated wife. Despite all the anguish of death, separation and relocation, the likeable but complex kid still has the hots for an unattainable 16 year old, and that keeps him as mentally busy as multiple other conundrums of faith and fate. Beautifully written.