Thursday 3 January 2019

MY YEAR IN BOOKS, 2018


As i probably moaned in previous years' posts, once upon a time i would read one or two books a week. Then i bought my first PC. So you (or i) can blame Windows 95 for the fact that i now average about one or two a month. And here's what i read in 2018. Books that were new are highlighted in red, re-visits to old friends are in boring old black.

Jan. 5: Maureen O'Connor Kavanaugh – Hidden History Of Downtown St Louis
Jan. 9: Jay Farrar – Falling Cars And Junkyard Dogs: Portraits From A Musical Life
Jan. 17: Martin Amis – Einstein's Monsters
Jan. 31: E.L. Doctorow – Ragtime

Feb. 13: Anthony Burgess – MF

March 7: Caroline Moorehead – Village Of Secrets: Defying The Nazis In Vichy France
March 23: Arthur C. Clarke – The City And The Stars

April 18: Michael Barclay – The Never-Ending Present: The Story Of Gord Downie     And The Tragically Hip
April 24: Craig Halstead – Donna Summer: For The Record
April 25: Spike Milligan – The Bedside Milligan, Or, Read Your Way To Insomnia

May 8: Robyn Maynard – Policing Black Lives: State Violence In Canada From Slavery To The Present
May 18: Edna Ferber – Show Boat
May 30: Martin Amis – The Rub Of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays And Reportage, 1994 – 2017

June 8: Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim
June 19: Walter Havighurst – Voices On The River: The Story Of The Mississippi Waterways
June 29: Kingsley Amis – Jake's Thing

July 7: Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty
July 12: Stewart Lee Allen – The Devil's Cup: A History Of The World According to Coffee

Aug. 5: Walter Isaacson – Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Aug. 7: Henry Freeman – American Revolution: A History From Beginning To End
Aug. 13: Elmore Leonard – Rum Punch
Aug. 23: Jonas Jonasson – The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared

Sept. 5: Hugh Bicheno – Rebels & Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War
Sept. 14: Elmore Leonard – Be Cool
Sept. 21: William Hjortsberg – Falling Angel

Oct. 10: Elmore Leonard – LaBrava
Oct. 15: Lillian de la Torre – The Exploits of Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector
Oct. 23: Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö – Murder At The Savoy

Nov. 7: Michael Palin – Erebus: The Story Of A Ship
Nov. 24: Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö – The Terrorists
Dec. 26: Michelle Obama – Becoming

And what, i hear you ask, were my favourites of the new ones? In fiction, the Jonas Jonasson was a delight but i think the nod goes to Edna Ferber: a wonderful portrait of a simpler time.



In non-fiction, Jay Farrar's book definitely deserves a nod: excellent portrait of life on the road for a working musician (he's the lead singer in Son Volt), Robyn Maynard deserves some thanks for opening my eyes to the extent that racism exists here in allegedly racism-free Canada, and Michael Palin's book was fascinating – anything to do with the Franklin Expedition interests me.

Non-fiction book of the year, though: Michelle Obama's “Becoming.” No, really. It's so completely different to anything i would normally read and it was wonderful. I don't like politics, but then, neither does she, so we got along just fine. She's an extraordinary woman. And her husband's not a bad guy, either!



I definitely have to give a raspberry to Hugh Bicheno's book about the American Revolution, though: not only was it a disorganised mess, but he let his own prejudices show through. He loathes two of my favourite people from that era -- Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin -- but he's wrong. Jefferson did not sexually abuse his female slaves (having slaves was the norm back then, sad to say). (Jefferson didn't like the system but didn't know how to end it.) He had a long-term relationship with one of them -- Sally Heming -- and they had several children together and he would have married her if it had been allowed.

And Benjamin Franklin -- who did for electricity what Newton did for gravity -- was not a "dirty old man." He was playful and he had a lot of young female friends, but his flirting with them was never "with intent".









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