Poke. Poke. Hello? Squeeeeee! Ding! Thump thump. Is this thing on?
(Ahem.) OK, it looks like the Blork Blog still has a bit of a pulse, so here’s a small injection to help it limp into 2016. It’s my annual report on the books I read in the previous year. As usual, they’re listed in alphabetical order, by author. Notable titles are highlighted in yellow, and graphic novels are indicated with “[gn].” See the asterisk strings for any other notes.
- The War Against Cliché, by Martin Amis *
- Slightly Out of Focus, by Robert Capa
- The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark **
- Hellgoing, by Lynn Coady
- The Last Thing He Wanted, by Joan Didion ***
- The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood
- The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson
- Thinks, by David Lodge
- The Bishop’s Man, by Linden MacIntyre
- Happy Stories about Well-adjusted People, by Joe Ollmann [gn]
- Science Fiction, by Joe Ollmann {graphic}
- I Curse the River of Time, by Per Petterson ****
- Paul Joins the Scouts, by Michel Rabagliati [gn]
- The Song of Roland (“Paul à Quebec“) by Michel Rabagliati [gn]
- Indignant, by Philip Roth
- Dream Story, by Arthur Schnitzler
- A Good School, by Richard Yates *****
Only seventeen titles (well, eighteen, because The Berlin Stories is actually two novels packaged together – Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin). Not a big year in terms of numbers, but a good year of reading overall. As usual, the books were interspersed with countless articles from copious magazines, both online and in paper, along with a noticeable uptick in podcast listening. It was also diffused by too much time wasted on Facebook. Not much time wasted on Twitter, however, as I spent very little time there at all in 2015.
I detect no particular trends in the reading, aside from the usual top-heaviness of “old white males.” Guilty as charged; only two titles by women this year, which is terrible. But I often pick up a book based on a gut-level interest, so it just works out that way. I really should try harder for variety. In my defence I should add that the proportion of women writers I read in magazines is significantly higher.
Here are a few additional notes on this year’s list.
* The War Against Cliché, by Martin Amis. I did not “read” this in 2015, I finished it in 2015 after pecking away at it for about six years. Martin Amis is one of those writers whose vocabulary and rapier wit is thrilling to read, yet he constantly makes you want to punch him in the face. The closest I will ever come to doing so is using the term “rapier wit” in this paragraph (twice!) because I know he’d hate it so much.
** The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark. I should be clear that I only read half of this one (the good half). Not that there’s anything wrong with the other half (how would I know?) but this was borrowed from the library and read on a Kobo. I was a bit slow getting to it, so when my two weeks was up it vanished from the device. By then I felt I had read the parts that interested me, so I didn’t bother jumping through the technological hoops of renewing the loan. Perhaps one day I’ll elaborate on my use of the Kobo and why I am no longer in possession of it.
*** The Last Thing He Wanted, by Joan Didion. Joan Didion is cool. Hot dang, she’s cool. When I read Play it as it Lays a few years ago I thought that odd, detached, and weirdly strung-out style was an artifact of the 1970s. Her essays don’t read like that – at least not the ones I’ve read. So I picked up The Last Thing He Wanted thinking that this recent novel, with it subject revolving around 1980s US politics and Central-American covert operations, would be a real straight-up page-turner. Um. It was equally odd, detached, and weirdly strung-out as Play it as it Lays. I did manage to follow along and I did get through it, occasionally pulled in the way I like to be. But most of the time I felt like yelling “fer Pete’s sake Joan, just tell the goddamn story!”
**** I Curse the River of Time, by Per Petterson. This had been on my “to buy” list for at least five years but I couldn’t find it anywhere (excluding online sources; I wanted to flip though it before buying). I was captivated by the title, which is about the most haunting string of six words I’ve ever seen. I searched book stores all over Montreal and beyond but could not find it. I found a lone copy at Book Soup, in Los Angeles. Nabbed it! I wasn’t disappointed, although I did find myself occasionally restless as I read it. It’s basically a slow-moving and somewhat dark story of a man’s regrets and his inability to fully acknowledge or deal with them.
***** A Good School, by Richard Yates. This book is so Richard Yates. It’s one WTF punch after another and makes you cringe in ways you never thought possible. You’ll not wonder why Yates was such a boozer in his lifetime, as he lays his demons bare on the page for all to see and know. It makes you want to go back to 1970 so you can find him in a bar and instead of trying to save him you’d get him even drunker just to help ease the pain. Ouch. (More, please.)
[Previous years’ reading lists.]