What: Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries
Where: Kick-ass second-hand bookshop just round the corner fron Notting Hill Station
Expected vibe: blacky humourous existential angst
We'll see...
Wednesday 26 November 2008
Sunday 23 November 2008
Some top reads of 2008
Estates by Lynsey Hanley (see photo)
Surprising, touching personal history of social housing in Britain. Manages to be polemic and sweet at the same time.
Fire and Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain by Christain Wolmar
Brilliant, page-turning history of the railways. Just don’t tell anyone that it was what I was reading most at Glastonbury this year.
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
Have wanted to read this for ages. Just the sort of meandering, part-travel, part-history, part-memoir that I love and my wife thinks is just silly. It just makes me pine for holidays…
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
When I heard that the author researched much of his epic, monumental but very human history of France en velo, is was there in a flash. I read it in France, of course.
Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones
Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy is one of my very favourite books of the last few years so I was always ken to read this. It has its moments but it’s just not Jones’ thing, really, the soul-searching travel in the mind kind of thing. Was thought-provoking, though and I’m in full argreement with his dislike of excessive material comforts. Where did I put my smartphone?
Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson
Beguiling, utterly bewitching beautiful hymn to birds. Deserves a fuller mention on this blog, which it'll get soon.
My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
Fiction, whaa? Yup, but of the agitprop, political sort. The other (and much less embarrassing and fitting) book that I read at Glastonbury. Fight the power.
Surprising, touching personal history of social housing in Britain. Manages to be polemic and sweet at the same time.
Fire and Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain by Christain Wolmar
Brilliant, page-turning history of the railways. Just don’t tell anyone that it was what I was reading most at Glastonbury this year.
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
Have wanted to read this for ages. Just the sort of meandering, part-travel, part-history, part-memoir that I love and my wife thinks is just silly. It just makes me pine for holidays…
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
When I heard that the author researched much of his epic, monumental but very human history of France en velo, is was there in a flash. I read it in France, of course.
Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones
Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy is one of my very favourite books of the last few years so I was always ken to read this. It has its moments but it’s just not Jones’ thing, really, the soul-searching travel in the mind kind of thing. Was thought-provoking, though and I’m in full argreement with his dislike of excessive material comforts. Where did I put my smartphone?
Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson
Beguiling, utterly bewitching beautiful hymn to birds. Deserves a fuller mention on this blog, which it'll get soon.
My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
Fiction, whaa? Yup, but of the agitprop, political sort. The other (and much less embarrassing and fitting) book that I read at Glastonbury. Fight the power.
Current read: Most Secret War by R.V. Jones
Where / how acquired: Second hand, after mention on uber-nerd site www.subbrit.org.uk
Vibe: Bit snobby and self-congratulatory but nonetheless gripping
My current read is this by ex-WW2 British scientific intelligence officer R.V. Jones – a detailed account of his work during the second world war to defeat the dastardly hun through quick wits, schoolboy gumption and the firm, steadying hand of science. It is actually very good, both a fascinating insight and a pacey narrative. It’s just that you firstly have to get over the Daily Mail-esque ‘if people in this country now worked like we did in the war we wouldn’t be in this mess’ (the book was published in 1979) and the general sense that the English-German bit of WW2 was a conker fight with slightly higher odds. The excellent Behind Closed Doors docu on BBC 2 at the moment, focusing so far at least on Stalin, reminds me that the vast majority of the war was won not by English grit and stiff upper lips but by the blood of many, many millions of Russians in particular. They starved and ate cats at Stalingrad, but held out, and then raped and pillaged their way back to Berlin, winning the most Pyrrhic of all victories. There’s very little that’s glamorous or worth celebrating about that – you don’t see a Russian Band of Brothers, do you?
As mentioned, the edition of this book that I’m reading was published in 1979. One of two things, mostly of tone, seem a bit dated but really not much. Why then is their such an industry in new books about the second world war – surely it’s all been said before? But it’s a massively popular and successful area of publishing at the moment. I was at a meeting recently where a new book by Giles Foden, author of the book-then-film The Last King of Scotland, was mentioned – and it’s set around Dunkirk (or D-Day, one of the two). A very audible gasp of ‘christ, that’s an immediate massive seller’ went up, and I’m sure it’s true. Is it that we’re at the point when the grandchildren of the people who fought in the war (like me) are at the sort of age to be interested in this history? Is it that the supposed black-and-white of the second world war makes such a contrast to the innumerable shades of grey of the many conflicts in the world today? Or is it just that WW2 is such a mine for good stories – because it really is. Whatever, I’m in no position to criticise – I’ll be at Andrew Roberts’ Masters and Commanders, Richard Evans’ The Third Reich at War, Nichols Rankin’s Churchill’s Wizards at the rest as soon as they’re in paperback… Just as soon as I’ve finished Most Secret War, and devoured today’s Sunday Telegraph…
Where / how acquired: Second hand, after mention on uber-nerd site www.subbrit.org.uk
Vibe: Bit snobby and self-congratulatory but nonetheless gripping
My current read is this by ex-WW2 British scientific intelligence officer R.V. Jones – a detailed account of his work during the second world war to defeat the dastardly hun through quick wits, schoolboy gumption and the firm, steadying hand of science. It is actually very good, both a fascinating insight and a pacey narrative. It’s just that you firstly have to get over the Daily Mail-esque ‘if people in this country now worked like we did in the war we wouldn’t be in this mess’ (the book was published in 1979) and the general sense that the English-German bit of WW2 was a conker fight with slightly higher odds. The excellent Behind Closed Doors docu on BBC 2 at the moment, focusing so far at least on Stalin, reminds me that the vast majority of the war was won not by English grit and stiff upper lips but by the blood of many, many millions of Russians in particular. They starved and ate cats at Stalingrad, but held out, and then raped and pillaged their way back to Berlin, winning the most Pyrrhic of all victories. There’s very little that’s glamorous or worth celebrating about that – you don’t see a Russian Band of Brothers, do you?
As mentioned, the edition of this book that I’m reading was published in 1979. One of two things, mostly of tone, seem a bit dated but really not much. Why then is their such an industry in new books about the second world war – surely it’s all been said before? But it’s a massively popular and successful area of publishing at the moment. I was at a meeting recently where a new book by Giles Foden, author of the book-then-film The Last King of Scotland, was mentioned – and it’s set around Dunkirk (or D-Day, one of the two). A very audible gasp of ‘christ, that’s an immediate massive seller’ went up, and I’m sure it’s true. Is it that we’re at the point when the grandchildren of the people who fought in the war (like me) are at the sort of age to be interested in this history? Is it that the supposed black-and-white of the second world war makes such a contrast to the innumerable shades of grey of the many conflicts in the world today? Or is it just that WW2 is such a mine for good stories – because it really is. Whatever, I’m in no position to criticise – I’ll be at Andrew Roberts’ Masters and Commanders, Richard Evans’ The Third Reich at War, Nichols Rankin’s Churchill’s Wizards at the rest as soon as they’re in paperback… Just as soon as I’ve finished Most Secret War, and devoured today’s Sunday Telegraph…
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