BOOKS READ IN 2015

I seem to have read more books this year than last - and far more than in any recent year before that. I haven't included here the Dylan-related books I've also read or skimmed through during 2015:

THE 8.55 TO BAGHDAD, Andrew Eames, 2004 so badly written it’s absurd that it won an award from the British Guild of Travel Writers, but good subject-matter

LET THE DEVIL SPEAK: Articles, Essays, & Incitements, Steven Hart, 2014 some substantial, brilliantly sleuthed essays

CHATTERTON, Peter Ackroyd, 1987 vivid, absorbing, but the insistent wackiness of every  character is over the top, & really he says nothing about plagiarism, which is his theme

CROW LAKE, Mary Lawson, 2002 completely wonderful novel, fresh and true

THE DOCTOR & MR. DYLAN, Rick Novak, 2014 good on Hibbing, hopeless on humans; it's not about Bob Dylan, and it's a novel

THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER, Hilary Mantel, 2014 short stories, with a whiff of using up old rejects; 2nd-rate by her standards

HISTORY OF MADNESS, Michel Foulcault, 1961 I gave it up: it's far too clever for me

GREAT APES, Will Self, 1997 I gave this up too: couldn’t stand his interminable showing off or his brutish arsehole-obsessing modernism

REVALUATION, F.R. Leavis, 1936 his least readable book

THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS, Joseph Conrad, 1897 a slim volume but very demanding: intensive and poetical, with echoes of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner

JOURNEYS: An Anthology, ed Robyn Davidson, 2001 snotty intro, sloppy edits, and a wayward selection of pieces, in that many aren’t really travel pieces at all

THE HUNGER GAMES [Bk 1], Suzanne Collins, 2008 clever, strongly plotted, decently-written dystopian-world page-turner; understandably a cult best-seller

TO FOLLOW THE LEAD, Annie S. Swan, c1911 appealing simplicity till the regrettable crescendo of god-bothering

THE SAFFRON KITCHEN, Yasmin Crowther, 2006 boring till p60, then a great central patch of affecting drama, and then a long ending of tiresome didactic hokum

THE OUTCAST, Sadie Jones, 2007 strikingly clear prose describing a slew of terrible events; compelling, sensitive, touching, and with strong characters

PRECIOUS BANE, Mary Webb, 1924 I was bereft at finishing this wonderful, beautiful, forcefully-written, unique book: so vivid, poetic, touching, sustained, humbling, sweet-natured - all without any cuteness or arch self-consciousness

THE GOLDFINCH, Donna Tartt, 2013 couldn’t be more different from ‘Precious Bane’ but its equal or better: phenomenally good - vast canvas (centred on a small one...)

FRANKIE & STANKIE, Barbara Trapido, 2003 terrible title and a bit shallow, but funny, fresh and quirky

WRITERS IN HOLLYWOOD 1915-1951, Ian Hamilton, 1990 very solid but afraid to be anything but studious, so too few Hollywood Babylonian anecdotes

THE EDWARDIANS, Vita Sackville-West, 1930 patchy writing; some implausible plot twists & characters; poor dialogue; fascinating material; glad I read it

DO NOT SELL AT ANY PRICE, Amanda Petrusich, 2014 loved it: a necessary look into the avid world of the 78rpm rare record collector; intelligent & humane

THE PAYING GUESTS, Sarah Waters, 2014 riveting, richly imaginative, a tense major work: nearly as good as ‘Fingersmith’ (high praise); so admirable

THE VERSIONS OF US, Laura Barnett, 2015 alluring premise, crap book: all so calculated instead of imagined; in shaming contrast to the Sarah Waters

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Harper Lee, 1960 a book almost everyone read at school but I never did; lovely, though read now - in retrospect - a bit apologist about the very southern racism the book deplores

SKIOS, Michael Frayn, 2012 this is Wodehouse Lite (with similarly ingenious plotting)

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, John Boyne, 2006 a clever, touching, unusual, good novel by no means only for Young Readers

WHEN WE WERE THIN, C.P. Lee, 2007 a really interesting social history of the UK music biz 1968-1980s - and a great title

THE MAN IN THE QUEUE, Josephine Tey, 1929 engaging and well-written, except for the purple prose paragraphs designed to prove she’s a Real Writer; the usual whodunit cheat: introducing a surprise relationship we couldn’t have guessed at

SMALL CEREMONIES, Carol Shields, 1976 at times piercing observation in taut, captivating prose; at times I felt oh-for-fuck’s-sake-you-precious-twee-middle-class-wimp

THE TERRIBLE PRIVACY OF MAXWELL SIM, Jonathan Coe, 2010 the terrible title, the awful postmodern ending - both indicative of garrulousness - and in between, a deflating, depressing book; Time Out found it “hugely enjoyable”...

PURPLE HIBISCUS, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2004 completely absorbing novel from a justifiably confident writer creating a refreshing, convincing Africa

THE TRAVELLING HORNPLAYER, Barbara Trapido, 1998 substantial, fiercely intelligent, dexterously plotted but with a horrible and improbable end section

BUDDY HOLLY, Dave Laing, 1971 captivating, modest, refreshing to read again now, full of acute small observations & quite right in its analysis of his influence [I wrote an earlier blogpost about this book]

THE MILLSTONE, Margaret Drabble, 1965 a slim volume in the best sense as well as literally; light touch, swift intelligence, subtlety & gaiety & delicacy of feeling and, now, a fascinating glimpse into pre-Carnaby St 1960s London life

STRAIGHT LIFE, Art & Laurie Pepper, 1994 edn mammoth oral autobiography + others’ testimony, of & to a very contradictory life: rich yet impoverished, creative yet sunk in addiction & its gruesome degradation; and vivid, espically about violent prison life; a hugely more candid autobiography than most

THE END OF THE AFFAIR, Graham Greene, 1951 occasional moments of sharp interest sticking out of the blancmange of dated Catholic hooey

THE L-SHAPED ROOM, Lynne Reid Banks, 1960 marvellous to find so belatedly: brilliantly plotted, vivid characters but subtly drawn, a glorious opinionatedness and such robust intelligence about human feeling and behaviour

THE BACKWARD SHADOW, Lynne Reid Banks, 1970 so very disappointing: contrived, ricketty plotting, shallowed characters who become hard to care about; a plunge into what would now be called Chick Lit

UNDER MILK WOOD, Dylan Thomas, 1954 [posthumous] pioneering but now a smaller thing than its reputation

BHOWANI JUNCTION, John Masters, 1954 powerful, compelling, brave, compassionate book it would be all too easy to dismiss today for its political incorrectness, yet in some ways ahead of its time, and from a really individual writer

THE LAST SEPTEMBER, Elizabeth Bowen, 1929 full of her exceptional brilliance, yet an oddly muted depiction of a crucial period in Irish history and the uncomfortable Anglo-Irish life clung to within it

SKATING TO ANTARCTICA, Jenny Diski, 1997 abiff with intelligence and self-indulgent pawing at the wounds of her appalling childhood; and brilliant, if brief, about penguins

A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD, Anne Tyler, 2015 much lauded; I was left wondering why

THE DEATH OF THE HEART, Elizabeth Bowen, 1938 another piercing scrutiny

CANADA, Richard Ford, 2012 not a pleasurable  read but a highly compelling and original novel

TIPPING THE VELVET, Sarah Waters, 1998 not a patch on ‘Fingersmith’: far too and-then-this-happened-and-then-this-happened, and too heavily playing the lesbian card - where ‘Fingersmith’ was a masterpiece of plot, character and prose

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, Charles Dickens, 1843-4 a great start but then filler and comparative failure: the least solid Dickens novel I've read

LONG BEFORE THE STARS WERE TORN DOWN, J.A. Wainwright, 2015 very readable cowboyish novel with a deft structure, though weak on women characters and with an unsatisfying semi-postmodern ending (aren’t they always?)

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ELMORE LEONARD’S 10 RULES OF WRITING

I’ve taken this ruthless but fair summary, and drawing, from the fine blog Northern Light by Seán Dodson, but Leonard’s rules themselves were published in his book 10 Rules of Writing, published in 2010 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (in the UK). Sensible rules, but ones that great books, and successful books, have often ignored.

Rule 1: Charles Dickens’ Bleak House famously opens with an inspired description of London’s “implacable November weather". The first chapter of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is itself implacably about the weather, serving notice that it will be a main character in the novel.

Rule 2: William Boyd’s no.1 bestseller (and James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner) Brazzaville Beach has a Prologue. So does Sarah Gruen’s Water For Elephants, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler's Wife and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

Rules 3 & 4: These are so sensible as to be ignored at your peril. To bring in a whole barrage of verbs like “remarked", “opined" and “elucidated" suggests brainless falsity. But there’s nothing wrong with a sparing use of “asked", “whispered", “shouted" and so on: it can be helpful. And naturally any number of successful, popular novelists go their own way in the matter. I’ve been reading John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids (1951), for the first time since 1967. It’s very good - and fascinatingly of-its-time but not datedly stiff - yet within a typical dialogue-spiced page we have speech without any narrative add-on, some uses of “he said", but also “he admitted", “he smiled", “agreed Umberto", “observed", “explained", “suggested" (twice) and “remarked". I didn’t find this intrusive or awkward. And then there’s the novel with which Hilary Mantel finally won a Booker Prize, the magnificent Wolf Hall - which doesn’t tell you who speaks any line of dialogue. You have to work it out for yourself. There isn’t even the hand-holding of a “said Thomas". No “said" anybody. No “said".

Rule 5: Indisputable truth. It applies too for every written sentence of non-fiction, of a letter, an e-mail, a tweet or a text message. It can only justify itself at the end of a one-word message - say, “No!" - for a more seemly form of emphasis than capital letters. In my opinion.

Rule 6: If he means as in “Suddenly, a man burst into the room and shot everyone", fair enough. When asked to serve a less clunky purpose, it can work. With “All hell broke loose", he’s wrong. As Bob Dylan, for one, has been repeatedly skilled in showing, cliché can be used in many witty, sly and beguiling ways.

Rule 7: Er... Mark Twain, D.H.Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Hardy, Mary Webb (ie in her Precious Bane, now a Virago Modern Classic) and any number of Southern US novelists, old and new (including Kathryn Stockett in her flawed but fine book The Help).

Rules 8-10: So pleasantly unmeasurable as to be hardly rules at all.

Good list, though: as long as you don’t take it any more seriously than Elmore Leonard did.

YES, DICKENS

Columnists have thought it smart to write pieces on how tiresome they find the Dickens bi-centenary ballyhoo. They are what's tiresome. So is the hypocrisy of the relevant Guardian academic rentamouth, Prof. John Sutherland, who yesterday published his Dickens-is-overrated piece (including a list of all the Victorian novelists he claims to find superior) . . . and today publishes his book The Dickens Dictionary, whose sub-title is ‘An A-Z of England’s greatest novelist'.

Dickens too can easily be accused of hypocrisy, and on a less shallow scale; certainly the great campaigner against injustice was vile to his wife and to his children. But he was, and therefore is, a great writer, and it seems more reasonable to say so today than to be “spewing" cheap shots.

Yes, a great writer. The objection to TV adaptations  -  less so to today's than to those ghastly children's television serials of days gone by  -  is that they emphasise the wacky names, grotesquerie and plot, when of course it's the writing  that's the superlative core of his genius. So often he contradicts the foolish notion we have that nineteenth-century writers are far too wordy  -  so often he can say in a clipped phrase what would take any contemporary writer a paragraph. Yet he is, too, so very powerful when he expands into rhetorical luxury. And it's hard to comprehend any denial of his vividly persuasive imagination or acuteness of observation.

Here are a few passages I love, from just one of his novels, Bleak House:

“Mr. Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and...took his long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the seed in the ground as it glided along."

“[Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock] start for home...out of Paris...Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to my lady, under the worn-out heavens... Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject."

“It is a dull street, under the best conditions; where the two long rows of houses stare at each other with that severity, that half a dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into stone, rather than originally built in that material. It is a street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to liveliness...and the echoing mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone chargers of noble statues."

“...in a large house formerly a house of state, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now; and in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and ante-chambers still remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache... Here, among his many boxes labelled with transcendant names, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn... Here he is today, quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school, whom nobody can open.
         Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to afford it... The titles on the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that can have a lock on it has got one; no key is visible..."

Excerpts, of course, snatch things from their context, and those above are the more powerful and numinous within the book, where they resonate within the great ebb and flow of the novel, sounding in the deeps of its themes, its atmospheres and passions, just as on the small scale of a short passage itself, a word or phrase reverberates against another a sentence or two before or after. The last passage above, for example, is part of the long and masterly scene-setting for the drama of Mr. Tulkinghorn's murder there: a drama in which the impact of violation is more felt because it violates not only the man but the privileged, guarded hush, so strongly established by Dickens, of the room in which it occurs.

There are Dickens novels I still haven't read  -  Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge  -  but they surely cannot better Bleak House, or Dombey and Son, or Great Expectations, or even, for all its marring facetiousness, the compelling Our Mutual Friend. Those readers who were alive in Dickens' own day were luckier than us: they had the chance not only to read his work but to go to hear his readings  -  hugely attended, clamorous, larger than life. Their core, though, was words. His great writing.