2016 · Annual selections
Dear All,
2016 has been an eventful year. Both Julie and I turned 40 and our children also started school. As the attached photo attests, Nathan and Dylan have begun to follow in their parents' footsteps and also thoroughly enjoy their books. I have continued to average reading a book week, helped by a still-active travel schedule and the delight of now not having owned a television for a decade.
The year's travel highlight was visiting Russia for the first time and spending three nights in St Petersburg. This also provided the opportunity to revisit some classic Russian literature, one of which makes it into the top-ten for the year. Russia marks the 47th country in the world which I have visited (and so there are still many more to enjoy…).I often get asked whether seemingly constant travel bores me and, the unambiguous answer is 'no'. Similar to reading, the experience is inherently mind-broadening, a transportation into other worlds and cultures, an ability to learn more about others and through this ourselves.
The year has certainly been a vintage one in terms of reading and the list below was a pleasure to compile. Both fiction and non-fiction works stood out and will remain enduringly memorable.
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (2014) - an amazing 600-page dystopian novel about a series of interlinking events/ worlds, both plausible and fantastical, beginning in 1984 and ending during the middle of this century. I was gripped from beginning to end, taken on a journey to an extent that the events populated my dreams as well as my waking hours.
Oryx and Crake trilogy by Margaret Atwood ("Oryx and Crake", 2004; "The Year of the Flood", 2010; "Madaddam", 2014) - a slight cheat to include three books within one entry, but it was a rare privilege to be able to read three works by the same author back-to-back. The trilogy again represents a form of dystopian, or what Atwood would call 'speculative', fiction. Nothing that appears here cannot be seen in the real world today.
Catherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson (2015) - Thomson is one of the country's most enjoyable but also provoking authors, and I am yet to read a bad novel by him. There is an element of menace in everything he writes, a subtext of subversion or the unknown. Reading this is like watching a dark film, the prose equally epic and cinematographic.
The Burning Book by Maggie Gee (1983) - distinctly out-of-fashion and arguably ahead of her time, Gee was one of the famous Granta 'class of 1983.' This work highlights the disintegration of a family unit against a background of impending nuclear war.
Out by Natsuo Kirino (2003) - a superb piece of Japanese crime fiction about a group of women who get involved in something they originally had never bargained for. Highly original. If you like Ryu Murakami, then you will enjoy this.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (2010) - a wonderfully epic work which begins with the death of the eponymous Skippy and then details the events both preceding and succeeding this event. Set in a school, it captures its atmosphere perfectly, but the work is more about hope and having courage in one's convictions.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015) - Ishiguro shows his literary dexterity by setting this fantasy novel in Anglo-Saxon times, a very different location to his previous works. Its pace is almost dream-like, its tone highly poignant and its message abundantly clear - be careful what you wish for.
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (2014) - a very clever and distinctly post-modern novel about subversion and corruption within the art world.
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (1842) - a wonderful journey across 19th Century Russia. Elements of both Cervantes and Sterne feature and Joyce would probably have appreciated the work too. The fragmented ending intrigues rather than frustrates. Separately, I also loved Gogol's short story "The Nose", a satire on pomposity in St Petersburg.
The Imperfectionists by Tim Rachman (2011) - all about journalism, a set of short stories perfectly stitched together within the form of a novel. Darkly humourous.
This is London by Ben Judah (2016) - a wonderful, if slightly rambling commentary on contemporary London, how the city has changed since the start of the century and how there are many 'forgotten' voices that lurk at its edge in more liminal zones.
Watching the English by Kate Fox (2005) - a great piece of social anthropology, unerring in its accuracy and highly relevant (maybe all the more so post-Brexit)
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (2015) - a 'must-read' work for anyone keen to understand contemporary geopolitics. Written in a concise and lucid way. Maps included too.