Books Read in 2020: 11 (November)

Getting close to the end of things where this list is concerned. From a plague perspective November was probably the worst month: Covid-19 cases and deaths shot up, and we were tightly locked down, with (at the time) no hint of when things might improve. And at that we in Canada were much better off than many people. Second-smallest total of books read in a month this year, for what that's worth. As usual, asterisks (*) identify re-read titles.

265. *V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd. O the joys of Anarchy. This might be heresy, but I think I prefer the movie… (1 November)

266. Biggles of the Camel Squadron by Capt. W.E. Johns. Was a huge Biggles fan in junior high school. I’m not anymore. WE Johns compares rather poorly with John Harris… granted he wrote in a different period: This book is from 1934, republished in 1968. (1 November)

267. Nieuport 11/16 Bébé vs Fokker Eindecker by Jon Guttman. Because of the aviation fiction I’ve been reading, I guess. Dry but informative. And only 80 pages. (4 November)

268. Reckless Fellows: The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps by Edward Bujak. I had hoped for new info about training, and perhaps a social history of the RFC in the UK. I was disappointed. The factual errors didn’t help. And if I never again see the phrase “Edwardian fox-hunting aristocrats” in connection with the RFC, it will be too soon. (5 November)

269. The Royal Flying Corps in France: From Mons to the Somme by Ralph Barker. Much better written than Reckless Fellows, and while it didn’t tell me much new, it was still a good read. (7 November)

270. Into the Valley: Marines at Guadalcanal by John Hersey. He was really good at this sort of writing. Very little happens in this tale of men running away from battle. But it’s a tremendous tale anyway, and well told. (8 November)

271. A Single Pebble by John Hersey. Novel set in early 1920s China. Not very interesting, I’m afraid: it reads like journalism, and the POV character’s a doofus. Good background material, though. (10 November)

272. Over the Wine-Dark Sea by H.N. Turteltaub (aka Harry Turtledove). Another example of fine background and world-building, without much juice to it. Two protagonists, neither of whom seems to be affected at all by his experiences. (12 November)

273. The Interceptors by John Harris. Penultimate Falconer novel, set in civil-war Russia, 1919. A most depressing subject, and this provides less flyboy action and more of a catalogue of misery. (13 November)

274. The Great War: A Photographic Narrative by the Imperial War Museums. Immense collection of photos, mostly of the western front but touching on most aspects of the war. Text is no great shakes, but it wasn’t the text I was interested in. (14 November)

275. The Revolutionaries by John Harris. A Mexican revolution? Sure, why not? Easily the most juvenile of the five books, and rather a silly way to end the series. (15 November)

276. The War Lover by John Hersey. Much more engaging than Pebble. Much longer, too, but in this case it’s a good thing. Interesting structure, though the final revelations about Marrow’s character seem a bit over the top. (16 November)

277. What’s So Funny? by Donald Westlake. Another Dortmunder novel. As easy to get through as a bag of Doritos. He has a knack for making elaborate coincidences seem quite natural. (18 November)

278. The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century by Jay Winter & Blaine Baggett. Companion book to a BBC/PBS doc series. Fascinating attention to non-battle, non-soldier details. Big, too. (21 November)

279. Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake. Non-Dortmunder comic caper. A most likeable protagonist, and catchy plot. Emotionally deeper than I’d expected. (23 November)

280. Horse of a Different Color by Howard Waldrop. Nobody writes like this, really. I wish I did. A bit surprised: I liked everything in this collection. (24 November)

281. Forever and a Death by Donald E. Westlake. Lorna thought it was a comedy; it wasn’t. To my surprise it was originally a treatment for a Bond film. Protagonist basically disappears in the middle of the book. (25 November)

282. Money for Nothing by Donald E. Westlake. Another standalone thriller, with a very odd plot device. And a protagonist who spends most of the book being passive and boring. Every one of the supporting characters is more interesting. Partially redeemed by a rousing finish. (26 November)

283. The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War by Ian Castle. Military history, not history―there’s a significant difference. Not for the better, I’m afraid. This was like double-entry bookkeeping for violent death. (28 November)

Books Read in 2020: 10 (October)

Into the final quarter of the year, and back under the lockdown thumb. Roddy Doyle was definitely the happy surprise of this month. Though the Westlake book prompted me to start reading his fiction. As always, re-reads are marked with an asterisk (*). But you knew that...

238. Last Page First by Allan Fotheringham. Several decades’ worth of columns, with a fair amount of recycling involved. Found it more entertaining than the previous Foth book, possibly because some of the columns were more recent than 1981. (1 October)

239. Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris by Edmund White. What can I say? I find the man’s style (and forthrightness) charming. This one’s more about him (and his friends) than about Paris, but if anything it’s more entertaining than The Flâneur. (3 October)

240. The Getaway Car by Donald E. Westlake. At Lorna’s recommendation, a collection of non-fiction by a very prolific writer of “detective stories”. Mostly entertaining (and at times funny) but there’s a flintiness at base that I suspect confirms he wouldn’t have been all that nice a person. (6 October)

241. Two for the Road by Roddy Doyle. To my surprise I laughed while reading this. A lot. Most definitely out loud. A simple idea (that ought not to work, but does), brilliantly executed. (7 October)

242. Listen Up! by Mark Howard. Canadian recording engineer/producer gossips about equipment and people he has worked with. Very odd. Shallow, not much depth… almost as if it had been dictated rather than written. (8 October)

243. Nemo: The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Read this out of order, and a lot of the dialogue is in German (fuck off, Moore) so not as enjoyable as it might have been. (8 October)

244. Get Real by Donald E. Westlake. One of the later Dortmunder novels. At first I wasn’t sure, but even if the satire is a bit clumsy overall it’s funny and very well written (10 October)

245. Ghost Stories by Walter de la Mare. Took me weeks (months?) to wade through this. Some good tales, but the style isn't for me. (11 October)

246. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Supposedly the last installment of the story, and Moore’s farewell to comics. Increasingly inclined to go up its own ass, I think, and the 3D stuff was painful to try to read. Still a fair amount of nasty, if self-indulgent, fun. (12 October)

247. The Fledglings by John Harris (or Max Hennessy). Apparently YA fiction about WWI pilots. Picked up on a whim. Not great, and rather dark for YA in 1971. But I’ll keep reading the rest of the series, I think. (14 October)

248. War Planes of the First World War: Fighters vol. 2 by J. M. Bruce. At long last, the Sopwith Camel! (Also the various peculiar Royal Aircraft Factory designs.) Don’t know why I love this stuff, but I surely do. (15 October)

249. War Planes of the First World War: Fighters vol. 4 by J. M. Bruce. French fighter design philosophy was very strange, it turns out. (16 October)

250. War Planes of the First World War Fighters vol. 5 by J. M. Bruce. Very frustrating that this excellent series just stops with this volume. (17 October)

251. Pioneer Aircraft: 1903-1914 by William Munson. Not really very well organized, but lots of intriguing info. Much more personality-based than any other books in this series. (18 October)

252. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not sure if Tempest would have made any more sense if I’d read this first. All in all though I like this volume much more than vol. 4. I’m inclined to be unimpressed by a piece of art that only makes sense if you have somebody annotating it, but perhaps Moore just makes me cranky these days. (19 October)

253. *Monty Python’s Big Red Book by Pythons. A reminder that they weren’t just about TV and movies. Pretty flimsy reminder, but what the hell. Wanted distraction, got same. (20 October)

254. *The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Vol. 1 by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Re-read just to confirm to myself that the first volumes really were much more accessible… and entertaining. (21 October)

255. Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not really sure what the point of this one was. (22 October)

256. Nemo: River of Ghosts by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not bad as a wrap-up of the Nemo-Robur family saga. (22 October)

257. The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake. First appearance of Dortmunder, and a comedy of frustration, well done. The ending’s a bit abrupt but I liked it. (23 October)

258. The Professionals by John Harris. Second pseudo-Biggles novel starring Martin Falconer. Reasonably accurate but somehow never gripping. (24 October)

259. The Victors by John Harris. Another quick read, with next to no staying power. Seems fairly serious for 1970s YA, but still not very deep. (24 October)

260. Stranger in the Shogun’s City by Amy Stanley. Fascinating detail about life in 19th-century Japan. Tsuneno does not sound at all likeable, but hats off to Stanley for taking a fairly small amount of source material and spinning it into a most engaging book. (24 October)

261. *Edo, the City That Became Tokyo by Naitō Akira (ill. Hozumi Kazuo). Re-read in order to enhance my enjoyment of #260, and enjoyed it much more the second time around. Lots of useful information for a fantasy world-builder. (25 October)

262. Mr. Straight Arrow by Jeremy Treglown. The career of John Hersey… who wrote a lot more than I realized, including novels I knew of but didn’t know were by him. He may not have been an easily knowable person; this book doesn’t tell me much. (27 October)

263. Down These Strange Streets ed. Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin. Fantasy or New Weird short stories. A higher hit-rate than I was expecting (the Harris and Gabaldon pieces were serious disappointments). Maybe even some inspiration here. (29 October)

264. A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister. Funny on the surface, but a lot of the history she retails is quite horrific. Men are shits; I’ve thought so for a long time. Will try to remember the amusing bits of this instead of the nasties. (31 October)

Books Read in 2020: 9 (September)

The end of summer. For some reason the lowest monthly total of the year. Actually, I know the reason: I became obsessed with the songs and artists mentioned in the first two books of this month, and spent much of the next four weeks assembling spreadsheets of the songs and artists. The next phase of that project required a lot of research on YouTube. This research has fallen victim to the pandemic malaise that has affected pretty much everything else I tried to do in 2020. Again, this month featured only a single re-read (marked, as always with that ol' asterisk*).

224. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music From Bill Haley to Beyoncé by Bob Stanley. 500+ pages, quasi-encyclopedic, and very entertaining (even when I don’t always agree with his opinions). Last quarter not as exciting because I just didn’t care enough about that music. (2 September)

225. Electric Shock by Peter Doggett. More pop-music history, this time covering the whole period of recorded pop music. Not as flamboyant as Stanley, perhaps, but covers much more ground. Now I want to build playlists… (4 September)

226. Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn. Supposed to be a comic masterpiece, I found it very depressing. None of the characters is really likeable, save for the old guy who dies before the halfway point. I can recognize the humour, but it’s all based on a degree of contempt for the characters. All of them. (5 September)

227. Go All the Way (ed. Paul Myers, S.W. Lauden) A mixed bag of essays about power pop. It has given me some ideas for new listening material. (7 September)

228. The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper. Climate change and epidemics in the fourth century? How timely. Liked this more than I’d expected to. Though I can’t fully agree with his arguments. (8 September)

229. Swordfish: The Story of the Taranto Raid by David Wragg. Pleasant enough read but not a great book; too little about the raid itself, and a lot of padding (did we need a full chapter on Pearl Harbor?) (12 September)

230. Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld. A collection of his wonderful, quasi-stick figure cartoons (in a similar vein to XKCD). Huge amounts of fun. (16 September)

231. *Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. Interesting idea: a history that tries to avoid being Euro-centric. Kudos for the attempt, but it seems to me there are a lot of gaps here anyway (Japan is hardly mentioned, and Africa doesn’t get as much notice as in Larry Gonick’s cartoon histories). Interesting to discover I’d actually read this book 4+ years ago, and had forgotten most of the first half. (17 September)

232. Malice in Blunderland, or How the Grits Stole Christmas by Allan Fotheringham. I probably would have found this funnier in 1982; today I was mostly aware of how the thing was constructed. (We’re not supposed to be able to see the wires.) Really took me back, to a time when I actually cared quite a bit about politics. (21 September)

233. A Saint From Texas by Edmund White. Two aspects of the author’s personality reflected in twin sisters from rural 1950s Texas (I caught hints in the family background of that of LBJ from the Hill Country of the 1930s). Amusing and engrossing in a way I don’t normally expect from mainstream fiction. (22 September)

234. The Police of Paris 1718-1789 by Alan Williams. An older book (1979) but full of fascinating detail. Wish I’d had it ten years ago… A bit of a tough slog, though: very academic in terms of prose style (i.e. dull and distanced). A birthday gift from Lorna (24 September)

235. The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London by Hannah Grieg. Another academic history, but not quite as dense as #234. Wonder why the last chapter  focused on women who were bounced from society. Did no Georgian man ever cheat at cards? (26 September)

236. The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. Loved the fuckin’ movie, had never read the fuckin’ book before. I like this ending better than the movie. (27 September)

237. The Flâneur by Edmund White. Quick, gossipy read that told me more than a few things I didn’t already know about Paris. And about the French. (29 September)

Books Read in 2020: 8 (August)

For those of you keeping track, August was when things started Going West again. Only 22 books read this month, but this was largely due to some of them being on the enormous side (for example, the two New Yorker compilations, to say nothing of the Lewisohn book about the Beatles... hundreds upon hundreds of pages, and it stops in 1962?). As always, the asterisk means a re-read. Only one of those this month, so yay for me?

202. The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. The story of the telegraph. Peculiar that such a 19th-century story should be affected by the time-lapse between its writing and the present, but the word “Internet” in the title explains all. (1 August)

203. A History of France by John Julius Norwich. JJN was the son of Lord Duff and Lady Diana Cooper, and this reads exactly the way I’d expect knowing this parentage. It’s informed, gossipy, quite entertaining and very informative for all its relative brevity. (2 August)

204. The Best of the Rejection Collection edited by Matthew Diffee. A bunch of cartoons not accepted by The New Yorker, as submitted by otherwise successful cartoonists. In most cases it was obvious why they’d been rejected. The worst of the book, though, was the idiot question-answer routine that prefaced every cartoonist’s contribution. I skipped most of these once I figured out what was going on. (2 August)

205. Mad Women by Jane Maas. Amusing memoir of an advertising woman who started out in the mid-60s. (Wonder if she’s any relation to Don the agent?) Some of it quite entertaining, the latter chapters perhaps not so much. (3 August)

206. The Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes ed. by Susan Whitfield. Massive (450+ pp) but hugely informative book, with lotsa pix and good captions. (4 August)

207. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield. Agonizingly academic and so a tough slog. Took me three nights to get through this. (5 August)

208. Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute by (ed?) George Stevens, Jr. Amazingly long, with nuggets of information buried amidst mounds of self-serving blather. Not sure why I stuck with it. As it was, I mostly skimmed the last three chapters. (7 August)

209. Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen. Focusing on geography and location, at least as the starting point of the history. I might have overdosed on silk roads history by this point. (9 August)

210. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. I love this guy’s writings about movies. This one’s the story of the five Best Picture nominees at the 1967 Oscars. Well-written and informative. (9 August)

211. Toy Time! by Christopher Byrne. Another of those listicle-type books. Some of the articles (about toys I actually played with) were interesting, or at least potentially so. I would have liked more detail about these items―and less about My Little Pony or Teddy fucking Ruxpin. (10 August)

212. The Beatles: All These Years: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn. About 1,000 pages, and that just gets the guys into their early 20s. Exhaustively researched but a smooth, easy read. Had to borrow it from the library twice in order to finish it. (13 August)

213. The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low. Not long (180+ pp) and not as detailed as I’d hoped. Some interesting bits but no real through-line to it. (14 August)

214. The 60s: Story of a Decade by The New Yorker. Some famous journalism (Arendt, Baldwin, Capote, Carson) and historical moments (assassinations, Woodstock) as seen at the time. Not always wise but definitely interesting. The short stories were a pleasant surprise. Another 700-page monster. (17 August)

215. The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold. Latest Penric novella. On the lightweight side, I’m afraid; she almost seems to be coasting. Of course, Lois is nearly 71; she could be excused for being a bit tired. (18 August)

216. The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold. A Vorkosigan story, only half the length of Orphans. POV is Ekaterin, not Miles. (19 August)

217. The 50s: Story of a Decade by The New Yorker. Maybe not as engrossing as the ‘60s volume. But hey, that’s the 1950s for you. The piece about teenage gangs was fascinating, in a sad sort of way. (20 August)

218. Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison. Sherlock Holmes as an angel? Fanfic? Well, it was a smooth and quick read. (22 August)

219. *The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford. My favourite of his, by far. Every time I read it I discover something new. (24 August)

220. Fanny in France by Alice Waters & others. Turned out to be a YA food- and cookbook. Some basic French recipes, but not hugely interesting. (26 August)

221. Travels With Alice by Calvin Trillin. Not as much Alice as I’d expected, in fact (Abigail and Sarah get more space). Wonderful anyway. And ch. 8 features many of the people mentioned in the Waters book. (27 August)

222. Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. A supposed history of walking. About 30% informative by volume, and maybe 30% entertaining. Seems a bit of a stretch to include garden design and mountaineering and revolutions in this history… (28 August)

223. The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat. Hardly worth the wait, but I wasn’t really expecting it to be. In some respects even worse than I’d anticipated, and not at all comparable to Robert M. Adams. (30 August)

Merry Plaguemas

From all of us to all of you. Because we are Canadian this blog's Xmas Holiday encompasses Boxing Day as well; the tally of Books Read in 2020 will take a few days off, returning on Monday 28 December. Looking forward to cooking a larger-than-usual holiday feast, beginning on the 24th and providing sufficient leftovers to feed us until 2021.

Christmas dinner (appropriately boozy) by Anthony DeLorenzo of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Image from Wikimedia Commons (licensed under Creative Commons, cc-by-2.0)

An Immodest Proposal

According to the news media, Canadians are increasingly fed up with porch-bandits stealing the parcels that are a concomitant of this pandemic year. I believe I have come up with a solution to the problem.

First, collect any fruit cakes you have got hanging about your house. As we all know, Christmas cakes are often baked but seldom eaten.

Second, wrap the cake(s) in aluminum foil.

Third, place the wrapped cake(s) in any cardboard box available. Ideally, use a box with an Amazon label.

Fourth, place the box onto your porch. Leave it there for human nature to take its course. It would serve the $^@#*^^%$ right.

Image by Mokkie by way of Wikimedia Commons

Books Read in 2020: 7 (July)

By July we were being allowed to get our hair cut again and to get together (out-of-doors, anyway) with our friends. I was still spending most of my time reading, because I just wasn't capable of anything else. Not so many re-reads (marked with an asterisk) this month. Still managed nearly a book a day.

173. Looking Forward by Ray Brosseau. Huge let-down. Supposedly the way the future looked to magazine writers 1895-1905, it’s just facsimiles of articles about current affairs, with the occasional prediction, some of which actually came close to being accurate. All in all a complete waste of time. (1 July)

174. *The Rise and Fall of Paradise by Elmer Bendiner. Marvellously chatty, witty history with something to say. Not at all academic or even all that rigorous. I don’t care. (2 July)

175. The 40s: The Story of a Decade by the editors of The New Yorker. Amazing journalism, some of (R. West on lynching) difficult for me to read. Also criticism by Wilson, Orwell, etc. Very long, but worth it. Well, maybe not so much for the fiction. (4 July)

176. An Armchair Traveller’s History of the Silk Road by Jonathon Clements. More pop history, and quite enjoyable. A quick read, too, which doesn’t hurt. Second half is less interesting. (5 July)

177. Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin. A bit of a disappointment: well-enough written (I think it’s intended for a YA audience but it doesn’t condescend… much) but the last chapter strikes me as a bit overdone in terms of the threat posed by H5N1 bird flu. The last two sentences (published in 2018, remember) are a bit chilling. (5 July)

178. Why I Write by George Orwell. Short collection of essays, dated 1931-46, pubbed by Penguin in 2004. “The Lion and the Unicorn” was tremendously informative. A brilliant writer, and there’ll be more by him on this list. (6 July)

179. Life Along the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield. Academically informed docu-fiction stories about individual lives at the end of the first millennium AD. Informative and entertaining and much better than #176, I think. (7 July)

180. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. Somewhat gloomy book (fucking depressing, really) about Depression-era poverty in North England. Wigan hasn’t got much better since, apparently. The second half is a bit strange to me, and does not I think show Orwell at his best. (8 July)

181. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. A book, written in considerable anger, about the Spanish Civil War. I’ve known about it a long time, never read it before. (9 July)

182. (Eavesdropping on) Jane Austen’s England by Lesley & Roy Adkins. Lots of material from primary sources, great amounts of sometimes uncomfortable detail (I suppose it’s good to know about chamberpots and privies even if one has no plans to write about them) about basic daily-life subjects. (11 July)

183. Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants on the Silk Road by Luce Boulnois. Both informative and charming. Did not pay much attention to the chapters about the contemporary (as of 20 years ago) situation. (13 July)

184. Switched-On Pop by Charlie Harding & Nate Sloan. Who would have thought I’d so much enjoy reading about 21st century pop music? Britney Spears? C’mon…Now I have to track down all of these records to check if I can hear what’s in this book. (15 July)

185. Is This Live? by Christopher Ward. reminiscences of the early days at Much Music. (16 July)

186. *Love for Sale: Pop Music in America by David Hajdu. Not so much a history as a collection of essays about various aspects of making and consuming pop music. A lot to like here, which is why I re-read it only about a year after first encountering it. (17 July)

187. The Beatles Are Here! ed by Penelope Rowlands. A real mixed bag; a lot just isn’t interesting. But some of it is remarkable (the post-Beatles lives of the fans are almost heartbreaking) and it was a quick read. (17 July)

188. The 50 Movie Starter Kit: What You Need to Know If You Want to Know What You’re Talking About by Ty Burr. Title is nearly longer than the book: this is not much more than 100 pages: 2-3 page introductions to the titular number of movies; I’ve seen all but three or four of them. Well, maybe a half-dozen. And I don’t have much interest in seeing those. A reasonable morning’s entertainment. (18 July)

189. Books, Movies, Rhythm, Blues by Nick Hornby. Only published as an ebook, apparently. Not a demanding read, but I occasionally was reminded of Orwell. His piece on Wodehouse is great. (18 July)

190. Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and the Post-War Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution by Charles Shaar Murray. Not a bio, and not necessarily all about Hendrix. I’m not necessarily that interested in Murray’s opinions… except when I am. The “interview” and sub-Ballardian short story are just embarrassing. (19 July)

191. In the Lands of the Enchanted Moorish Maiden: Islamic Art in the Mediterranean: Portugal by Claudio Torres, Santiago Macías, Susana Gómez et al. Terrible title. Book is a cross between a monograph and a tourist guide. Great pix, some interesting fax. (20 July)

192. Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin. Somewhat out of date (it’s from 2004 or thereabouts) and so not offering much new. Also occasionally depressing. But I learned something from it anyway (seems Wilson wasn’t as mad as I’d once thought), and I still love les garcons de la plage. (The piece about the “Smile” premiere brought a tear to the eye.) (22 July)

193. Canada by Mike Meyers. Weird mixture of country-boosting and autobiography. Sometimes quite affecting―the guy really likes the Trudeaus―and sometimes so shallow you couldn’t float a canoe on it. (23 July)

194. What We Did In Bed by Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani. Title’s a bit of a bait-and-switch: only one of the chapters is about sex. It’s actually a history of the bed as furniture and cultural object, and of all the activities associated with it. A lot of fun, a good read, and I learned a few things. (26 July)

195. The Big Book of Rock & Roll Names by Adam Dolgins. The most featherweight of trivia; by the next morning I had forgotten just about everything in the book. Best I can say about it is that it provided the right sort of entertainment for a hot, uncomfortable night. (26 July)

196. Seeing Things As They Are by George Orwell. A collection of reviews, essays—and poetry? Well, I found it easy enough to ignore the poetry, but the rest was as fabulous as he always is. (28 July)

197. The New Frontier by Derwin Cooke. Graphic novel from DC, providing a sort of modified origin story for some second-generation superheroes (Green Lantern, Martian Man-hunter, etc.). Not quite the story I was expecting, almost a more literal rendition of the fake-alien-monster plot from Moore’s Watchmen. Interesting drawing style. (28 July)

198. Dumplings: A Global History by Barbara Gallani. She sort of lost me in the introduction, when she claimed that fried dumplings weren’t dumplings. So where does that leave gyoza? (Especially given she went on to discuss them, and their Chinese counterparts, as dumplings anyway.) My opinion wasn’t raised much by her contention that Marco Polo was coterminous with Genghis Khan, not Kublai Khan. At least it was a quick read. (29 July)

199. A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth. The early chapters (Sumer, Egypt, Greece) are laugh-out-loud funny, especially the one on Ptolemaic Egypt. Vastly entertaining. (30 July)

200. A Secret History of Brands by Matt MacNabb. Who knew Heroin was originally a brand-name? (Okay, I did. But still.) Pretty much a waste of space, I’m afraid: badly written, not edited at all so far as I could see, and without sufficient detail in most chapters to justify the premise. (30 July)

201. The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion by Matt Whyman. A coffee-table book that cheerfully admits to being one. Text is mostly forgettable (though some of the interviews are actually informative) but it’s copiously illustrated and the pix are mostly great. (31 July)