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