Books I read in 2012 but did not blog about.

How very post-modern of me – a blog about things I didn’t blog about! The intention was always to write about what I read, but in 2012 I made a few exceptions – either I struggled to formulate anything coherent about the books, or er, …

Crime and Punishment. Yes I did really read this through to the bitter end, although it was something of a struggle. Why didn’t I blog about it? Some novels are just so monumental it is hard to find anything original or insightful to say. But that’s not the real reason if I am completely honest. At the heart of this novel is a shocking and brutal double murder shown through the eyes of the murderer. The reader is invited to empathise with the killer – not to condone their actions but to come to some sort of understanding of their behaviour, bizarre and erratic though it is. I didn’t, and I fully recognise that is a failure on my part. But without that understanding the rest of the novel is just so many words. The other relatively minor issue I had with this novel was the translation – it was heavy handed and cumbersome, which may have been true to the original text, I have no way of knowing, but make a tough read even tougher.

Oleanna – David Mamet. I read this very quickly earlier in 2012, so definitely need to revisit it in 2013. It is a highly fractured text – a lot of the speeches are one side of telephone conversations, or fast paced cross-purpose arguments, which on the page are almost unintelligible, but in performance I am sure would make a lot more sense. On my initial superficial reading I got the impression that the play condoned violence towards women, which I can’t believe for one minute is right (although I know the play on first publication was considered controversial) – so I definitely need to reread.

50 Literature Ideas you really need to know – John Sutherland. A text book really, but bite-sized introductions to a wide range of literature concepts such as Post-Modernism, Structuralism, Post-Colonialism, and a lot of other -isms. Text books aren’t really for reading, as any student will tell you, but for referring to in the course of that frenzied last few hours of revision. Sutherland works hard at making this all accessible, but there is only so far you can go with Deconstructionism without reducing it down to an alternative set of labels.

Back Story - David Mitchell

Time was I would run a mile from a celebrity biography, with I think plenty of reason - there are so many clippings jobs with glossy front covers out there , that sorting the wheat from the cliche wasn't usually worth the effort. Autobiographies ought to be better, but the majority are ghost-written with the minimum of effort - a few childhood anecdotes, prompted by photographs of minor parts in school plays and family holidays, progressing quickly to the break through appearance on Comic Relief/Big Brother/Help I'm a Celebrity etc. You can spot the filling and the difficult subjects avoided or glossed over a mile off.

In the spectrum of autobiographies, of which there was a huge surfeit this year, Back Story fits firmly in the middle of the pack. In its favour it is clearly not ghosted - Mitchell's engaging personality shines through - and it is reasonably open and honest. The downside is that his career trajectory, arguably even his life, has been so predictable and routine - for a comedian that is - that you get the feeling you have read this all before, and more entertainingly.

To provide the book with a structure,other than the blindingly obvious chronological approach, which of course is in the end unavoidable, Mitchell takes a walk through north London, using the things he sees along the way to prompt a minor grumble about an aspect of modern life, followed by the appropriate reminiscence. This is a harmless enough conceit, but gets predictable very early on, and soon becomes unintentionly pedestrian (see what I did there?). It is obviously not his fault that his life has had little in the way of trauma or challenge, and he has made the most of the opportunities life has given him, but overall you have to wonder why he wrote this other than to cash in on his moment of celebrity.

If you want to get to know the real David Mitchell - and I am not sure why you would, his work doesn't require it, and his comedy is funny irrespective of what school he went to - this is obviously a good starting place. I got the impression a few things were passed over quickly or omitted - most notably the name of the lover before his engagement to Victoria Coren. The section of the book on his relationship with Victoria is by far the most engaging, where the barriers come down the most and we see someone with a bit more than a dry wit and a comfortable life.

One quibble - Mitchell has a pop at Stewart Lee for a piece he does on Only Fools and Horses. You might have seen it - the scene where Del Boy falls through the bar was voted funniest moment on British TV in one of those made up polls that no-one ever really votes in. Lee used this vote as the basis for an extended and extremely funny rant. Mitchell objects to the points Lee makes in this rant, missing the point with considerable flair - Lee is being funny; it is a performance piece, not a political treatise. The irony is that rants about things that you really shouldn't get upset about eg Tesco's signs or grocers' apostrophes are Mitchell's trademark.

The Casual Vacancy - J K Rowling (2)

Of course, no sooner had I finished my previous blog than I googled "Rowling" and "Dickens" and established, conclusively, that there is no such thing as a new idea. In fact, the association between JKR and CD was established long before this novel, in, for example, interviews and comments by JKR herself. And there is the answer to the Christmas ghosts reference. Simply put, the reference to Dickens is there because JKR wants us to approach her dark novel of life in 21st century England in the same way we think of Dickens' social commentary in his novels. Dickens did not have any simple solutions for the situations he found his characters in - neither does Rowling.

Drawing a link between yourself and one of the greatest English novelists is a bold step, and Rowling has a long way to go in terms of building her canon before any such parallels are justified - to be honest they are a bit ridiculous at this point in her literary career. You can't argue with the impact of Potter, but however much it crossed over into adult readership, and however much it addresses serious themes, it remained a work of children's literature. You have to admire her chutzpah though, and if you are going to adopt a role model you could do much worse than Dickens. Of course I am not suggesting Rowling is equating her work with CD, simply saying that she would like her novel to be thought of in the same way ie as serious social commentary.

Having said there is no such thing as a new idea, so far I have not found anyone online pointing out the echoes of Christmas Carol with this novel, so I am feeling a bit smug as of now.

One other thought about this novel - Rowling seems to experience a visceral disgust with fat people, men in particular. She attracted some flak in the Potter novels with this tendency, and built in positive overweight figures later on in the series to balance the impression given by the Dursleys and others. Here fat is strongly associated with nastiness, laziness, and corruption, and is described with a distaste bordering on disgust. A sympathetic character equates obesity with drug abuse, and while Character A says X therefore the author thinks X is obviously too simplistic for words, the insistence of her returning time after time to the observation that the fat middle class men in this book are unattractive and unpleasant really leaves an unavoidable impression that she equates obesity with moral weakness. Fat teenagers are one thing - fat middle aged people are just bad.

Last comment on this edition - what a bad, lazy cover!

The Casual Vacancy - J K Rowling

This is a bit of a trojan horse of a book - ostensibly about middle England's parochial concerns about a vacancy on the parish council of a small town in the West Country, this novel actually addresses a wide range of social issues, from self harm, racism, prostitution, domestic violence, etc, etc. Its like an episode of the Archers on crack.

The litmus test, as always, is was it a good read? The change of style from the Hogwarts novels is dramatic, and takes time to adjust. We then have a large cast of broadly similar characters doing largely similar things. Sorting out who is who takes a while. The election, when it finally comes, is a damp squib (ha ha, Hogwarts joke there for you) and some of the more melodramatic plot twists are telegraphed some way off. So far so bad, but despite that I found myself turning pages interested in what happens next.

Rowling's middle England is a bleak, dark place. There's not one happy family - all the children seem to despise their parents, with good reason. Huge psychological neuroses are carried around on shoulders young and old. A doctor refuses to treat a heart attack patient. There is no love or affection that is fulfilled. The only glimmer of hope for this community dies in the first chapter.

This novel has attracted over 500 Amazon reviews, so the chances of me having much original to say about it are slim. It has been portrayed as a political attack on the middle class, sneeringly done by someone whose political roots and allegiances are with the council estate rather than the detached mansions she now inhabits. This is of course simplistic; Rowling has not rewritten Hard Times here. But the mention of Dickens leads me cunningly on to what I think might be an original point. In this novel the Parish Council website is hacked four times, by four different characters, and messages are posted on the sites comment forum by "the ghost of Barry Fairweather". Note - "the ghost of BF", not "BF's ghost". Four ghosts - ring any bells? I think there is a deliberate, subtle reference here to the four ghosts in A Christmas carol, including the three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Is Robbie Weedon a Tiny Tim figure perhaps?

Why - just a coincidence, or is Rowling making a more subtle point about regret. There is no Scrooge-like redemption at the end of this novel, and I clearly can't build much of a case for the reference - but I bet it is there somewhere.

The End: Germany, 1944-45 by Ian Kershaw

As readers we are as guilty as the rest of the media when it comes to our insatiable obsession with the second world war. We just keep returning to it, drawn irresistibly, by that haunting "what if?". Here the focus is on the last year of the war in Europe (incidentally, it would have been nice if Kershaw had even acknowledged that there was a war going on elsewhere) and tries to answer the question - why did Germany fight on into 1945 when the end was only a matter of time, and when the cost was so high in terms of human life and destruction of property, including Germany's cultural heritage.

Asked this question a non-historian would hazard that the Nazi party, its leadership, in particular Hitler, would have had something to do with it, and of course this is the case. So successful had the Nazi's been in making themselves part of every aspect of German existence that the thought of giving up when their leaders where still promising victory was inconceivable. factor in the mythology of the stab in the back surrender of 1918 and the scene was set to a fanatical fight to the death. The detail of this is portrayed by this book - and it is fascinating to see how the administration managed to keep mundane activities running almost up to the end of the war. More chilling is the retribution meted out to anyone who tried to hasten the end of the war, or surrender, even with the Allies at the point of victory.

Kershaw makes very effective use of letters home and diaries, as well as other sources such as secretly recorded prisoners of war, to get nearer to the heart of what ordinary Germans really thought about the end of the war. The illusion of Hitler's invulnerability was extremely strong.

There are a few things I would like to have seen covered in this book. Firstly, the war is portrayed as a European battlefield, and while the focus was on Germany I don't see how the context of the World War could be ignored. Secondly, the war the conflict to the north and south of Germany is largely ignored, along with pretty much any other non-Germanic part of the conflict. As I understand it Germany had large reserves of forces in for example Norway which were never called into the final struggle for the homeland - why not, when old men and young boys were being pushed into uniform? Finally, we hear time and again that many Germans clung to the hope of some secret weapon that the Nazis were working on. We are led to believe that these were simply false hopes, rumours dreamt up by a desperate populace and allowed to spread by a propaganda machine running out of lies. But is that the whole story - was there really no German research into new weapons that could, potentially, have turned the course of the war?

Dominion - C J Sansom

Alternative history novelists are a pretty unimaginative bunch - the Second World War is I suppose such a compelling period of history, when tiny moments can be seen to have had, in hindsight, such momentous impact, that they rarely stray far from its grasp. The turning point in this version of German victory in WW2 is Chamberlain's resignation in 1940, and Halifax's acceptance of the premiership. Surrender on terms to Germany swiftly follows.

So far so pedestrian, but Sansom sets his novel 12 years on, in a downtrodden England when the resistance is gaining momentum, Hitler is ailing, and the never ending war between Greater Germany and the USSR is draining the life out of the Reich. This world is realised in a lot of detail with alternative histories laid out for the rest of the world, the British political establishment (including Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, foreign secretary, and of course, irresistibly, Churchill, leader of the resistance) and various other British institutions.

What follows is a highly conventional spy narrative, with several strands closely interwoven, never more than a day or two apart. The principal character, David Fitzgerald, a fairly anonymous civil servant finds himself involved in a spy ring. By coincidence Frank Muncaster, a depressive university friend of his, becomes aware of some highly secret information which must not fall into German hands. This is all hugely unconvincing - it is never explained why the USA would want to try to smuggle Muncaster out of the UK when they already have the knowledge he carries. When the secret is finally revealed it is all one big "meh", and the novel fizzles out of a beach in Rottingdean, of all places. For much of the novel this implausibility doesn't really matter - Sansom drives the plot along convincingly and doesn't allow too much time for reflection. The period detail, clearly the result of a lot of research, gives the book the feel of a 1950s black and white movie.

This was an undemanding, very long, read, that was an interesting digression on the "what if" theme, with a reassuring "we win the war in the end anyway" conclusion which I would not be at all surprised to see televised sooner or later.

Moranthology - Caitlin Moran

You see what she did there? - the last two letters of her name are the first two letters of the word describing politely what this is, so she mashed them together to come up with the title. The good news is that this is by far the worst "joke" in the book, which is a collection of her recent articles, reviews, and gossip, the latter also being known as Celebrity Watch, which is usually the best thing about the Times on Fridays.

Moran can certainly turn a phrase. Her writing is always well constructed, easy to read, and worth reading. I have a few reservations, but these shouldn't detract from the overall appreciation of what is a good bedtime read. The review of the Great British Bake Off, and the squirrel scandal of 2011, is genuinely laugh out loud funny.

Those reservations: first, there are some sudden switches of tone, moving from D list celebrity gossip and euphemisms for body parts, to highly serious commentary about social issues. Moran is a genuinely passionate writer on issues such as poverty and mental illness, and to read these articles alongside what is undeniably amusing chatter about Katie Price sometimes struck a jarring note. Second, her defence of the Murdoch/Times paywall didn't ring true - I know she takes the Murdoch shilling, and has licence to speak her mind within certain no doubt unwritten constraints, and I am sure she would say she genuinely believes it is right to make people pay for some content on the Internet, but there is no serious discussion of consideration of the counter-arguments about setting the web free, user generated content, etc.

Aside from the social commentary, and in particular the attacks on the Government, Moran is at her best when writing about her enthusiasms - Lady Gaga, a quite historic interview, Sherlock, Dr Who. What struck me about many of these articles is that I had a clear recollection of reading them first time around - always a good sign, although it must mean I read the Times more often that I thought I did.