Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it -

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34. '1984' - George Orwell

Is this the same man who wrote 'Down and out in Paris and London'? The writing is still flawed but infinitely more accessible.

Winston filled with impotent rage, exists in a society where shortages, government red tape, fear, totalitarianism is the norm: not (dissimilar bar totalitarianism to London in the late 1940’s). The partys' main mandate seems to be the falsification of memory and the reinvention of meaning, language. It is Shakespearean how Orwell coined so many phrases ‘news speak’ ‘thought crime’ ‘big brother’ ‘double think’ which are now peppered throughout our daily conversations, journalism. (‘2+2=5’ was soviet propaganda suggesting the 5 year plan could be completed in 4). It's frighteningly easy to find similar manipulations of words today in corporate slogans and political party election propaganda. Orwell is reeling against political lies, spin, totalitarianism, facism, Stalinism. Individuality is wiped out everything is monitored, one nation under cctv.

In my opinion it's only a small matter that Zamyatin provided the scaffolding for 1984 as Orwell breaths life into the confused original. A lot of critics at the time thought it was an indictment of the British Labour Party, or of contemporary socialism in general. Orwell stated that the “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you.” Well worth reading. A very scary reflection of the 20th century.

paddyandy

A great book for all Christians to read warms the soul.A life changer it turned my life around utterly .....and still have the copy i read in 1978.It was all the blurbs said it was.

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35. ‘Birchwood’ - John Banville

Banville called Birchwood his ‘Irish novel’. Set in the time of the famine Gabriel Godkin is the young heir to the Godkin family estate. The house is falling to pieces around him reflecting the unraveling lives of his family. Gabriel runs away to join a traveling circus and look for his lost twin sister. Like most of Banville’s characters the protagonist is on a quest for meaning. Very dark and gothic. I enjoyed the character of Granny Godkin.

‘In their architecture and in their style, his books are like baroque cathedrals, filled with elaborate passages and sometimes overwhelming to the casual tourist.’ -Paris Review.

36. ‘The Lemur’ - Benjamin Black

I wanted to find out what Banville’s Doppelgänger was like. Very formulaic plot, the ending was too neat. There were parts where you glimpsed flashes of Banville taking back the reins for example the description of a smoker standing out side a bar in New York.

Banville says he isn’t proud of his ‘Banville’ books and prefers his ‘Black’ books, but reading this I wonder how could he really be proud? Robert Harris’s book ‘The Ghost’ has at a basic level a very similar plot, it’s by far the better read. A poor effort.

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37. '1599: A year in the life of William Shakespeare' - James Shapiro

I adored reading this book. It is at once intelligent and engaging. Shapiro sets out the events of a busy year in the life of Shakespeare by cleverly dividing the book up into seasons. The book starts out with the transportation of the old theater and it's re-christening as the Globe. He elucidates what is known about some of the big characters in the group of players that worked at the globe. There is a chapter on the Irish wars. Hamlet, As you like it, Henry V, Julius Caesar were most likely produced in this year and are all discussed.

What Shapiro does not do to his credit is to fill in the gaps with surmising about Shakespeare's life by basing his information on the plays or circumstance. He illuminates the time without betraying the bare facts. What he does do is make connections based on records. For example he gives an account of what Shakespeare and his company would have seen as they walked through the halls and rooms in Whitehall before they put on a play for Queen Elizabeth I.

This book is very atmospheric. As Simon Schama says - history must be burnt into the imagination before it can be received by reason, and that is exactly what Shapiro does.

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38. ‘Samuel Pepys: The unequalled self’- Claire Tomalin

I read this ages ago so my memory is a little sketchy …

This is a very extensive and solid biography on Samuel Pepys the 17th century diarist and civil servant.
The book is divided into three parts: childhood pre-diary, the diary years and then the post diary years. Pepy’s account is remarkable not least because keeping a diary was unusual practice at the time but because of the prominent figures who he crossed paths with. The diary spans a very eventful period, the restoration of Charles II, the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London. The diary is a fascinating historical document for this period. Tomalin also uses other historical records to fill in the gaps, compare perspectives and enlighten the reader. She is a great biographer and a foremost scholar. I found that parts of the book dragged a little for example the chapter on the naval office but only because of how thorough Tomalin is in her description of the day to day work carried out there. The interesting parts: getting his kidney stones removed (skip this part if you‘re squeamish!), the great fire of London as well as it’s aftermath and the politics surrounding it. Women have a voice in the novel too : Elizabeth Pepys Samuels wife, the maids, lady Sandwich. Pepys is not always the most likeable of characters, his treatment of his rivals and women in his life is at times reprehensible. He was avaricious, accepting bribes and burying money. He was a member of the royal society and helped his family in some ways. It is a credit to Tomalin that her portrait of Pepys is so balanced.

By composition it is an amazing work, not least because of the inclusion of informative foot notes and the way she has condensed and made the information interesting. I’m sure her recent biography of Charles Dickens will be equally revealing and extensively researched.

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39. ‘The Sense of an Ending’ - Julian Barnes

Tony Webster is a retired arts administrator. He lives apart from his ex- wife and grown up daughter. The narrative begins in Tony’s school days. A clever new boy Adrian Finn joins Tony’s group of friends and makes insightful contributions to class discussions. ‘History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation’. These discussions on history come about when they hear that a class mate who got a girl pregnant subsequently committed suicide. There are also pertinent commentaries on the unreliability and impermanence of memory and the subsequent creation of personal versions of events. The group go off to university where Tony meets his girlfriend Veronica Ford who invites him to spend a weekend in the company of her parents and brother. Four decades later Tony receives a surprise legacy from Veronica’s mother 500 pounds and two documents which force him to re-examine the past. The character Veronica leads Tony like Conchis in ‘the Magus’ through a labyrinth of self discovery.

Throughout I was turning the plot over in my head but couldn't discover the truth until Tony realised it. In the end the reader is left trying to apportion responsibility. Barnes succeeds at creating a narrator who is subjective, deluded, mediocre. It’s short, you can read it within a day, it has a sucker punch ending and it just might win the booker.

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40. 'Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything' - Joshua Foer

Another book published this year. I suppose this could be placed in the popular psychology section. Joshua Foer is a freelance journalist for the New York Times, he is researching an article on the U.S. memory games and is so intrigued he decides to enter the U.S. memory championships the following year. Ed Cooke a 'mental athlete' and a loveable nerd (the book is full of loveable nerds) takes Josh under his wing and teaches him visualization (loci) and other memory techniques. There are two strands: Joshua's training for the memory championships and a brief overview of the techniques he uses. The history of memory, the ideas of cicero, greek philosophers, medieval philosophers, contemporary practitioners, unusual case studies.

This is not instructive, it is an overview of various techniques and an introduction to the background of the art of memory. This book is very entertaining and accessible. Joshua provides the reader with several interesting titles for further reading.

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41. ‘Madame Bovary’ - Gustave Flaubert

Emma Bovary is a 19th century desperate house wife. I enjoyed the first one hundred pages and I liked that the narrative style used free indirect speech. It did start to wane for me half way through. It was said to be the first realist novel, there is a density to the book and a lived experience about it.

The circumstances following its publication were even more interesting. In France in the 1850s there was a lot of censorship due to an alliance between the establishment and the church. ‘Madame Bovary’ was viewed as an affront to decent comportment and religious morality. Flaubert and his publisher were put in the dock. The case for the persecution was principally that the novel encouraged women to commit adultery and thus liberated them. The prosecutor thought that Flaubert was such a great writer that he made adultery attractive to women. The case for the defence was that Flaubert came from a good family, this book is not immoral its about what happens when you take a women who is a peasant and educate her above her station. In the novel Emma is an avid reader of romantic literature, it is when she applies these romantic notions to her own existence that circumstances start to go awry. Of course at this time adultery for men was fine but the adulterous women was condemned. Flaubert is acquitted in the end and the trial made the novel notorious and as a result even more sensational.

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42. 'Why be happy when you could be normal?' - Jeannette Winterson

'Why be happy when you could be normal?' sadly is a real question posed by Jeannette's adoptive mother. The adopted daughter of a pentecostalist couple in Accrington Lancaster, Jeannette is by her own admission a born scrapper. The architect of her childhood is the fearsome Mrs Winterson, a bible bashing depressive and a violent woman. Jeannette spent a lot of time locked outside in the coal hole or on the front doorstep contemplating what life could have been like if she hadn't been adopted. This time was also spent concocting stories. She tries to understand her adoptive mother and through that to understand what has made her who she is. (Despite all this there are some comic moments).

This memoir is full of literary references, Winterson as we know became a successful writer despite a mother who felt that Christianity conflicted with education. What she says about literature is lovely. Writing as a form of therapy is a common theme with most people who have suffered depression. We leave Jeannette at the age of around 19 and rejoin her 25 years later for the second part which documents the search for her birth mother. For her, writing is therapeutic and there are several emotional challenges to be dealt with. I'm sure the difficulties of searching for birth parents and family members will resonate with many people.

As someone who has been criticized over the years and accused by critics of being arrogant and conceited, she has acquitted herself very well and has uncovered information about her upbringing that has allowed the reader and also herself to understand what she went through.

I read this at break neck speed. It is an engrossing memoir given that she allows her life to flail so much into public view. This book is well written, surprising, uplifting, shocking even, the reader can't help but sympathise. It is baffling how she survived.