The best books you read in 2008

[Nigel w]

These I have read this year and enjoyed - or at least been educated by:

William Dalrymple - The Age of Kali

his account of a decade spent travelling around India. Read it in India, and felt guilty as it made me realise what a superficial traveller I am.

Hugh Thomas - The Slave Trade

found a pristine unread copy in a second-hand bookshop for £2. I like the pretence of being an intellectual when I pick it up but I've only managed 200 of the 900 pages so far. I'm now trying to convince myself that it is a reference work, rather than something to be read from cover-to-cover, but if I'm honest the best thing about it was getting it for two quid !

L Ron Hubbard - Dianetics : The Evolution Of A Science

you can't move for scientologists down here on the Kent/Sussex border as we're only seven or eight miles from their headquarters near East Grinstead. You call out a plumber or an electrician and you get a free lecture on dianetics thrown in. So when the guy who came to fix the dishwasher left me this, I thought I'd read it to find out what exactly it is that they believe. Having read it, I still haven't got a clue. But I have come to the conclusion that they are nice, kind, warm and generous people, utterly barmy but entirely harmless. And unlike most plumbers and electricians, they don't rip you off but give you a fair price. Which perhaps means I've already been brainwashed!

Jenny Uglow - A Little History of British Gardening

vivid writing that makes a specialist history come to life.

Tim Butcher - Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

my heart sank when I was given this and saw that it was by a Daily Torygraph correspondent. But it's really good. A second decent bloke who writes for the Telegraph, alongside Peter Culshaw.

fiction

I've really enjoyed

ROHINTON MISTRY
Family Matters

BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Poisonwood Bible

KHALED HOSSEINI
The Kite Runner

THOMAS HARDY
Tess of The D'Urbevilles
refused to watch the tv drama and re-read the book instead. Magnificent..

IAN MCEWAN
On Chesil Beach

CAROL SHIELDS
The Stone Diaries
This is a wonderful book that made me realise there are so many different ways of looking at a life. There's an extraordinary section at the end which is, in effect, a set of different obituaries of the central character. One of them is simply a list of the things she didn't do in her life. Incredibly moving and poignant, which is why I read it again 15 years after I first devoured it - something I seldom, if ever , do with a modern novel.

[David Flower]

Most of you will by now know about my obsession with the enigma of the unusual coincidence, .

new thread? I'm always amazed how often I have exactly the right change in my pocket for a purchase. Like £2.59 or something. Happens about 4 times a year and is oddly satisfying

[Kirin]

'Oracle Night'

I don't know if this counts as one of your coincidences, but the latest issue of the NYRB has a review of his latest book, and the review mentions Oracle Night, though very briefly.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22120

[NormanD]

CAROL SHIELDS - The Stone Diaries

I ordered this once from the library. The librarian wrote down the title as "The Stoned Iris".

[Nigel w]

I ordered this once from the library. The librarian wrote down the title as "The Stoned Iris".

Must have been a certain look in your eye that led her thought processes in that direction, Norman !

[howard male]

David Flower wrote -

new thread?

Go to my 'Etc Etc Amen' thread to report your unlikely coincidences, David. I really should have put my Auster one there, but it seemed to fit more naturally after the mention of his novel here.

Yes, I get that 'exact change thing' happen to me too. And a variation on it - a woman at the till in Sainsburies telling me my bill was exactly the same as the previous customers. I felt like saying, 'Well, that's because I am the creator of a coincidence-based non-religion, and the Knowing Unknowable Universe likes to continuely remind me that it approves of this idea.' But then I thought 'That way lies madness,' so I buttoned my lip and just said, 'I suppose that kind of thing is bound to happen once in a while.' She seemed quite disappointed by my response.

[Dayna]

I liked The Beatles In Cleveland by Dave Scwensen. Their live gig in Cleveland was almost pretty much a disaster when they came here in 1964.

[joel]

The books I most enjoyed this year:

Your Inner Fish - Neil Shubin
A concise guide not only to what we are and how it is we come to be the way we are, but also a very clear explanation of DNA and genetic drift and how they work within the framework of descent with modification. This is information of primary importance.
Some of the "pop" metaphors and asides were rather cloying on first reading, but by the time I'd read the book a fourth time I didn't even notice them, aside perhaps from the remarkably badly-used VW Beetle metaphor (the Beetle in fact evolved into the Porsche 911, but the rear-engine layout still plays tricks on the unwary to this day).
At the core, this is a brilliantly clear and and accessible guide to genetics and evolution. The best book of its type I've read this year by quite a margin, and possibly the pop-science book of the new century so far.


The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About it - Paul Collier
Written by a former Director of Research at the World Bank, this is unlikely to be Naomi Wolf's pick of the year. All the more reason why those who sympathise with Wolf would do very well to read it. While he doesn't kick his former employers nearly as hard as he should, while his prescriptions may seem naive (though does the sending of properly trained and equipped soldiers to the Congo seem quite so naive now as it did just a year ago), and while he ups his own work quite shamelessly, Collier's analyses of the underlying causes of poverty are trenchant and often surprising.
Interesting also, in that his seems to represent the new establishment view on poverty.

The Aubreyad - Patrick O'Brian
OK, so it's the final 10 of the complete 20 novels (the 21st was not so much unfinished as barely started at O'Brien's death and as such cannot count in my opinion), but the series froms a single, almost seamless odyssey stretched out along the endless currents of the wine-dark world river. The final 10 are in a sense the return voyage post Bonaparte (mostly), into a new time in which the the simple certainties of war with its prospects of promotion, advancement, lucrative prize-ships, and indeed of the great age of sail itself begin to fade with alarming rapidity and in which the dawn of the scientific age and a new tightly controlled, bureaucratic and energetic civilisation begins to emerge.
What kept me riveted the several thousand pages of the saga are O'Brien's pristine and bone-dry style, the beautifully drawn characters of Maturin and Aubrey, the wondrous nature of the seas they sail, the people they sail with and those they meet, and the ships themselves, which O'Brian captures in glorious and unstinting detail as living, breathing, almost sentient things. Simply fantastic.

So those are my three, of which one is troublesome (rightly), but the other two (that is 11) are a pure joy. The Aubreyad is not for everyone, but Shubin surely is.

[Charlie]

She seemed quite disappointed by my response.

Maybe you should try, "yes, I wrote a book about this once"

[Charlie]

She seemed quite disappointed by my response.

Maybe you should try, "yes, I wrote a book about this once"

I did not intentionally make those lines rhyme, they just did it by themselves

Which is, I suppose, another demonstration of the phenomenon.

Another common manifestation is when I hear two people leave a gap in their conversation, and the lyric of a song on the radio echoes what they have just been saying, using the same phrase, word or idea

[Ian M]

She seemed quite disappointed by my response.

So am I , Howard. Just as you had the chance to rupture the banalities of the supermarket experience and pierce the veil of humdrum existence as personified by the glass-eyed indifference of the checkout queue, connecting with another human being through the randomness of apparent co-incidence revealing the underlying unknowable structure which binds us all together...you passed it by. Tsk. How disappointing.

(Apologies to Russell Brand)

[howard male]

Ian M wrote -

So am I , Howard. Just as you had the chance to rupture the banalities of the supermarket experience and pierce the veil of humdrum existence as personified by the glass-eyed indifference of the checkout queue, connecting with another human being through the randomness of apparent coincidence revealing the underlying unknowable structure which binds us all together... you passed it by. Tsk. How disappointing.

You're quite right of course, Ian, I should have used it as an opportunity to plug my KUU non-religion. But because it's a non-religion, one of my self-imposed rules is I don't preach it as if it is a religion. The woman will still have experienced her mini-miracle and got her little frisson of indefinable excitement from the incident without me spoiling her moment with a five-minute sermon (which would probably would have resulted in her discretely signally to the burley security guy to escort me out.)

As things stood, her glassy-eyed world view had already been delightfully ruptured just by the fact I had joined her checkout queue rather than the next checkout queue along. And there's also a good chance she was actually more astonished by my cool nonchalance in the face of such wonders, than she would have been by the sermonising of what she would have just perceived as one of the Crystal Palace unhinged, who'd probably just wandered across the road from the local Wetherspoons in order to pick up some ibuprofen and a pork pie.

CG wrote -

Another common manifestation is when I hear two people leave a gap in their conversation, and the lyric of a song on the radio echoes what they have just been saying, using the same phrase, word or idea

A nice variation on the cosmic nudge I've not come across before, Charlie. I shall add it to my list. The nearest comparison I have is that when I was writing my original KUU philosophy a few years ago (before it ended up as the invention of a fictional rock star) I would often hear someone say something on the TV in the other room just at the moment I was typing that word of phrase. Obviously I wouldn't count this as a possible cosmic nudge if it was an often used phrase or word, but often it was unusual enough to make me smile at the connection.

[CantSleepClownsWillGetMe]

Another common manifestation is when I hear two people leave a gap in their conversation, and the lyric of a song on the radio echoes what they have just been saying, using the same phrase, word or idea

I had never experienced this one until it happened to me twice in the past month, with the same damned song:-

Son and I in car, radio on, I'm lecturing him about something or other, he turns to look at me with hostile eyes, Rihanna's voice cuts in - "Shut up and drive, drive, drive ..."

It's uncanny so it is.

[EleanorT]

Howzabout we do a Top 5 books of the year?

I've read a lot more this year than I normally do. And here's my list of favourites:

1 "Eleni" by Nicholas Gage

This is definitely my favourite of the lot. It retraces what happened to the writer's mother when she planned the perilous escape of herself and all her children from their civil war-ridden remote mountain village in the Mourgana region of Greece, near the Albanian border. She ends up unable to accompany the escapees and this book is the result of an incredibly impressive investigation into the circumstances that led to her subsequent death. I'd say it's on a par with another true story that I read last year, that ultimately has a happier ending: Malika Oufkir's "Stolen Lives: Twenty Years Spent in a Desert Jail".

2. "Gypsies Portrayed" by Ramón Zabalza

This is essentially a photography book, but one whose fascinating accompanying text I read in detail. It is one of the works of reportage that I admire most, and features the communities of gypsies in the 70s and 80s moving around the periphery of Madrid and a few other Spanish towns. Ramón Zabalza immersed himself in this world very different to his own, and what he comes away with is a collection of very powerful images and a deep understanding of their way of life. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to track down the book these days.

3. "Lavengro: the Scholar, the Gipsy, the Priest" by George Borrow

This on the other hand is not difficult to locate as it was for a long while, from when it was published (circa 1850) to about 1920, a best seller. Most secondhand book shops should have a copy or two of his or one of his other titles. I'd not heard of him, until my a friend recommended his writing. I absolutely loved it. Anyone interested in languages and travel, gypsies or the areas of Norwich, London, Edinburgh, Northern Ireland or North Wales, there are some fine descriptions to be found. I've got two other books of his waiting to be read as a result...

4. "Un désir d'Orient" by Edmonde Charles-Roux

I don't believe this has been translated, but there are other biographies out there in English that are no doubt interesting - this is a portrait of the early years of Isabelle Eberhardt, a girl born to Russian parents in Geneva, in 1877. I wanted to learn about her, having heard of her as an eccentric character who lived and died in Algeria. These 600 pages only took me up to when she was 22, and not yet settled permanently there. Nonetheless it was fascinating, and I'm looking forward to the rest. What I do know is that she died in similar circumstances to those of the Algerian musician Othmane Baly, who was swept away by flood waters as he attempted to cross the oued in 2007.

5. "Forbidden Journey" by Ella Maillart

This is an account of the journey made by the Swiss writer with Peter Fleming, brother of Ian, in 1935 from Peking to Turkestan. The political situation of the areas traversed meant it was a near impossible feat.


I came across four of the five books via www.bookcrossing.com, a concept and website I can highly recommend.

Other ones that come close are "In Siberia" by Colin Thubron, "The Sword and the Cross" by Fergus Fleming and "Méharées" by Théodore Monod.

[uiwangmike]

Just now, I’m reluctantly coming to the end of my second Carol Shields book of the year, Unless. It’s a novel about a translator, now in the middle of writing her second novel while having to cope with her student daughter making herself derelict. I’m finding it a joy to read, and the experience would be more joyful without the knowledge that it was Carol Shields’ last book, published shortly before she died in 2003. I started on Rohinton Mistry with Family Matters. It was recommended to me by Mistry’s Korean translator, who’s an old student of mine. He thinks his earlier novel A Fine Balance is better, so I’ll get round to that asap. My biggest disappointment was Snow, my first go at reading Orhan Pamuk. No characters worth caring about, inexplicable motivation, deadly dull narrative, unbelievable scenes. But since Pamuk is Nobel laureate, perhaps I missed something.