100 books in a year. 16 - 20

 For some reason I've decided to read 100 books this year. I don't know why. Maybe there's a prize?

Last time we look at books 11-15. Here's what I thought of the next five.

Call for the Dead - John Le Carre

Here's another of those authors everyone talks about, but whom I'd never read. I'd seen the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and found it utterly incomprehensible, so my hopes weren't high. I went in expecting a labyrinth of complicated plotting and esoteric references to the world of espionage. 

I was pleasantly surprised. There was a clear, enjoyable plot, with lots of action and surprises. Best of all, I could follow what was going on. You hear that, Agatha Christie? It turns out it wasn't my fault I didn't understand your bloody overcomplicated nonsense. It was you. Read some Le Carre! Take notes!

This was a fun, witty read and made me want more. It feels like a clear ancestor of the Slow Horses books, which I just adore, so that's pleasing. 

Doctor Who: The Romans - Donald Cotton

As previously mentioned, the first books I truly loved were Doctor Who books. 

Back in the early 80s there was no way of revisiting old TV stories: no streaming, no DVDs, not even video tapes. Which made being a young geek a difficult proposition. How could I bore my family with detailed accounts of Doctor Who's activities, without adequate source material? Well god bless these novelisations - brisk accounts of nearly every television story, written for my very demographic (weird young boys with overactive imaginations and no friends).

All very lovely, you might be thinking. But come on, you're a lot older now. And DVDs do exist. And surely you've got some friends by now? Well yes, all good points. And I don't tend the revisit these Doctor Who books very often. They live, stacked three deep in a shelving unit, rarely disturbed. I can't throw them away, obviously, but I tend not to read them.

I dug this one out because I write a Doctor Who blog, and I wanted to talk about this story. Yes, I do another blog - it's here if you're interested. Like one isn't enough. Anyway, this was basically research. Plus, bonus, it's very short. 

But lest you think I'm being all defensive and am in any way embarrassed about the inclusion of this, a children's book, let me set you straight. This was an absolute bloody joy. Witty, engaging and really well written. Not all the novelisations stand up to scrutiny, but this one really does, and I have no shame. 

Pay the Piper - George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus

Was this a present from my brother? It seems like the sort of thing he'd send my way. We're both very into the zombie films of Mr. Romero, and my brother is good at finding interesting, unusual things that I'd like. And also stupid, boring things I don't want at all, that I don't care for and I've no idea why he he thought I'd be interested. This is why I have a wishlist, Dan. Stick to the wishlist.

Except, if this was from him, it was a win. So, whatever. Stick to the wishlist except for interesting horror novels, I guess. I had a great time with this book. I don't know how much of this Romero actually wrote, and how much of his credit is just to get people like me interested. But the prose style is great, with loads of gloopy, tangible atmosphere. It's a horror tale, very much in the style of Stephen King, with a well drawn community slowly coming under the influence of an unspeakable evil. Lots of people die, horribly, and it's properly unsettling. 

If Dan didn't buy me this, and you did, and you're currently furious that I forgot you gave me such a thoughtful present... um... well, I'm sorry. I hope the satisfaction of knowing I loved it mitigates against your feelings of betrayal.

Filterworld - Kyle Chayka

Yeah... this was fine. It's a well researched exploration of how algorithms work and how they are changing culture, and that is interesting. It's also written in a clear, fairly engaging style. 

So why am I being meh about it? Well, it's an issue I've had with a number of these books. I spend the first quarter of the book going, "Oh, this is all fascinating, and offers a different perspective on the world." And then I spend the rest of the book going, "There's that new perspective again. And again. And... yeah, it's just this one idea, isn't it?"

There's plenty in here to like. But maybe either have more ideas, or write shorter books. Either will do me fine. There's no shame in a short book. If anything, they make me happier. 

Oh, one last thing. This book was recommended to me by Amazon because I buy other books on a similar topic. The irony of this is not lost on me.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

I've owned this book for many, many years. Very occasionally I have picked it off the shelf, teasing it with the prospect of me finally reading it, only to dash its hopes by shaking my head and putting it back, too lazy to engage with what I assumed would be a bleak and difficult read. Sorry, book. If it's any consolation, I have also made many women feel this way, and most of them went on to form happy, successful relationships. 

Well, having finally got beyond the 'dithering by the bookshelf' stage, I can report that yes, Brave New World is bleak. But no, not especially difficult. There's a lot of worldbuilding, which isn't always my favourite thing. I don't yet understand this world, the one I live in. How am I meant to also understand a new, pretend one? I don't care how brave it is. 

The learning curve is made easier, however, by the fact that this book clearly inspired a massive amount of sci-fi that came afterwards. And by that I mean films and television. Don't go jumping up and down about all the literary science fiction I've failed to consider. I haven't read them. That's why we're here, remember?

This is clearly a hugely influential work, and it was pleasing to see early expressions of ideas that became commonplace tropes. But I'll tell you what, I wasn't expecting as much Shakespeare. I mean, I know the title is a reference. It's even from a play I've read. What are the odds of that? But the book really gets into its Shakespeare, to the extent that massive swathes of the later chapters are basically characters shouting bits of Hamlet at each other. 

Anyway. This was good and I enjoyed it. And I've a sneaking suspicion that it's one of those that appears on 'books you should have read' lists, and usually they leave me feeling wretched.

That's all for now. See you next time for books 21 - 25.

Or you can leap backwards, to see how I found books 11 - 15.

100 books in a year. Eleven to Fifteen.

Great news, it's me. Here to share with you some of the books I've been reading this year. 

Last time I told you what I thought of books six to ten. And, as sure as maths is maths, here come the next five. 

Ban This Filth - Ben Thompson

This is good. It's about Mary Whitehouse, the mad old woman who spent her life crusading against moral filth wherever she saw it. Which was pretty much everywhere, but particularly on TV. 

I can't remember a time when I didn't know Whitehouse's name. She was a ubiquitous presence in the media as I was growing up, always railing against some new perversion which was going to ruin the minds of the innocent. And of course I loved all the perversion and stuff, and was very excited about having my mind ruined. So by extension I hated her. And I was looking forward to this book ripping apart her idiotic, puritanical ideas.

Well, to my annoyance this turns out to be a thoughtful, well researched book which takes a balanced, fair approach to the mad old battleaxe. Thompson has unearthed an massive amount of correspondence, primarily between Whitehouse and the BBC, which shows the development of her campaigns through the years. The letters themselves are fascinating - full of middle class passive aggression and sexual tension - but the real gold is in Thompson's dissection of the battles.

He has a very dry wit and pulls no punches when it comes to addressing Whitehouse's more unreasonable panics. But he also takes pains to look at her motivations and finds that, even though her actions might often seem mad and bizarrely naive, she was at heart a good woman who observed the power of the media, and worried about its effects. Damn you Thompson. I didn't come here to have my prejudices challenged. But well done anyway, I guess.

Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie

If you've followed my reading journey from the start you won't be at all surprised to find that this was my first Agatha Christie. Yes, I know - she's one of the best selling authors ever. How have I avoided it? Well, by cunning, stealth and misdirection, that's how. I'm sneakier than I look.

Anyway. I didn't like it. Stupid bloody book. Why is she so popular? And don't go saying, "Because she's great and you're wrong and I bet you weren't even paying attention properly and kept checking your phone to see if anyone had clicked 'like' on that picture of you in a hammock."

Here's the thing. I'm willing to accept that Agatha Christie is objectively good. and that people like her for a reason. But on the evidence of this book and this book alone. I don't get it. She introduces a dozen characters, all of whom have completely interchangeable names and personalities and say things like "I say, Julian, can you make the badminton kerfuffle at the weekend?"

And then I'm meant to keep track of them all, as they wander about their complety unrelatable lives, having tea at each other's houses and occasionally dropping dead of murder. And I'm meant to work out the impossible puzzle of who was near the garden when the hen made a loud noise and such trivia. And then Miss Marple, who isn't even a detective, comes up at the end and says, "Ah, didn't you realise that Margaret took Jocasta's earring and so that means Henry couldn't have worn a hat that day and so I think Sebastian did the murder." Yeah, Miss Marple. If I had literally nothing to do all day, I'd be great at working out what was happening. But I'm not a retired old nosey madwoman, so I wasn't. 

Stupid book. 

The Hotel Avacado - Bob Mortimer

I read Mortimer's first novel, The Satsuma Complex, last year, and found it pleasantly diverting. Same with this sequel. It's mildly funny and well written, and I yummed it up, much as one might yum up an enjoyable ham and cheese pastie. It didn't rock my world, but it did keep me happy til lunchtime. 

It's a little odd reading a book by Bob Mortimer I found myself automatically trying to tune into his 'TV persona' voice, looking for absurdity and playful irony in every character and plot beat. For as long as I've watched Bob, he's been a carnival of gentle absurdity, and so I was looking for that here.

But it's not really that sort of thing. It's funny, yes, and he has some winning turns of phrase that demonstrate the unorthodox connections forged by his unique synapses. But this is a sincere, romantic tale of people trying to win against the odds. And it's quite lovely.

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

I have a friend called Matt who is very smart. Well, I have two or three, but let's not get bogged down in trivia. This Matt, the Matt we're focusing on, lent me a book by David Sedaris in order to stop me strutting up and down his house, drinking his wine and shouting, "What books would you recommend? I'm trying to be clever, like you."

This is not that book - this is one I sought out afterwards, by the same author. But it's more or less the same thing. A series of journalistic-ish, autobiographical-ish essays about memories and times Sedaris has experienced, with reflections on how it made him the person he's become. Though really it's just a series of hilarious, slightly bitchy stories about stuff he did. 

I'd never heard of David Sedaris before this, and am delighted to find that he has many books for me to newly enjoy. He appears to be a slightly awkward, outsidery kind of guy, who found that, in the world of prose, he's something of a badass. Love it.

Grendel - John Gardner

I've wanted to read this for years. Ever since 1987, when I first heard the very-long Marillion song of the same name. The song retells the story of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster, and it goes on for ages and has cool widdly keyboard bits and I love it. When I discovered it was based on a book, I became very excited.

"Why didn't you read it, then?" you may ask. To which I can only say... um... I'm not sure, and I've been busy, and please don't make me think about the fact that it's been nearly 40 years. I really don't think I can account for that big a gap in my CV.

Anyway. I read it this year, so shut up. It's very weird and wonderful and I had a great time with it. Grendel lurks on the outskirts of human society, occasionally breaking into their castles and biting people's heads off, then retreating to his dead to wax philosophical on the nature of being. It's a wild, vivid ride that throws notions of storytelling and morality in the air and laughs as they cascade all over the place. Dark, mad and fascinating. 

So there you go. Five books closer to the grave. See you next time, for books sixteen to twenty. 

Or you can skip back, to books six to ten.

100 books in a year. Six to ten.

I have decided to read 100 books this year. Is that far too many? Just enough? Laughably few? Let's find out together. 

Last time I talked about books 1 to 5, which you can find here.

And now - books 6 to 10. 

Berzerker - Adrian Edmondson

I've been a fan of The Young Ones since it first crashed into my life in the early 80s. It made a huge impression and I've followed its main players ever since. Adrian Edmondson is, as I'm sure you're aware, one of those players. 

And what a book. This is an absolute delight, and very quickly became one of my Favourite Things Ever. It is a wise and wonderful tale, told with compassion and wit, bristling with playful prose. One of the best things is, he doesn't tell his life story in strict chronological order. Good. I generally can't be bothered with autobiographies where we spend the first 200 pages watching them grow up in a council house. Get to the bit where you're famous, please. 

That said, I loved all the early life stuff too. He's a great writer, and there's a loose, conversational style to the whole affair that holds your attention. It's like sitting there, listening to a very funny man tell you astounding stories until the sun goes down. He has an amazing ability to demonstrate the gentle warmth and melancholy of an older man alongside the still burning flame of his earlier, crazier self. 

When I read most books, a little bit of me is watching the page count, delighting at the achievement as I near the end. Especially this year, as every book gets me one closer to my target. However. While reading this book, every page closer to the end made me a little sadder, that this beautiful, joyful book was going to come to an end.

Elevation - Stephen King

A brisk and breezy King book, which I flew through in a couple of evenings. Don't be fooled into thinking I'm a fast reader, though. I'm painfully slow. It's just that this was nice and short - practically a short story by King's standards. 

It's a relatively recent work, and the old boy seems to have lightened up somewhat. My main knowledge of King is of the early stuff - The Shining, Firestarter, It, all that lot. So I'm used to the relentlessly 'horror' fixated version of Stephen King, where the reward for being a lovely, decent character is that you suffer a horrible but extremely well described death. 

It's nice to see that the decades have mellowed him. This is positive, affirming and funny. Maybe he's been like this for years, while I wasn't looking. I guess I'll find out when I read more.

Lolita - Vladamir Nabakov

What a peculiar book. I'm very much glad I have read this, but I often wasn't glad to be actually reading it at the time. Not because it's badly written. Quite the opposite, if anything. 

As you'll probably know, this is 'that book' that Sting was singing about in his famous song "I am trying ever so hard not to sleep with this schoolgirl". It's about a man who fancies under age girls, and it's told from his point of view. Bonkers, right? But also fascinating. Not least because you spend a lot of the time thinking, "Who allowed this book? It feels like this book shouldn't be allowed. Am I allowed to be reading this book?"

The book is inherently critical of it's pervy protagonist, but that's subtext. The actual stuff of the writing is the narrator describing how much he fancies Lolita. And he's very good at describing things and making them sound sexy. Stop it, narrator. Socks aren't sexy. Except you make them sound like they are, and you're very good with words. God damn it.

Anyway, the main message is 'don't go out with underage teenage girls'. Never mind the moral issues - they sound like absolute nightmares. They'll be very mean to you, and say some very hurtful things, and mock all the stuff that you think is cool, and you'll never get a handle on their moods. 

(But also do mind the moral issues, obviously).

You Are What You Watch - Walter Hickey

I like books about popular culture and how it reflects ideologies, and how our brains make sense of stuff. So I found lots in this book to like. It's fun when books talk about television, because I've seen lots of television, and so I feel less stupid for a while. 

This is a bit of a mess, though. If it had a focus, I couldn't work out what it was. There'd be an amazing bit on how out brains interpret the visual information sent by our eyes, and how that explains how we tell stories. And then some seemingly aimless wandery nonsense about statistics that I didn't care about. 

Was it just that I wasn't properly paying attention? Well let's not rule that out. But I came away with the impression that the brief was 'write down everything that you've ever thought, referring occasionally to films and TV, until you hit the word count." If that was the brief, then well done, mission accomplished.

A Study In Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle

Another shameful omission. I had never read a Sherlock Holmes story in my life. Ridiculous, eh? I look like the kind of person who should have a big collection of all the Sherlock Holmes books, sitting on my shelf in the correct order, next to my replica pipe and magnifying glass. Well. Turns out I am as much of a nerd as you think, but also much lazier than you realised.

So I made my first foray into the world of Conan Doyle. I know about Holmes, of course. I've seen various films and TV adaptations, most strikingly the recentish Moffat/Cumberbach incarnation. All very enjoyable, but I knew they were modernised to appeal to my easily distracted brain. What would the book be like? Full of... I don't know, old stuff. Long sentences. Horses. People staring at wallpaper for fun.

Anyway, it's very good, obviously. Conan Doyle's prose style is way snappier than I'd expected. I was amazed that Holmes was every bit as weird and waspish as Cumberbatch's version. He was funny. Alert. Not the stuffy old patrician I'd expected. Also, the book takes a thoroughly bizarre turn half way through and jumps to a seemingly different story, in America, featuring totally different characters. It's as if David Lynch has taken over, and it's great. And then at the end it goes back to Sherlock Holmes saying, "So anyway that's why all the murders happened," and that's the end of the book. Glorious. 

That's all for now. See you next time, for five more books I read and at least partially understood.

Click here for books eleven to fifteen. 

Or skip back to books one to five. 

100 books in a year. One to five

 Afternoon all.

Now, here's a thing about me. I've got a degree in English Literature. Got it in the 90s. And it's basically ridiculous that I have it. I am very poorly read, and spent a lot of the time during my degree hiding from lectures and doing anything I could to avoid reading books. I know - ridiculous. Three years to read! Imagine the pleasure of that. And I ran away from it. 

Anyway, this year I decided to do something about it. I set myself the task of reading 100 books over the year. That feels like a lot, and enough to redress some of the balance and stop me feeling like a total fraud. They won't all be 'literature', as you'll see, and in fact some of them will be complete rubbish. But they will be, indisputably, books. 

I started this in January. A smarter man would have thought to chronicle the journey immediately. But I thought of it now, several months later. Maybe I was subconsciously afraid that I'd instantly fail, and so was saving myself the accompanying blushes. I still could fail, of course. But I've made a decent start. And, lucky you, I'm going to tell you all about it, here in this blog.

Here's the first five I read.

Doctor Who: Myths and Legends - Richard Dinnick

Well, we're off to a pretty ropey start. This isn't going to impress the ghosts of my past, is it? This is less 'diving into literature' and more 'paddling in the shallow end where you always have been, reading about Daleks.'

Well, we're going to have to live with it, because it was fun and I enjoyed it. Doctor Who books are the reason I started reading in the first place, back there in class 1:1 at middle school. Nine years old and amazed at the joy of this mad, creative universe, where vampires tear space apart and techno wizards play with the laws of time. 

That sense of wonder has never gone away, and I'm glad I can still enjoy myself as if I was a child. 

Carry On Jeeves - PG Wodehouse

There are loads of authors names who linger at the fringes of my consciousness. I know the words, and have a dim idea of what they are like. But I've never bothered to actually read their stuff. PG Wodehouse sits very firmly in that category.

Or sat, should I say, because now I've read one. Who knew it was so easy? You just decide to read it, and then it happens, and then you've changed from being a person who never read it, to a person who has. Amazing.

After reading it, I very excitedly told everyone else how good and funny it is. And they all looked at me as if to say, "We know. Literally everyone on earth except you has read it. And if they haven't, they've watched the TV show." Well, fair enough. But it was new to me, and I was popping with happiness. I mean, I'd had a vague sense of the posh clever butler and his dim master, but now I could see the elegance and music of the writing. It was like finding the source of a river from which all modern comedy flows. Wonderful.

Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

My mate Gary lent me this. I was delighted for two reasons. One - it was short. I could tell just by holding the thing as he passed it to me. "Excellent," I thought, "this will tick one of my 100 books off really quickly." This was early days, remember, when I was wondering if my reading target might have been foolhardy and optimistic.

Reason two is pretty basic - I like Stephen King. He's one of the few authors I do know well. He's easy to read, and that's a major plus for me. I have no interest in wrestling through clever prose, where the guiding principle seems to be 'the more confusing my sentences, the cleverer my text." Maybe that makes me less smart. If so, I'm reasonably OK with it. 

This book tells a fun, engaging story, with no messing about. I cared about the people and enjoyed the things that happened. Well done King, and whoever Richard Chizmar is. 

The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton

Behold! Literature. I think. 

So, full disclosure. I was inspired to read this by watching the film Peter's Friends. I love that film, and watch it most years. Films are easier than books aren't they? I could watch 100 of those in a couple of months, and still have time to play computer games. 

Anyway. In Peter's Friends, there's a reference to GK Chesterton saying something clever about how the bravest thing an explorer could do would simply be to pop over the fence and talk to his neighbour. And I've often thought how I'd like to be the kind of person who could just make references like that, over dinner. "Oh, it's like GK Chesteron said..." Imagine. People would stroke my face and offer me biscuits. 

So I looked to see what he'd written. Well, loads of stuff it turned out. So I chose this, because it sounded really weird and interesting. I was not wrong. It's all very satirical and metaphorical, and full of big, outlandish ideas. It turns out I like that. So look forward to me quoting it at dinner, sometime soon.

The Human Mind - Robert Winston

To finish off, we have a non-fiction book I bought about 20 years ago. It's been on the shelf, mocking me for all that time. "You're not going to finish me, are you?" it seemed to say. And for most of the time it was correct. 

I have a bookcase dedicated to what Waterstones would call 'Smart Thinking'. That's where books like this go. They're for visitors to stare at, really. Sadly, I'm more often in the mood for something along the lines of 'Relatively little thinking, but plenty of robots and shooting'. 

Well this book wasn't going to be the boss of me. I got it down and ruffled its pages, trying to find where I'd left off. Page 32. That wasn't great. However, the book did smell delightful - that faint, musty vanilla smell of old pages. 

The contents were almost as good as the smell. I like stuff about how the brain works, and how we think. It's a bit outdated in its attitudes, and Winston does have a tendency to go on rants about how he thinks research grants should be spent, and what is wrong with people, and why can't he have a million pounds to play with brains please? But on the whole I had a fine old time with this and I know know a bit more about my brain. Like, for example, why it has trouble retaining information from clever books.

So there we are. Five books I read. That's not a bad start. See you next time (and, theoretically, 18 subsequent times) for the rest.

Read about books 6 to10,  here.