My 2024 10Q answers

It's that time of year again, the eve of Yom Kippur, when I follow a secular version of a Jewish tradition and go through a process of self-reflection by answering a series of 11 questions over 11 days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I've done this every year without fail since 2010. It's called 10Q and I highly recommend it if you're thinking about doing it yourself.

Here are my answers from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. These are my answers from 2024:

Day 1:

Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My answer:

The first things that come to mind are sports. I went to Cardiff to watch Scotland play Wales in the Six Nations - and we won! I've been going to Cardiff every two years for years. I think I started in 2008. And I've seen Scotland lose every single time - sometimes a heavy defeat. This year, Wales were in disarray and Scotland were on the up. And we won! It seemed too good to be true. I've been lucky to see Scotland beat England at Twickenham in recent years - as well as a thrilling 38-38 draw in 2019. These are some of the best sporting memories of my life - certainly in terms of being there live, in person, at the event.

Scotland took a big lead in the first half against Wales and then Wales came back into the game. I remember refusing to get up out of my seat to allow someone back in when Scotland were defending on their own line. (That's a really annoying thing about going to rugby internationals: the constant getting up and letting people squeeze past you to go to the bar for more drinks. I don't understand why people spend hundreds of pounds on tickets and travel and then just piss the day away getting drunk.) By the end of the game, Scotland were clinging on to their lead. Eventually, they won the ball and worked their way down to the Welsh line. I was screaming for them to kick it out: time was up, the game was over. By continuing to play, they risked giving away a penalty, giving Wales the ball and the chance to break for the winning try at the other end of the pitch. I was screaming so much I nearly passed out through lack of oxygen!

I'm so grateful I got the chance to witness this rare event in person. It may not happen again in my lifetime. I'm also relieved to be following a team that has a chance to win more games than it loses. When you're Scottish and you follow the Scotland rugby team, you get used to losing and disappointment. As a result, any victory tastes all the sweeter.

We pigged out on rugby this year. We also had tickets to Scotland vs England at Murrayfield. The first time I've been to a home game since I was at school in 2001. And Scotland won this one, too! It was a great day out. But going to two Six Nations game in one season is quite a lot. I've now seen Scotland win in Edinburgh, Twickenham, and Cardiff. Next year, we're going to Paris for the final game of the championship. I'm stupidly hopeful (mostly jokingly), that we could be watching Scotland play for the chance to win the Grand Slam. I doubt this, but can you let me dream?

I've talked about going to see Scotland play in Dublin and Rome as well. Maybe we'll treat ourselves to those in future years.

Another significant sporting experience this year is that the Washington Commanders are pretty decent (so far) in this young NFL season. We're 4-1 and have won four games on the trot. Our rookie quarterback, Jayden Daniels, is playing really well. Even our defense has been playing well the last couple of games. I'm trying to stay cool about it and enjoy it while it lasts. The NFL is, after, the Not For Long league: defenses will figure out how to stop us; we'll have injuries; form will dip; we'll be unlucky. But let me enjoy it in the meantime! If you wait long enough, things will get better. Scotland beat England at Twickenham. Dan Snyder finally sold the team and we seem to have appointed some coaches who are making the most of the talent available to them.

I've loved sports for a long time. I love the stories around them, and the emotions; the history, the rituals, the traditions; the unexpected result, the lucky break. I went through a bit of a dip in the mid-2000s. It's hard to keep going when your teams are shite. But it also gets a bit repetitive and there are other things to do with one's time.

I'm really lucky that Fran tolerates my interest in sport and is even learning to share it with me. She loves watching sports documentaries with me. And she finds ways to enjoy it through me. We both love the Tour de France and the Olympics. I love the drama and the emotion. It doesn't matter if the athlete is from "my" country. I love sport for sport's sake.

It's also nice to be writing about something light-hearted and joyful this year; not the death of my big brother.

Day 2:

Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year? Alternatively, is there something you're especially proud of from this past year?

My answer:

I'm proud of the way I have learned to take good care of myself. It started with meditation in the shower to get me through the grief when Gregory was dying. I think I maybe took a break from it when we were on holiday in Berlin. But, with Fran's encouragement and her own good example, I've made it part of my routine to use the Balance app to listen to a meditation each weekday morning when I have a shower. It's become a solid part of my routine. I also use the "Ease into Work" meditation when I'm feeling stuck and unproductive; and the pomodoro timer to kick-start my work; and I listen to a meditation when I spend 20 minutes lying on my shakti mat after working out in the morning. It now feels like a special treat at the weekend to listen to a podcast or audiobook in the shower. And I'm definitely "reading" a bit less this year because of the time lost reading in the shower. But I'm happy to take the mental health benefits of meditation instead. That's definitely something that's different about me this year.

I had the Balance app for free for a year. I didn't use it at first but suggested it to Fran when she was struggling with anxiety about work. It made a positive difference to her. So when I was in my time of need and she suggested it to me, I started doing it, too.

Another part of my self-care was to give up the 5:2 diet, which just felt too hard this time last year when I was processing the waves of grief from Gregory's death. I allowed myself a holiday from that. And, yes, I did put on a bit of weight, but that's OK. I started the 5:2 again at the beginning of September and it definitely feels easier. Tuesday and Thursday are my fast days; and sometimes I could also do Monday because I get up later after a late night of NFL.

I can't think of anything that I wish I had done differently. I guess that's a good sign.

Perhaps as a result of my self-care routines, I've had better work habits this year. I'm still not perfect and work nowhere near full-time. But I don't need to. I earn enough to pay my way. I do feel more productive and the work continues to come my way. It's also been a bit more interesting this year. I like a bit of problem solving and making things incrementally better. I see that I have skills that fill a gap in the organizations I work with. I've also come to understand that what I do can be called Technical Marketing. I've never really had a proper, concise label for it before. I got that from a handbook written by Simo Ahava, the Google Tag Manager expert who I've been following for years.

Day 3:

Think about a major milestone that happened with your family this past year. How has this affected you?

My answer:

We started scattering my big brother Gregory's ashes in our favourite places around these islands. I was the first to do it at the end of March. Moira and Sandy joined Fran and me in Wales for a few days. We took him to Ynyslas, my favourite beach, and where I proposed to Fran. His remains were kept in a large cardboard cylinder about the size of a big stack of CDs and the height of a tube of Pringles. It was heavy! And it was just one quarter of his remains! I went into the sea by myself. Before I went in, the four of us held the container together. As I walked into the waves, I was hit by another wave of grief. I was pleased I had that moment to myself, in private. I waded in to about waist height and opened the perforated lid of the container. I started to pour out the ashes, which came in a trickle. I had to make sure that I faced the right way with the wind at my back. I then realized it would work better if I ripped off the lid of the hole because it was flapping back inside and blocking the flow. I poured a lot but eventually it was empty. The ashes lay on top of the surface of the water and then were mixed in when they were hit by a wave.

It seemed like the natural thing to do to take Gregory to each of our favourite places. Instead of having a grave site to visit, we will now be able to go to our favourite places whenever we want to see him. And his atoms will become a part of that landscape. I can say, "Let's go to see Gregory." Or let's go for a swim with him. It will become a palimpsest place with layers of memories of each year we visit; the joyous memory of my proposal to Fran, kneeling in the cold, shallow water; and of a more solemn time, putting my brother's body to rest. We were never able to share Ynyslas with Gregory while he was alive. And, to be honest, I wouldn't have wanted to share a holiday with him there. He wasn't great company when high or low or somewhere in between. So that one was emotional for me.

Then, in late July, the Brains and Brawn met in Courtmacsherry, County Cork, where my sister Laura lives: Fran and I travelled over by car and ferry from Holyhead; Richard and Zoe flew. The five of us went to Laura's favourite beach, Broadstrand. As a celebrant, Laura had thought of how we could honour Gregory's dark side and our own shadow selves. We created a little shrine out of the different parts of his life: family, friends, metal (I forget everything, to be honest). Laura gave a speech. I was expecting to be more emotional, but I was calm and composed. Then we drew a family tree in the sand and put candles on the branches to represent each of us. We then took his remains in the sea, in the same container as before. We took turns holding the container as we scattered the ashes in the water. The same problem of the lid getting stuck inside and stopping the flow. Richard's swimming shorts got a bit covered in ashy dust. Then we had a swim together. We did it at the early part of the holiday and it felt like a weight was lifted afterwards.

Then it was Moira and Sandy's turn. They took him to Kilmory beach on Achnamara: their special place. They were alone this time but spent hours being in that landscape, choosing where to scatter his ashes in private. Moira also talked of some sense of relief and gratitude.

My brief ball seems to have got smaller and the waves of grief are less frequent; but they do still hit me every now and again. When I cry over films and TV, it's often with a nip of grief for Gregory somewhere in there, too. Will every time I cry from now on be like this?

What's next? There's one more portion of his remains to scatter. We've got plans to do that next October on the Isle of Arran in Richard and Zoe's favourite spot. But we won't have been there yet by this time next year, so I'll have to wait a couple of years to write about that.

Day 4:

Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

My answer:

There was a UK general election at the beginning of July. I followed the campaign closely, listening to the daily Newscast podcast from the BBC and reading occasional articles in the Guardian. I was desperate for the Tories to be voted out and they duly were trounced. Labour won a big majority and my party, the Lib Dems, made a big comeback with a very strategic campaign that focused on the few seats where they had a genuine chance of winning - mostly in Conservative marginals. It was clever stuff. I stayed up all night to watch the results come in. My highlight was around 06:00 when Liz Truss lost her seat.

I now pay less attention to politics because I trust Labour and Keir Starmer to get on with the business of governing with less scandal and more integrity than before. (Turns out, they are not immune. They won't spend as much as they need to; and they're happy to take lots of freebies.)

I also read a book recently called Failed State, which has begun to change my mind and not blame the Tories for everything. It's not all their fault; the institutions of government are themselves failing - whoever is in power. But the problem is that the government is too busy to actually reform the system and would probably be criticized for not focusing on the important and immediate things. It's all fucked, basically, but there are ways to make it better - mostly by decentralizing power, investing properly in local government, changing the system of patronage and incentives for MPs, changing the culture of the Treasury, which always seeks to limit spending.

It's been nice to be on the right side of an election result for a change. The Lib Dem won in our local, redrawn seat. The whole of Oxfordshire is Tory-free! I suspect that this government will just try to steady the ship and it won't be until the next election when they are able to campaign for more radical changes. I was disappointed that there wasn't enough focus on environmental issues. There's so much shite talked about immigration in a negative sense. There was one SNP leader who actually spoke in favour of immigration, arguing that Scotland's economy needed it to thrive, which was really refreshing.

But I certainly feel more at ease now that the Tories are no longer in power. Of course things will still go wrong, people will misbehave, decisions will be botched, the wrong things will be funded. But that's government. An ill compromise. I was nevertheless very proud of the dignified, swift, and peaceful transfer of power the day after the election. There are some things this country gets right.

Day 5:

Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? "Spiritual" can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.

My answer:

Nothing springs to mind at the moment that I haven't already written about: scattering Gregory's ashes at Ynyslas and Broadstrand; watching Scotland beat Wales in Cardiff and England at Murrayfield.

The closest to a "spiritual" experience have been my occasional dreams of Gregory. The most recent one was a couple of nights ago when he appeared as The Joker in an amateur stage production at my old school, Belmont Academy. I was also in A Block, the Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Techy, and Art building. Sometimes these dreams linger with me for the whole day. I tend to share these on the "Just wee 6" WhatsApp group. I have dreamed of him in his yellow swimming shorts; being taken hostage in the back of a yellow van and we had to rescue him from Carlisle (where his death was registered); I gave him a hug standing up; he took us up a tower like the Berlin TV tower to look down at his black and white graffiti art on the ground surrounding it; he broke both of his legs and was missing when we went to visit him in hospital, then we saw him hobbling down the corridor wearing a pair of khaki fisherman's waders and I ran up to him, joyfully shouting "You fucking freak!" because he shouldn't have recovered so quickly after his operation - he was smiling and had a glow about him with a big bushy fisherman's beard - he was mute; I was visiting his university during a conference and it ended with him disrupting my viewing of the Super Bowl by putting on an alternative Nickelodeon-style broadcast and then trying to buy the Spice Girls movie - he was an agent of chaos; he was sitting quietly in a little pink dress; he wouldn't join us on a family camping trip because he wanted to watch an opera on TV with his girlfriend; he was driving us up a steep icy slope towards some kind of natural disaster that Moira was keen to see up close (like an explosion in an icy mountain) - I urged him to shift into first gear when it got really steep (back-seat driving); we were visiting him in his flat (much nicer than the real one) - Scotty was there with a new haircut - when it was time to say goodbye, we knew it would be the last time - I gave Gregory a big hug with his head on my ribcage; we were again visiting his flat (more grotty this time) - I had a bath and when I let the water out I could see lots of hair shavings in the bottom, some of which were mine - then I noticed there were lots of minnows in the bottom of the bath as the water was running out and all over the carpet - I wondered if they had swum up the pipes from Bristol’s sewers - Gregory sheepishly revealed that he’d kept them in a plastic tub in the corner of the room where there were lots of discarded takeaway bags - I then had to rescue a white pet rat that was drowning in the bath water - this turned out to be Milly, who when I woke up was soaking wet from the rain and needed to be touched with a towel.

He seems to visit about once a month on average. They are a mix of love (giving him hugs) and sometimes fear of his agent of chaos mode. He's obviously still on my mind a lot and I think about him pretty much every day.

When the dreams linger with me, I tend to have a less productive day. It makes me mindful and I like to hold on to them for as long as possible. But I'm glad I've written them down because I'd already forgotten some of them.

Day 6:

Describe one thing you'd like to achieve by this time next year. Why is this important to you?

My answer:

I think I might actually be able to finish reading my list of books to read after Finals. I'm only four books away now. One of these is Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, which I've downloaded on my Kindle but I'm not sure if I should read. Fran is certainly against it. I found it for free online, so there's none of the moral issue of paying for it. But there's a familiar stubborn part of me that wants to read it anyway to experience it for myself. I'm not afraid that it's going to turn me into a Nazi or anything, or make me anti-Semitic. But I probably will get bogged down with it and it would slow my reading speed and motivation. Perhaps it could be a toilet book. How appropriate. There was obviously a reason why I wanted to read it 20 years ago. Probably just because it's one of those notorious books that not many people have read but lots of people have an opinion about. I'm also drawn towards that kind of disgust. I want a visceral feeling. But I'm also just curious what it's like.

I've definitely read a bit less this year. I had six weeks before the general election when I was listening to a lot of podcasts. I'm also not reading that much in bed at the moment. And I follow a couple of Substacks, which usually means I've got articles to read over breakfast and lunch instead of reading my book.

It's important for me to read this list of books that I created 20 years ago because I'm a completist and it motivates me to get through something like this. I think I'll also find it tremendously satisfying to cross off the last title. I'll also feel liberated to read what I want (instead of what my 21-year-old self wanted to read). I've got a whole bookcase of books on my backlog - some of which I rescued from Gregory's library the day after he died. Over the last couple of years I've been prioritizing my list of books to read after Finals over these other books, more recent acquisitions.

I think I've written about this here for the last 2 or 3 years, since I've been reading regularly again. It's obviously important to me. And it will be all the more rewarding because it's been a struggle. But I'm glad that it has finally motivated me to read more.

My next challenge might be to read through my backlog of books, and then the list of books I want to read on Goodreads. These lists of books I'll never finish, though, because when you read books, they suggest more books; and when you talk about books with people, they suggest more books; and Fran and I both love treating ourselves to books when we're on holiday; and people give me books for birthdays and at Christmas. What did someone call it? A library of longing? "My library is an archive of longings" (Susan Sontag).

Day 7:

How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you?

My answer:

I'm not sure I've got the balance quite right at the moment. My morning routines take quite a while so I'm often not ready to work until about 11:00. Is that fine? I guess it's OK if I keep up with my work. Maybe I've said yes to too many things at the moment, which is why I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and pulled in too many directions. Is it too much to do the following each weekday morning: workout or yoga, followed by 20 minutes on the shakti mat listening to a 10-15-minute meditation; then a 20-minute walk while listening to my audiobook or podcast; a shower while listening to another meditation; breakfast at the table while reading? It's a really nice way to start the day and I'm feeling pretty good on the whole. But it does take a while.

Then at bedtime I often don't get to bed until after 23:30, sometimes closer to or after midnight. Before waking at 06:45. I'm not getting enough sleep. If I was less tired would I be able to get through my morning routines a bit faster? Should I remove the shakti mat from my morning routine and only do it occasionally? I'm pretty good at keeping habits like this once I start them (if they're working for me). But when you keep stacking habits on each other, your whole day could just be those routines and there's not much time in between for actual paid work.

I also do most of the laundry: putting it in the machine at bedtime, after we've brushed our teeth together and scheduling it to finish before 05:30 so that it takes advantage of the low electricity rate between 23:30 and 05:30. That then means that my morning routines also include another 15-20 minutes to take down and hang up laundry. More audio time, which is great. But another delay to the start of my working day.

If I ever went back to an office job and had to leave the house, I'd have to change my routines. I'm still living with the legacy of lockdown and furlough, which changed the patterns of my life.

Is this really a problem, though? I feel like it's sustainable and, although I'm busy, I don't feel overly stressed, anxious, or close to burnout. I just need to get better at scheduling my work, making time for deep work, and ignoring the noise of emails for the tasks I've already agreed to do.

Is it broken, so do I need to fix it?

Nothing really feels like a chore anymore. I enjoy my work: both paid digital work and unpaid house work.

Of course there are projects I'd like to make time for: framing and hanging more pictures; reading Gregory's notebooks and filing his artworks into the portfolios that Fran gave me for Christmas; taking stuff from the garage to the tip, giving it to charity, or selling it on eBay. But I'm pretty content, on the whole. There's not a huge lot I want or need to change.

Day 8:

Is there something (a person, a cause, an idea) that you want to investigate more fully in the coming year?

My answer:

I think this is a similar answer to last year: I want to go through Gregory's stuff. I held off a bit this time last year because I was in the middle of grieving and Moira told me to wait. Now I've lost some of that drive, urgency, momentum. But I don't think it would take such an emotional toll now. I'd like to read the two issues of his fanzine, The Crypt, that he wrote. I'd like to scan the first issue and share it with Lapinas Pix (definitely wrote about this last year).

Why is it, with 10Q (and life in general), that everything takes so long? You might set an intention but then it takes 2-3 years to get around to it.

In my reading I also want to continue to investigate alternatives to capitalism. I find it both infuriating and fascinating. How does one break out of the paradigm one is living in to see alternative possibilities? And if I settled on something that I'd like to see the world become, how would you begin to introduce that idea to the world and make it happen?

I've just finished Malcolm Gladwell's The Revenge of the Tipping Point. I'm interested in how ideas (or overstories) go from a tiny idea in an isolated place, to becoming the new norm. When I was at a charity conference, I remember learning about the social change index (I think that's what it was called). There are quadrants that an idea can move between, created by two axes: informal (mess, unpredictable) at the top; formal (controlled, measured) at the bottom; individual on the left; societal on the right. The top left box is therefore community (informal and individual); the top right box is public sphere (informal and societal); the bottom right is institutional power (formal and societal); and the bottom left is service provision (formal and individual). This is the social change grid. In order to make change happen, you need to get an idea into the public sphere and then institutionalize it. So an idea like the living wage might start of at the community level and spread into the public sphere, where it gains public support, and is then institutionalized to become a formal law that businesses and organizations must follow.

I don't know if I want to do the work to make that happen; but I'd certainly like to witness social change.

Day 9:

What is a fear that you have and how has it limited you? How do you plan on letting it go or overcoming it in the coming year?

My answer:

I don't think I'm afraid of anything. Nothing really comes to mind. There are things I don't want to do, but I don't think that's out of fear and it doesn't feel limiting. I've just reached a stage in life where I know what I like and what I don't like, and I try not to do the things that I don't like.

Am I afraid of hard work, of more discpline and longer working hours? No, but I don't really want to do them.

What does actually make me afraid? I'm sometimes socially nervous but in the right context I can be sociable.

Argh. I don't like this question. I don't know what to write about. Maybe it's just not a problem for me at the moment.

Day 10:

When September 2025 rolls around and you receive your answers to your 10Q questions, how do you think you'll feel? What do you think/hope might be different about your life and where you're at as a result of thinking about and answering these questions?

My answer:

As usual, I think I'll be grateful that I did it. It has been a busy couple of weeks, so it's been hard to fit them in, but this time of year always seems to be busy and hectic. I'll probably notice that this year was a lot less eventful than last year (when my big brother Gregory died and that was pretty much all I wrote about). I'm grateful that life has returned to normal and there haven't been any major crises to overcome.

I also don't really want much to be different about my life. I want to have finished my list of books to read after Finals, but I actually think I will have done that by this time next year. I'll be reading more freely and following my nose rather than a wishlist compiled 20 years ago.

This has felt like a transition year. Things have changed in Fran's life (new job at the Dragon) but not really in mine. I'm coming up to the 4-year anniversary of going freelance full-time. This no longer feels novel; it's just how my life has become. I've adjusted to it.

This hasn't felt like a momentous year and it'll probably feel a little boring to read about, a little repetitive, nothing much to say. But that's a blessing, in some ways. A quiet life.

Day 11:

If you had just six words to make a prediction for the upcoming year what would they be?

My answer:

Continue a quiet way of life.

"No More Parades", Book 2 in "Parade's End" by Ford Madox Ford - audiobook review

This second book in the Parade's End series takes place behind the frontlines during the First World War. Again the pace is languorous and I enjoyed being back in the company of Christopher Tietjens, who is an efficient army officer, processing men for the "draft" on their way to the front. The opening scene of the book is the most memorable: the weirdly cosy scene in Tietjens's hut. It's an interesting insight into the workings of the army, the politicking, maneuverings, resentments, and petty squabbles between the officer class. It was also surprising that Mrs Tietjens appears at the camp and then meets Christopher in a fancy hotel. Didn't they know there's a war on? (It was the hotel scene where I slightly lost interest and momentum.) Again, I was able to follow most of the subtle drama in this audiobook form, but I did find myself listening to other things instead of this - partly because of Bill Nighy's soft-voiced narration, which my ears can't pick out over the sound of a shower or boiling kettle. It feels like what I imagine a Henry James novel to be: almost as if it's in slow motion, but it is exquisite and masterly, like an oil painting described in minute detail. I love learning how fucking clever Tietjens is. On to A Man Could Stand Up - a title that I can never remember.

"A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Letters and Diaries" by Barbara Pym, edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym - book review

As the subtitle suggests, this is an autobiography of Barbara Pym made up of her diaries, letters, and notebooks. I wanted to read this first, before Paula Byrne's biography, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, so that I could form my own opinions from the primary sources. The diaries cover most of Pym's early life from being an Oxford undergraduate through to the end of the Second World War. These are interspersed with letters to her Oxford friends. After the war, there are bigger gaps in the diary. Pym then starts keeping writer's notebooks to mark significant days and capture conversations and scenes, which she uses in her novels.

The editors, Hazel Holt (a colleague from the International African Institute) and Hilary Pym (her younger sister), add useful summaries at the beginning of each section. It feels like they have a light touch, but I guess their main influence is in what they choose to include and leave out. They respect Pym's privacy by not filling in the deliberate gaps in her diary when pages are torn or cut out. (I'm learning that Paula Byrne's biography, which I'm currently reading, explains these gaps and conjectures what they are hiding.)

Pym, as ever, is good company. As a student, she's very sociable and gets involved in numerous love affairs with men, sometimes more than one at a time. However, she lets herself be taken advantage of. She has zero chill and develops unrequited infatuations. During the war she develops a sense of duty and female solidarity - although she again obsesses over an unattainable man. Then she joins the Wrens and goes to Naples for the end of the war.

On her return to London after the war, she gets a job, begins to write, keeps notebooks, and starts to publish novels. In the 1960s, she begins a lovely correspondence with Philip Larkin, which was how I got into Pym in the first place. This sees her through the 16 barren years when she went unpublished and also led to her renaissance with the help of Larkin and Lord David Cecil's endorsements in the TLS. These last years are happy but cut short by illness.

This is a lovely way to learn more about a writer's life: through her own words and private thoughts. It was a delightful read - particularly the letters to Larkin and the notebooks full of funny observations and mini scenes from novels. You really get a sense of her personality and how it developed over time.

"Some Do Not…", Book 1 in "Parade's End" by Ford Madox Ford - audiobook review

The first book in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End tetralogy, beautifully narrated in this audiobook version by Bill Nighy (He Do the Police in Different Voices). The slow, patient accumulation of character detail had me gripped from the beginning when Christopher Tietjens and Vincent Macmaster are on the train to Rye for a weekend of golf. The sense of period is immense: Edwardian, stiff, snobbish, superior, imperial, class-obsessed, on the cusp of war. I have to admit that, as an audiobook, I sometimes felt lost in the non-linear narrative (Tietjens is back from the war in part 2 - had I missed a bit?!), but I let it wash over me like an oil painting, focusing on the tiny brushstrokes and trusting that, over time, enough of the bigger picture would clarify. (And, when I read the Wikipedia plot summary afterwards, I realized that I really hadn't missed much of the story and nuance.) It truly is a masterpiece of audiobook narration by Nighy. And I have continued straight on to No More Parades.

"Quartet in Autumn" by Barbara Pym - book review

Barbara Pym was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for this book in 1977, which was eventually awarded to Staying On by Paul Scott (which I read at school). Of the Pym I've read so far, this definitely felt like the most literary of her novels: right from the beginning the theme and variations of the quartet of characters (Edwin, Normal, Letty, and Marcia) hums and vibrates. Once more she returns to the same trusty materials: the unmarried, lapsed engagements, domestic life, libraries, the church, vicars, eating lunch in London restaurants, women's expected emotional and domestic labour, the fecklessness and stupidity of men. But in her 16-year hiatus of unpublished underappreciation, she seems to have matured as a writer as she matured in age. Her subjects are, like her, older and autumnal; her themes deeper, concerning the place of her characters within society, the imperfect welfare state, the world of work, and the loss of power and status of the church.

These people are not likeable, but I found myself warming to them and rooting for them. Who else could turn milk bottles, garden sheds, and tinned foods into such poignant and loaded objects?

The pacing is also a marked change: the focus shifts rapidly and seamlessly between each of the four main characters and sometimes beyond them like a melody dovetailed between instruments. One sometimes loses track of their separate identities: which woman dyes her hair again? Who lives in their own house and who in a bedsit? Which one of them was married before? Pym's own love of snooping on people is a constant refrain: Marcia following Norman into the British Museum at lunchtime; Edwin and Norman both finding themselves outside Marcia's house, subconsciously checking up on her; Marcia spying on her beloved surgeon Mr Strong's house in Dulwich; Mrs Pope, Letty's landlady, waiting until Letty went out before looking through her things to find out more about her; the social worker, Janice Brabner, checking up on Marcia; Marcia's neighbours, Priscilla and Nigel, watching her in the garden - I'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting.

This book didn't fill me with the same Pymsy pure delight as Excellent Women; it's colder, more sombre, closer to death, old age, and loneliness, but it's no less impressive and compelling. I can see why this book broke through. Touching, sad, heartbreaking, but not without hope and humble joy.

"An Unsuitable Attachment" by Barbara Pym - book review

This was the book that was rejected by Pym's publisher and caused the hiatus in her publishing career. It may have been old-fashioned in the early 60s, but it just feels like a period piece now and not out of place amongst the rest of her novels that I've read so far (Excellent Women, Less Than Angels, and Crampton Hodnet). The title is nicely ambiguous: there are a number of unsuitable attachments in the novel: be that the vicar (Mark) and his wife (Sophia); Sophia and her cat, Faustina; Rupert and Ianthe; Rupert and Penelope; Mervyn and Ianthe; Basil Branche and Ianthe; or Ianthe and Paul. Once more, Pym draws an attractive main female character, Ianthe, who has good taste and nice things. Once more, Pym recycles characters from previous novels, including Mildred and Everard Bone from Excellent Women (although, sadly, Mildred was ill on the day of the dinner party and couldn't attend); and Esther Clovis and other anthropologists from Less Than Angels. I love how she does this. They sometimes feel like the non-speaking characters in The Archers (in a good way): one feels they have full and rounded lives, just lived beyond the margins. There's also an interesting E. M. Forster-style parish holiday to Rome. Pym is brilliant at describing the characters' dashed hopes of a quiet moment with their beloved. Again I raced through this in about a week. I know of no other writer who can extract so much drama from a Christmas bazaar, a garden party, or a dinner party. I love me some Pym. Next up: the novel that ended her hiatus and earned her a Booker Prize nomination: Quartet in Autumn.

"The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World" by Peter Frankopan - audiobook review

This is a sequel to The Silk Roads - an extended epilogue - focusing on contemporary economic and military developments in China, Asia, and the Middle East up to 2018. Much of the focus is on China's Belt and Road Initiative: a series of infrastructure projects designed to improve trade and access to natural resources. On the surface, these plans seem like a good thing: helping to improve the economies of under-developed countries and join them together to share resources. But Frankopan acknowledges that sometimes the huge loans cause fiscal problems in the recipient countries and the projects don't live up to their initial promise. (What also goes unsaid is the impact that this exploitation of fossil fuels will have on climate change.) In the beginning of the book, Frankopan argues that economic power has shifted to the east, which becomes strikingly obvious when he lists the foreign owners of English Premier League football clubs. The military build-up is also alarming. I'm admittedly not a regular consumer of the news, but much of these developments were new to me: I don't think our western media pays enough attention. These two books together have changed how I see the world.

"Crampton Hodnet" by Barbara Pym - book review

Published posthumously in 1985, this was one of Pym's first novels, drafted in 1939 and tweaked in the 1950s before it was put aside. It's a wry story about North Oxford: a tutor falling in love with his pretty female student; an older woman and her plain younger companion fussing over a new curate; nosy gossip and busybodies; afternoon tea; a garden party interrupted by rain; an indiscretion in the British Museum reading room; seeing people you know in tea rooms; broken relationships and rejected proposals. Although it's not as polished as Excellent Women or Less Than Angels (not surprising because it was never worked up for publication), it's still a delightful and amusing read - particularly being set in a city that I know and love. The title, incidentally, is not unlike Wilde's concept of Bunburying: an invented parish to get the curate, Mr Latimer, out of a sticky situation. It doesn't have quite the high-wire act of a P. G. Wodehouse story, but it shares some of the same sorts of comic characters - particularly the formidable and interfering aunt, the eligible young folk, and the feckless men.

"The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" by Peter Frankopan - audiobook review

I read this book with some trepidation. The last time I read Peter Frankopan (The Earth Transformed), my big brother Gregory died and I didn't want to feel responsible. Thankfully, my father-in-law Tom's scan didn't live up to my worst fears. My reading got lighter after that! As with The Earth Transformed, it took me a while to get into this as Frankopan worked his way through ancient history towards the present. I let the rise and fall of empires and civilizations wash over me. As we approached the early modern period, I became more familiar with the outline of the histories being told. It really is a fantastic book: refocusing the history of human life on earth around the Middle East and Asia and the network of "silk roads" that map its trading patterns, migrations, and networks of knowledge. As the documentation grows, the pace slows. It really put things into perspective: the British empire was just one of many, no better or worse than those that came before: all of them brutal, selfish, short-sighted, exploitative, and finite. But Frankopan is nevertheless excoriating about the incompetence and venality of British diplomacy.

Frankopan does a few interesting things that I think will stay with me. He argues that the motivation behind the First and Second World Wars was really about oil in the Middle East: the fuel of modern empires and their armies. Most of the problems in that region today stem from the meddlings of our government and their rivals for the black gold. I was also startled at the insight that one of the reasons for the Holocaust was a lack of food, caused by Germany's rapid over-expansion and its invasion of Russia. With too many mouths to feed, the Nazis chose to let the Jewish and Russian people starve and then proceeded to mass slaughter. The Final Solution in this light is less premeditated than I had thought; it was more a tactic of war and resource scarcity. But no less of an atrocity.

I wish all our political leaders read this book to get more perspective on the conflicts and interrelations between people, land, and sea. It also makes me realize the myopic nature of our media that focuses on Western Europe and the US. The power (and natural resource wealth) has shifted east.

"Less Than Angels" by Barbara Pym - book review

I really enjoy spending time in the world of Barbara Pym. This novel deliciously overlaps with Excellent Women. We find out what happened to Mildred and Everard Bone. There are also a few other minor characters that appear in both novels. Less Than Angels is about a group of anthropologists in London: undergraduates and more senior academics, and their wider families. I read this alongside Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads. They cross-pollinated: the end of the British empire; problematic attitudes towards Africa and its people; the slow shift of power. It also made me think of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and the different variety of relationships women and men have; suburban life and women's place in it. I really loved this book and want to keep reading more Pym. It doesn't matter that it's just a window into people's lives: there is still intrigue and joy to be found in the everyday and domestic; the awkwardness of a visitor sitting in the wrong pew in church, which "belongs" to a regular family; the politics of afternoon tea; the way women treat each other in a love triangle; the fecklessness of most of the men. I love that you sometimes catch sight of something major in passing, through another character's eyes, rather than directly through the people it's happening to (field notes on a bonfire). There's also something brutally comic about how one character reaches the end. More, please!

"Some Experiences of an Irish R.M." by Edith Œnone Somerville and Martin Ross - book review

This was recommended to me by my father-in-law, Tom, last summer, on the eve of our holiday to the west of Ireland. Only just got round to reading it. It's a bit like an Irish P. G. Wodehouse: an English Resident Magistrate (a former soldier) tells of his life in rural Ireland: the servants, the dilapidated houses, the horses, the hunts, the sports days, the sailing trips, the dances, the rivalries and spats. I never really laughed out loud, but it was amusing and there's a nice turn of phrase from time to time, including a deliciously intoned Irish brogue. It feels quite modern even though it was published in 1899: I guess it has the same register as Three Men in a Boat: we're definitely not in the Victorian era anymore, but it's still a time of the British Empire and patrician attitudes towards the subjugated colonies. The Irish (although often foolish) don't suffer fools gladly, and often take advantage of their English lords. There's a lot of stuff about horses and hunting with hounds, which gives a good insight into the thrills of the chase. Apart from that, it's good-natured fun. Interested to learn that this was written by two women. Not sure yet if I'll continue to read the sequel: Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. (1908). I feel like another Pym.

"Solitaire" by Alice Oseman - book review

Solitaire is Alice Oseman's first book, written in 2012 when she was 17. Its narrator is Tori Spring, the older sister of Charlie from Heartstopper. She is one of my favourite characters from the Netflix TV series because she would suddenly appear silently like a ghost and had an incredibly dry sense of humour. She is a very loving and caring older sister to Charlie. I was also intrigued when her friend, Michael Holden, appeared in Season 3 of the Netflix series. They were great together (excellent casting), as if she'd found her soulmate.

I read this book wanting to spend more time with Tori and get to know her. It's fascinating seeing some familiar characters (Charlie, Nick, Ben, Michael, Charlie and Tori's parents) from Tori's perspective. She's anti-social, depressive, sometimes erratic, a bit of a misanthrope, insomniac, self-loathing. Michael calls her a “manically depressed psychopath”. But she's really likeable and I found myself rooting for her and Michael.

The overall plot is a bit silly and unsatisfying. A myserious blogger called Solitaire orchestrates a series of stunts and pranks at Tori's school, which get increasingly violent and dangerous. Who is behind it and why?

I was more interested in Tori and Michael's weird and abortive friendship and the glimpses of Charlie and Nick. It was compelling and I read it quickly. It's at its most juvenile in the climax of the Solitaire plot (which I won't spoil), but that shouldn't stop you reading this book if you're interested in Heartstopper. It's also an interesting insight into teenage culture from that era (a generation after mine). I missed out on those sixth-form years in a normal mixed comprehensive because I went to an all-boys boarding school for my final two years. But I did find myself picturing it at my old school, Belmont Academy, imagining it as if I'd stayed on, living vicariously. I wonder what I would have been like.

"Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives" by Lucy Mangan - audiobook review

A lovely audiobook about books, read by the author. It follows on from Bookworm, her book about childhood reading and goes through her adolescence with young adult fiction, set texts at GCSE and A-level, her English degree at Cambridge, and her adult reading. It's touching and insipring just how much Lucy Mangan loves reading. I found the last few chapters really moving, when she writes about building her own library in her second home in Norfolk during the pandemic; and her dad's death. It makes me want to read more.

"Excellent Women" by Barbara Pym - book review

Barbara Pym has been on my radar for a while, ever since I read about her correspondence with Philip Larkin. The fact that he was a champion of her work means something. She came back to my attention earlier this year when my father-in-law, Tom, recommended an old BBC programme called Miss Pym’s Day Out, starring Patricia Routledge, which we watched on iPlayer, a weird fictionalized documentary about her nomination for the Booker Prize for Quartet in Autumn in 1977 on the back of endorsements from Larkin and Lord David Cecil after a 14-year hiatus when her publisher refused her manuscripts because she was too old-fashioned for the 60s. I'd also been saving the Backlisted podcast episode about Excellent Women, which I listened to after watching the TV programme. Then, when we were in Wales for my birthday in early May, we raided the shelves of the bung for all the Pym we could find, plus Fran bought this lovely Virago paperback edition of Excellent Women.

I'm glad I've been saving Pym until now. I'm not sure I would have appreciated her fully as an undergraduate. She is delightful. Her subject matter, on the surface, may be about spinsters, church gossip, jumble sales, clergymen's daughters and wives, learned societies, and endless cups of tea; but it's so much more than that. She has the clear and crisp, unfussy prose of Nevil Shute and W. Somerset Maugham; the heartachingly unrequited love of my lost 20s. Her characters live and breathe off the page and stay with you for the duration of your reading and then linger with you.

There is something very quaint and dated about the era she describes: London shortly after the war, when men were still returning from Europe; churches are partially in ruins but are still filled by keen congregations; women were very definitely subjugated by men, always expected to bear the burdens of domestic labour, but not without protest, however private.

There is a plot: new neighbours, a fractious marriage, the vicar getting engaged, invitations to lunch with various men who may or may not be interested in marriage. But the plot isn't really the point. It is nevertheless compelling reading in its delightfully digestable 10-page chapters - perfect for reading one or two over breakfast and lunch. A very fine companion. Utterly Pymsical. I'm looking forward to much more Pym in the weeks, months, and years to come.

"A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries: Volume Two" by David Sedaris - audiobook review

This second volume of David Sedaris's diaries (2003-2020) follows on from Theft by Finding (1977-2002). His life is much more settled. He lives in France, England, and New York; and travels widely across the US, Europe, and east Asia. His career as a writer and performer is routine, with regular book tours. Much of his material comes from his travels (particularly his drivers) and from his interactions with people who stand in line to get their books signed. This audiobook version is narrated both by David Sedaris and Tracey Ullman. Initially I found the switching between two voices a bit uneven and distracting, but I eventually got used to it and appreciated that Tracey Ullman could do a more varied range of non-US English accents. A very enjoyable and funny listen, which made me laugh out loud numerous times. The 17+ hours whizzed by.

"How to Watch Football: 62 Rules for Understanding the Beautiful Game, On and Off the Pitch" by Tifo - The Athletic - book review

I really enjoyed this short picture book. Some of the stuff was a bit obvious, but I actually learned quite a lot about modern football. The game has changed since my heyday in the 90s. I've enjoyed the Tifo videos on YouTube for a while. Intelligent analysis and a real artistic style. I zoomed through this book in a couple of days. It kinda left me wanting more: a bit more depth on interesting topics. Worth a read for anyone: both experienced and inexperienced football fans.

"Tilting at Windmills: How I Tried to Stop Worrying and Love Sport" by Andy Miller - book review

I've been wanting to read this ever since I finished Andy Miller's The Year of Reading Dangerously. It was quite hard to get hold of: I could only find it secondhand, which is probably because it's slightly dated (originally published in 2002). I'm glad I read it though. It's a non-fiction book about someone who doesn't like sport but forces himself to watch and play it for a year. Andy Miller's hatred of sport stems from being humiliated at school - particularly when he tried to make the hockey team. Over the course of a year he goes to the Boat Race, watches Queens Park Rangers Football Club, and plays a lot of minigolf. It reminded me a bit of Lynn Truss's Get Her Off the Pitch! (2009). In some ways, it's like a travel book: a foreigner visits a foreign land. I understand why some people don't like sport and feel alienated from it. But I'm not one of them. That said, there are times when I go off certain sports for a time. It's funny and entertaining. The best bits were about his love of minigolf, which takes him to international tournaments in Denmark and Latvia.

"My Family: The Memoir" by David Baddiel - audiobook review

David Baddiel is incredibly good company in this audiobook. It made me laugh and cry. I felt like I was missing out by not having the physical book because it is full of photos of his family and his mum's golf memorabilia, but I love the way that Baddiel stops reading at these moments and casually and unscriptedly describes the image, like a rambling and lovingly composed HTML alt attribute. He invited me to go and look at the images in a bookshop, which I might well do.

This is the book version of his My Family: Not the Sitcom theatre show. It's mostly about his parents, Sarah and Colin Baddiel, a bit about his brothers, Ivan and Dan. Sarah had a long-running affair with a man called David White, a pipe-smoking golfing enthusiast and memorabilia dealer. Colin seemed not to notice or care. Both of them were neglectful by today's parenting standards, but, as Nora Ephron would say, they provide good copy. Sarah was shameless in the broadcasting of her sexuality ("My clitoris is on fire!"). David admits he spent much of his 30s in therapy. Sarah died 7 years before her husband, who had dementia and Pick's disease, which exaggerated his worst qualities of rudeness and swearing - often hilariously.

I've always liked David Baddiel. He played an important part in the formation of my sense of humour via The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Fantasy Football League with Frank Skinner. I remember that my brother, Gregory, read his first novel, Time for Bed, which seems to be the thinly fictionalized version of this memoir. I admire his thoughtfulness and honesty. He admits in this book that he has to tell the truth and lacks the common Jewish trait of shame, which leads to some funny anecdotes about his life as a celebrity.

I zoomed through this book in a few days, often smiling and laughing as I listened on my daily walks around the estate. It's touching and moving - particularly towards the end when he describes the death of both his parents and a beloved cat. But some of the biggest laughs come in these dark times. May you live a long life. What a great hang!

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams - book review

This is the second book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It's more of the same space-based comedy with the same characters and a journeying plot. Adams remains at his best when domesticating the alien. It's full of amusing lines - my favourite being: "It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds". I think my view is tinged by knowing how hard Adams found it to write these books to a deadline. It does feel like some of the chapters are mailed in / reeled off, and that there's no overall direction; just a series of scenes with some funny bits. But it is worth it for the funny bits.

"An Italian Education" by Tim Parks - book review

I first read this book in March and April 2022. I wanted to re-read parts of it that mentioned Pescara, which is where we're going on holiday this August. I searched through the book on Kindle and bookmarked all the chapters that mentioned Pescara, re-read them all, and then read continuously from "Il cambio della guardia" to the end (about 100 pages), which describes Tim Parks's visit with his daughter Stefi and son Michele in June 1994.

I really love Tim Parks's non-fiction. This follows on from Italian Neighbours and focuses on the education of his two children (and the imminent arrival of a third). It's about moving to a newly built home in a housing co-operative and his new neighbours there. But, as I said, I was re-reading it for the Pescara mentions, which come early in the book because that's where his in-laws live and where his wife, Rita, is from.

There's nothing particularly remarkable about Pescara as a holiday destination. Sun, sand, sea, Italians at the beach. But Parks make it special and in his inimitable way turns the particular into the whole, somehow giving you a taste of Italian culture and its people. And he does so with such affection and commitment.

A delight to revisit, even if I finished it in the middle of a hot night in May, unable to sleep.

"The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design" by Richard Dawkins - audiobook review

I read this because Douglas Adams recommended it a number of times in Last Chance to See and elsewhere; and also as a follow-on from my earlier reading of Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Dawkins argues that natural selection is the blind watchmaker in nature. Animals and plants evolved when their genes mutated to create variations. The variations that benefited them (i.e. helped the gene to survive) were kept; the variations that made it harder to sustain life are discarded. But the timeline of evolution is on a different scale of magnitude to human time, so you have to put on your hiking boots of thought.

This book is accessible to a general audience, but I wasn't always wearing my hiking boots; sometimes I was in my slippers, so some of the biological nuances will have slipped me by. I think Dawkins is at his most readable when he's using analogies to explain complex natural processes. I was captivated, for example, in his description of how dust particles interact with streams to redirect its flow; or how DNA is more of a reciple than a blueprint; or how he created a computer program to mimic how biomorphs evolve.

He's at his worst when sneering at other schools of thought that he disagrees with or which have been scientifically disproved. He sounds like a bit of an arrogant snob. But one who's very good at what he does.

This audiobook version is narrated by both Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward. In The Selfish Gene, the second narrator was used to read footnotes and asides, and I think that's also the function of the second voice in this book, but that was never spelled out. It gives the book a slightly uneven surface but also underlines that scientific discoveries are also evolving and need to be constantly revised and revisited. It's possible, also, that the Lalla Ward sections are revisions that were added after Dawkins's original recording. But an explanation would have been nice.

It remains remarkable to me (someone who never studied biology as a subject beyond some basic lessons in introductory science at secondary school) that Darwin's theory of evolution is so dominant: how often he is cited, expanded, and updated. He is the Shakespeare of his field.

"Heartstopper: Volume One" by Alice Oseman - book review

This is a very sweet graphic novel that was turned into the groundbreaking Netflix TV series of the same name. It's effectively a storyboard for season 1. The characters of Nick and Charlie are recognizable and were very well cast. I read this book in less than 24 hours. Although it's aimed at younger readers, there's still much to enjoy for someone like me at 41: just the way that most of the characters are so accepting and kind. I'm also intrigued by Alice Oseman's other books, such as Solitaire, which is where the Nick and Charlie characters originated and is told from the point of view of Tori, Charlie's older sister, who is one of our favourite characters from the TV series. It would have been interesting to read this before having watched the TV show, so if you haven't partaken of either, I recommend starting with the books and then watching Netflix.

"1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear" by James Shapiro - book review

A follow-up to 1599 and in the same vein of a biography of Shakespeare based on one year in his life. Things have changed quite a lot in the 7 years since. James VI and I has acceded to the throne and survived the Gunpower Plot of 1605. He is trying to unite his Scottish and English kingdoms, but meets resistance from parliament and his subjects. Plague is an ever-present menace, which periodically shuts down the London theatres. The threats abroad from Spain and Ireland have waned compared to Elizabeth's reign; but there is a toxic distrust of Catholics at home.

1606 was the year in which Shakespeare wrote three tragedies: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Shapiro shows again how each play reflects the historical and political context; and how Shakespeare rewrites his source texts. Both Shapiro and Shakespeare are masters in command of their materials.

Another very readable book but one with slightly less of Shakespeare;s life in it than 1599. The best chapter was about the loaded word "equivocation", but I also really enjoyed Shapiro's accounts of the court masques and the lads' holiday when King Christian of Denmark came to visit for a few weeks in the summer. It sounded like a debauched time with lots of drinking and swiving. It's also amusing to hear that Christian wanted to play sports but James refused because he was crap and bored his guest by going hunting instead. Methinks Christian overstayed his welcome.

The result is a humanizing of Shakespeare, showing his works growing out of the fertile ground of their sources and context. A much darker book than the last one, but no less informative.

"Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?" by Claire Dederer - audiobook review

We listened to most of this audiobook on long Easter bank holiday car journeys to and from Scotland. It was written in the wake of the #MeToo movement and online cancel culture. Dederer pitches it as an autobiography of the audience (meaning her as a subjective consumer of art), covering filmmakers such as Roman Polanski and Woody Allen; the painter Pablo Picasso; writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Raymond Chandler; and the musicians David Bowie and Miles Davis, amongst others. She wrestles with the ethical problem of whether we should still consume the work of monstrous men such as these after we know their problematic behaviours. She argues that biography now comes to find us: it's hard to avoid the knowledge of what Polanski, Allen, and Picasso did, of how they abused women and children, abused their power. I think we've all struggled with this. I still love Woody Allen's films (particularly Manhattan), even though I know of his icky relationships. I was concerned during the book that Dederer was going to either chicken out and not come down on one side or the other; or declare that we should boycott these works. But her conclusion is nuanced and informed by her own "monstrousness" as a mother, a writer, and a recovering alcoholic. As a memoir writer, it's perhaps not surprising that part of this book is a memoir, too. I sometimes wondered if some of that stuff could have been cut, but I think it does add something to her argument. It felt a little long towards the end. And it did turn out to be the result of two long essays being turned into a book.

She embarked on the project wanting to find an authority to tell her what to think and feel about art by problematic men. Unable to find one, she turned inwards to write a descriptive rather than prescriptive book about what this knowledge does to us as consumers of art. I won't spoil her conclusion but it was more satisfying than I thought it might be.

Dederer narrates the audiobook version. We both snickered at her poor pronunciation - particularly of German and French words, but also plenty of English. She is obviously someone who is well read but hasn't spoken some of these words outside of an American academic context. Perhaps a bit unfair of me to laugh, but la-di-da, Michael, la-di-da!

"The Letters of Mercurius" by Mercurius Oxoniensis - book review

A book a satirical letters about the student revolts at Oxford University in 1968-70 written in a comical Elizabethan English and published pseudonymously, at the time, in the Spectator. These were recommended to my by my father-in-law, Tom Wheare, who also lent me his copy, which has an appropriately fusty smell and yellowing pages. The language is delicious, even if the events behind them are now slightly occluded and muddied by in-jokes. I love the sweeping way each letter is signed off as one sentence runs into the farewell. It also features "lady Wheare" (Tom's infamous mother), who somehow got involved in the student occupation of the Clarendon Building. An musing diversion.

"The Child in the City" by Colin Ward - book review

The penultimate book in my list of books to read after Finals, and another one recommended to me by Roman Krznaric. I read the second edition, which printed the text without the pictures (which I nevertheless looked up online). Colin Ward is a gentle anarchist in the sense that he wants society to function despite - not because of - what government does or doesn't do. He has a remarkable empathy for children. I'm wondering if Roman recommended this to me because we were talking about how I don't really like (or want to have) children. Although it didn't set my brain on fire, I suspect this book will quietly influence my thinking. It's a good companion to the ITV documentary series 7 Up.

"Starship Titanic" by Terry Jones and Douglas Adams - audiobook review

Based on the computer game that Douglas Adams developed. He couldn't be bothered to write the novel version, so Terry Jones did it for him…in the nude! It's quite a horny book (probably because Terry Jones was naked at the keyboard). Amusing and definitely woven through with Adams's sense of humour and preoccupations with technology. Expertly narrated by Bill Nighy, who is a great hang. Typical of Adams's work in that it's not a compelling plot; more a series of amusing scenes and characters. Probably one of those books that had more of a commercial than a literary imperative and slightly adjacent to but not divorced from the Adams cannon.

"The God Desire" by David Baddiel - audiobook review

A short book about David Baddiel's atheism. Interesting, intellectual, and at times moving. Baddiel is good company.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future: Douglas Adams and the Digital World" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

A collection of BBC radio programmes in which Douglas Adams indulges his love of technology (things that don't quite work yet). It's quaint to hear people talking about the internet in its early days. Many of Adams's predictions are remarkably accurate. I've heard bits of this elsewhere but as I'm a completist I'm glad I sought this out. The final programme is narrated by Mitch Benn, looking back at what Adams got right.

"1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" by James Shapiro - book review

A really clever idea: to write a biography of William Shakespeare by focusing on one year in his life: 1599, in which he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. I had never really appreciated how much of contemporary life and politics he put into his plays: the threat of Spanish invasion, the Earl of Essex being sent to Ireland to try to suppress Tyrone's uprising, and his own company's construction of the Globe theatre. This was another one of the books I put on my list of books to read after Finals. It was a beezer! I found it really easy to read: compelling and informative, and reflective of a change in how I view literature since the days when I was a student: when I wasn't that interested in the political and historical context because I was ignorant and afraid of doing more reading. Now I'm humbler and no longer afraid of not knowing something. It makes me want to read the follow-up: 1606.

"Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service" by Michael Lewis - audiobook review

A series of essays originally published in the Washington Post about people who work for the government and are extraordinarily good at their jobs, such as a guy who runs military cemeteries; a man who figured out how to reduce the number of roof collapses in mines; a woman who makes it easier for doctors to look up cures for rare diseases; and a woman who oversees volunteers who digitize the national archives. Only a couple of the essays are written and read by Michael Lewis. They provide a fascinating insight into the value of government.

"Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine - audiobook review

Douglas Adams travels around the world in search of endangered animal species with a conservationist / zoologist from WWF called Mark Carwardine. Originally a one-off magazine article, then a book to accompany a BBC Radio 4 series. The different landscapes, people, political situations, and travel anecdotes are sharp and amusing. I think this was the book that Adams was most proud about. I believe it had quite a big impact on the conservation movement but I can’t judge that. I grew up in the years immediately afterwards when Blue Peter and Newsround regularly covered these sorts of issues.

"Up in the Old Hotel" by Joseph Mitchell - book review

Fucking hell! What a masterpiece. This was one of the last books I put on my list of books to read after Finals, recommended by Robert Crumb in the Guardian Review: "a wonderful collection of profiles from the New Yorker from 1937-64 by the great columnist Joseph Mitchell, which chronicle New York from the 1920s; it really puts you there". I got it for my birthday in 2010 and only started reading it last July and I've been puttering away at it a few pages a night. I also read two other books in between. But recently I've gathered more speed and started reading it over breakfast and lunch now that my decks are clear. It's a bit like an American (New York) Ulysses but non-fiction. Also a bit reminiscent of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor in the way it paints a city through its people. Towards the end of the book, everything comes together in "Joe Gould's Secret", which, because I started the book so long ago, felt vaguely familiar. This is because Joe Gould is the "Professor Sea Gull" of one of the first profiles. But it's also because Joseph Mitchell is such a character, too: in the warmth he feels for New York's people and ways of life; his storytelling panache; his amazing memory and ability to weave together strands of knowledge. Who knew about the Native American high steel bridge-builders; about the shad fishermen of the New Jersey side of the Hudson River; the bums, the drunks, the conmen, the gypsies, the policemen; the Fulton Fish Market and all its many suppliers; the wrecks at the bottom of the river, and the oysters and clams? Joseph Fucking Mitchell did and he put it all in this book, which you should read haste post haste.

"The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

A posthumous collection of writing recovered from Douglas Adams's various Apple computers, plus 11 chapters of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel. I preferred the earlier essays and fragments. But the Dirk Gently stuff is quite interesting because it's a sequel to The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. It has provided me with further oxygen and direction for my Douglas Adams deep-dive.

"Trelawny's Cornwall: A Journey through Western Lands" by Petroc Trelawny - audiobook review

A book about Cornwall's history by the BBC Radio 3 presenter. Part travelogue, part personal history, part social history. My favourite bits were about Falmouth as the post office of the British Empire (lots of packet ships used to sail from there); the undersea cables that landed near the Lizard; and Marconi's radio experiments nearby. I was also shocked how early mining was in decline in Cornwall. It wasn't always entirely thrilling but Trelawny's voice is soothing and some of his pronunciations are hilarious - particularly "puh-tree" for "poetry".

"The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

Another weirdly plotted Dirk Gently novel. This one features gods such as Thor and Odin living in our world. More gods live listless lives like outcasts, the dispossessed, the homeless.

"I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" by Nora Ephron - audiobook review

I ordered this audiobook for Fran and thought I'd listen to it myself because I quite enjoyed Heartburn and I'm a big fan of When Harry Met Sally…. As the title suggests, these are a series of comical essays about being a women, from trying to hide your neck when you get older to the tedium of "maintenance", and her various relationships (real and imagined) with chefs and authors of cookbooks. It was quite short and also, at times, a little dated (first published in 2006 but written about the 70s, 80s, and 90s). The audiobook version is narrated by Nora Ephron herself and she's delightful company. There are many parts of her personality that remind me (affectionately) of Fran. But, as with Heartburn, there are other parts of her worldview that I find more challenging, and which made me a little sad: sad about all the shit some women have to deal with; sad that couples philander and break up; sad that some women care so much about handbags or wear shoes that don't actually fit them and actively harm their feet; sad that people have plastic surgery to try to hide the inevitable fact of ageing. I'm not saying Nora Ephron is into all of these things (she's not). I don't really know what I'm saying. So maybe I should stop. The point is: it made me a little uneasy at times. But maybe that's a good thing. I guess I was hoping for more of a comfort read.

"Inciting Joy: Essays" by Ross Gay - book review

This was a Jolabokaflod present from Fran, which I started reading straight away on Christmas Eve. It deals more with grief than The Book of Delights but is still full of delights. My favourite essay was "Dispatch from the Ruins (School: The Eleventh Incitement)", which blew my tiny mind. It's about his views on university education and teaching; capitalism; bullshit jobs; and starts with an account of a faculty meeting in which students are referred to as "units". It reminded me of some of the philosophies of Sir Ken Robinson, the creativity expert and educationalist; The Cancer Stage of Capitalism; and A People's History of the United States. Gay describes how he runs some of his classes: giving everyone an A grade at the start to get that worry off the table; joining in the creative challenges he sets his students. It's hard to describe and I don't want to. Just read it.

"Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys" by Billy Crystal - audiobook review

An enjoyable autobiography covering both the actor Billy Crystal's personal and professional lives. The audiobook version also features some chapters performed live on stage as part of a stand-up comedy set. I preferred the other chapters that were just read by the author: they were less performative. I was most interested in what he had to say about one of my favourite films, When Harry Met Sally…. He's good company and it's quite touching at times how much of a proud father and grandfather he is. It also made me laugh out loud a few times. I didn't realize he was personal friends with Muhammad Ali, Mickey Mantle, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

"The Secret History of Christmas" by Bill Bryson - audiobook review

A short (3 hours and 3 minutes) and mildly entertaining audiobook about the history of Christmas in Bill Bryson's inimitable style, narrated by the author himself. It focuses mostly on the UK and USA. It's remarkable how many of our Christmas traditions are relatively recent. Most of the them date from the 1840s onwards. It's reassuring to know that Christmas has always been about feasting and excess, drawing as it does on the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Full of facts and tidbits, which I will now forget or vaguely misremember.