Which Books Should You Be Reading This Week?
Your digest of the weekend's newspaper reviews Dec 10/11
Firstly, apologies for last weekend that you didn’t receive your digest of the newspaper book reviews, I wasn’t feeling too well and so spent most of last Sunday sleeping, but here I am, back to full health and raring to go.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag this week as a lot of the newspapers are doing round ups of the year in books, and so I thought I’d give you a walk through of some of the best books of the year that just happen to be in my little pop-up bookshop.
First up, The Guardian decided to try to imitate The Book Room’s idea of getting writers to curate their best books from the genres they work in (I mean, I’m told imitation is a form of flattery, so I’ll let them away with it…). The newspaper’s Saturday section asked crime writers to celebrate their favourite fictional detectives. You can find that article here. But it reminded me of a great little book I have in store which is part of the Comic Classics series by Jack Noel. Getting kids to read the classics can be a bit of a slog, the language is understandably more difficult for them than contemporary texts, and so Jack Noel came up with a fun way of presenting these stories that are interesting for kids in bitesize pieces with fun illustrations. Noel’s Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles would make a great stocking filler and you can buy it here.
• Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles by Jack Noel (Farshore) £6.99
The Saturday Guardian also had a pretty scathing review of Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel Stella Maris. Fans of his will know that The Passenger, released last month, was his first novel in ten years. But McCarthy has not actually penned a book with a female protagonist since 1968, and if you read this review by Beejay Silcox, he might wish he hadn’t bothered with another.
‘Women, I am repeatedly told, don’t like – don’t get – Cormac McCarthy. It’s the kind of patronising nonsense that gets levelled at us when we point out the converse: that McCarthy’s fiction doesn’t get – doesn’t like – women,’ writes Silcox. ‘When female characters do appear in his pages, they are cowards, victims and sexpots: sirenic doom-bringers, cheetah-owning dommes, simpering twits and bad mothers.’
Eep. So what might Silcox make of this book and McCarthy’s writing of his protagonist Alicia? (I am typing this through my fingers.)
‘Alicia is the character you’d invent if you set out to skewer McCarthy’s frontier-fawning machoism. She’s a gordian knot of pathologies: synaestheic, schizophrenic, autistic, anorexic, nihilistic, suicidal and in love with her brother…. ‘
So far so, er….
‘There’s the link McCarthy makes between Alicia’s madness and her menstrual cycle; her certainty that motherhood is the cure for all her existential woes; her atomically weaponised daddy issues…’
Ok, Silcox may have a point. She goes on to talk about the incestuous subplot which McCarthy has used before… the last time he placed a woman at the centre of a book.
Oh dear McCarthy.
This review is very much viewed through a female lens, so that’s not to say McCarthy’s male fans may find the book utterly enjoyable and may not find it irritating in the least.
It is said that Stella Maris should be read as a companion book to The Passenger, in fact, other reviews I’ve read said that the latter makes little sense without it. And, even a review like this, piques one’s curiosity, and if that’s the case for you, I have copies in store and also online here.
• Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy (Picador) £20
Continuing on the theme of fiction, The Sunday Times reviewed Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries this weekend, and I may not have this in the shop but please, how could I not include it?
‘The book paints a picture of a man possessed with incredible foresight, beset on all sides by doubters blind to his prophecy,’ writes Charlotte Ivers. ‘It was Hancock who foresaw the need to pre-order 100 million vaccines, against the advice of his vaccines adviser. It was he who saw the need for the Chinese authorities to lock down Wuhan long before they did. He who warned of the risk of asymptomatic transmission when all the medical community seemed to agree it did not exist…’
But wait, I’m mistaken, this is not Matt Hancock’s debut novel, this is no fiction, it is, instead, his truth. Reader, this is non-fiction. And this book extends to 600-pages of the stuff – 500-pages of which appears to be Hancock bemoaning the British press. And here’s the thing because I had it on pretty good authority that in the second half of 2020 while the experts were still gathering the science, Hancock was courting the media and getting himself on the News at Ten each night with exclusives and executive decision-making which now makes complete sense given his new determination to have a showbiz career.
But I wonder how much of the book focuses on that other major effort Hancock made during the pandemic, that of cheating on his wife? Somehow I think not much because that doesn’t exactly sit with the hero image that Hancock appears to be creating in these Pandemic Diaries, does it?
‘Hancock has done some valuable public service in documenting his frustrations, and he seems to have tried to do his best for the country,’ Ivers writes. ‘That’s about all I can muster when it comes to approval. I wish you a better reception in showbusiness.’
Reviewing in the Sunday Telegraph, Tim Stanley described the book as ‘embarrassing Alan Partridge-esque diaries’, which make them sound much more fun, especially if you read them with that voice.
It was a strange time, but perhaps you would like to hear what happened from the man who claims he was on the frontline and if you do, you can send me a custom order here.
• Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid by Matt Hancock (Biteback) £25
In the Saturday Review section, Times writers were asked to write about their favourite books of 2022. Hilary Rose picked Still Life, which I have in store and have been pressing into customers’ hands.
‘I’m slightly cheating by picking Still Life by Sarah Winman because this was published in 2021, but I came to it in paperback only this year,’ writes Rose. ‘It’s now one of my favourite books and, as with another of my top ten – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles – I nearly gave up after a few chapters. Don’t. Hang in there past the iffy beginning, and you’ll be rewarded with an absolutely gem of a novel about love, loss and a parrot called Claude. It’s also a must-read for anyone who dreams of living in Florence.’
I share the same agent as Sarah Winman and have seen just how many accolades Still Life has won over the last year or so. You can grab copies of both Still Life and A Gentleman in Moscow in store and online.
• Still Life by Sarah Winman (4th Estate) £8.99
Robert Crampton picked Kate Atkinson’s latest book Shrines of Gaiety for his favourite, lauding it as ‘another cracker.’
‘Despite numerous awards, very strong sales and almost 30 years in which she has never produced a book that was anything less than excellent. Kate Atkinson doesn’t quite get the critical respect she deserves. I don’t suppose she minds; she seems content to follow her own path, excelling in whatever period or genre she tackles. In her latest, Shrines of Gaiety, she returns to one of her core subjects, the hopes and dreams of ordinary women in the first half of the 20th century, on this occasion in and around Soho.’
• Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (Transworld) £20
Rachel Sylvester picked Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, and I have loved having this book in store for the cover which is a piece of art in itself.
‘The Marriage Portrait is a novel inspired by a poem, inspire by a painting (of a real woman, Lucrezia de’Medici). O’Farrell captivatingly weaves the fantastical world of Renaissance Italy with a brutal real murder. There are intricate tapestries, a virgin heroine with floor-length red hair, a menagerie including a tiger, and a cruel duke who plots the killing of his young wife. It is escapism with emotional depth,’ writes Sylvester.
• The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press) £25
Right, that’s your lot for this week, I’m off to have the Sunday roast my friend has just cooked for me, but remember that you can find all of these books and more over at my website. And if you’re after something that isn’t yet listed, send me a custom order here.
I’m closing orders for book hamper on Wednesday, December 14, so if you would like one ready for Christmas, let me know asap.
• Don’t forget you can find me popping up inside The Bloom Foundry, 55 St John’s Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN4 9QG until Christmas Eve. I am there Tuesday to Saturday 10-5, and Sunday 11-3.