2024 Books

Originally published on my Facebook feed. 

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Reflections on my 2024 reading:

The most significant reading experience I had this year was James Joyce’s Ulysses. I call it a “reading experience” because I read and listened to the text, read Don Gifford’s book of annotations, Richard Elmann’s biography of Joyce, and revisited The Odyssey. Was all of it worth it? To quote from Ulysseys: “yes.” I felt like the book was one gigantic test, stretching my abilities of comprehension to new limits - in a way that was (mostly) enjoyable. I enjoyed reading Leopold Bloom’s odyssey around Dublin, his descent into Hades (a funeral), his encounter with the Sirens (barmaids), his battle with the Cyclops (a vicious anti-semite), Circe’s captivity (hallucinations in a brothel), and his return to Ithaca to reunite with Telamachus and Penelope (7 Eccles Street, Stephen and Molly). I enjoyed the way each chapter has its own style (the last one really is a fifty page long sentence), and trying to tease out the myriad of details, subplots and significance. I struggled - especially in Chapter 14 (Oxen in the Sun) - but even when I was lost I was able to enjoy the beauty of the language. I am now working my way through Finnegans Wake with a book club - I have sumitted one mountain just to discover a peak ten times higher. 

I am now caught up with Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson books - he’s 89, so I really hope he finishes the last one soon! Nominally a biography of LBJ, they also incorporate large histories of the United States and its government. As Joyce took Leopold Bloom and turned him into an epic hero, Caro turns Johnson into one - in the Greek sense, where the heroes are deeply tragic. LBJ was a corrupt, insecure Zelig who kneecapped rivals and rigged elections - and yet he passed more legislation than any postwar president, with the greatest proportion of the country behind him. For better or for worse we live in his America now - with more civil rights and an expanded social safety net, but where the majority of the people do not trust their leaders. Subsequent presidents have confirmed that distrust, but it was with the cries of “Hey Hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?!” that it was lost. We are now a deeply paranoid, resentful, country; Caro convincingly traces a lot of that back to Lyndon “Bullshit” Johnson.

But my most all consuming experience this year was with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I listened to over six hundred episodes of their podcast, The Rest is History, read several of their books, became a member of their “club”, and even saw their live show. Their podcasts are incredibly entertaining, they cover a huge variety (Persians, Franks, Byzantines, Aztecs, pigeons, coronations, soccer, French Presidents, the Falklands War…) and there are a lot of wonderful insights. Sandbrook’s great insight - one he traces through his social histories of postwar Britain - is that most people throughout history do not obsess about politics, or abstract ideas, but instead focus on what’s in front of them. An obvious bit of analysis, sure - and one that echoes Edmund Burke and War and Peace - but it is easy to forget, especially when you are left frustrated after an election defeat and begin to blame the electorate. 

Holland’s great insight - one I found much more surprising - is that our epoch remains Christian. I was ambivalent at first, but after I read his brilliant book Dominion (2019) I was converted - not to Christianity, but to his argument that the Western understanding of the world is deeply rooted in Christian assumptions. The two scriptures he uses to support this claim are “the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16) and “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Humanism, Secularism, Atheism and so forth still pull their morals from the implications of these two passages. If we want to imagine a world where these assumptions are not accepted, we can revisit the pre-Christian world of Thucydides, who observed that “the strong do what they can, the weak suffer as they must”.

Their podcast turned me on to lots of other books - including some of the lesser read works of George Orwell. The first was The Road to Wigan Pier (1936). It’s a book in two parts - the first is a beautifully written travelogue to the destitute north of England (Wigan and beyond) where we are taken into the private lives of the unemployed, as well as deep underground into the coal mines. The paradox was that the coal miner had the most important job in the country - other than farmers - but they had the worst working conditions, having to travel miles underground for backbreaking labour - when they were lucky enough to be employed. 

In the second half Orwell explores the tensions between “Socialism” and “Socialists”. Orwell believed that Britain needed Socialism, but after his experiences he understood that the proles were put off by Socialists - “One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England”. I am sympathetic, although might update some of those categories. Orwell was a committed believer, and this led him to join one of the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War, hoping to “kill one fascist”. Instead, after months of frustration on the battlefield, he was shot in the neck and returned to England - where he chronicled his experiences in Homage to Catalonia (1938). 

Fascism followed him to London - the essay The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) begins “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” Orwell hoped that war would ultimately lead to revolution in England, and a new democratic “English Socialism” would emerge - one that would stand up to the USSR once the Nazis were thoroughly defeated. Today Orwell is mostly known for his postwar novels Animal Farm and 1984 - books that obscure his optimistic vision for Britain. Orwell was a virtuous, honest, articulate, and brave man. As I read these works, I thought about how rare these qualities are, and how much I admire him for them.

At the other end of the spectrum was Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis. Unlike Orwell, Jim Dixon is lazy, deceitful, and self destructive. While many academics these days might hope to land a tenure track position at a quality university, Dixon is constantly trying to find escape - a better girlfriend, a better job, a better drink. The book climaxes with him giving a drunken lecture on Merrie England - imitating various characters, taking deep pauses, and affecting accents - and yet, once he’s been fired, he manages to find a better job in London - “Lucky Jim” indeed. Amoral, irreverent and hilarious.

Finally, there was Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1962). This was a much more tortured, existential book - a man gets kidnapped while looking for beetles, and must live the rest of his life with a woman at the bottom of a sand dune, working to remove falling sand, lest they be buried alive. The sand is all consuming - without constant effort it enters their home, contaminating their food and water. He tries several methods of escape, but ultimately is forced to accept his fate - and eventually finds some happiness in the absurdity of his life. Mustn’t we all?

That’s it for reviews, but here are a few honourable mentions:
Stuart Reid - The Lumumba Plot

Scott Shapiro - Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

Tom Segev - A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion

Fintan O’Toole - We Don’t Know Ourselves - A Personal History of Modern Ireland

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen - Hanoi's War
Deborah Lipstadt - History on Trial and Antisemitism

Robert Harris - Conclave and An Officer and a Spy

Frank Herbert - God Emperor of Dune

James Shapiro - William Shakespeare’s 1599

Jonathan Haidt - The Anxious Generation

And that’s it! Thanks for reading - I really enjoy these yearly reviews and the chance it gives me to reflect. Happy New Year to all!