Journal tags: novel

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Books I read in 2024

I’ve been keeping track of the books I’m reading for about seven years now. I do that here on my own website, as well as on bookshop.org.

It has become something of a tradition for me to post an end-of-year summary of the books I’ve read in the previous twelve months. Maybe I should be posting my thoughts on each book right after I finish it instead. Then again, I quite like the act of thinking about a book again after letting it sit and stew for a while.

I should probably stop including stars with these little reviews. They’re fairly pointless—pretty much everything I read is right down the middle in the “good” category. But to recap, here’s how I allocate my scores:

  • One star means a book is meh.
  • Two stars means a book is perfectly fine.
  • Three stars means a book is a good—consider it recommended.
  • Four stars means a book is exceptional.
  • Five stars is pretty much unheard of.

No five-star books this year, but also no one-star books.

This year I read about 29 books. A bit of an increase on previous years, but the numbers can be deceptive—not every book is equal in length.

Fiction outnumbered non-fiction by quite a margin. I’m okay with that.

The Wager by David Grann

“A tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder” is promised on the cover and this book delivers. What’s astonishing is that it’s a true story. If it were fiction it would be dismissed as too far-fetched. It’s well told, and it’s surely only a matter of time before an ambitious film-maker takes on its Rashomon-like narrative.

★★★☆☆

Bridge by Lauren Beukes

I think this might be Lauren’s best book since Zoo City. The many-worlds hypothesis has been mined to depletion in recent years but Bridge still manages to have a fresh take on it. The well-rounded characters ensure that you’re invested in the outcome.

★★★☆☆

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Part of my ongoing kick of reading retellings of Greek myths, this one focuses on a particularly cruel detail of Odysseus’s return.

★★★☆☆

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

Keeping with the Greek retellings, this was the year that I read most of Jennifer Saint’s books. All good stuff, though I must admit that in my memory it’s all starting to blend together with other books like Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra.

★★★☆☆

Children Of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The final book in the trilogy, this doesn’t have the same wham-bam page-turning breathlessness as Children Of Time, but I have to say it’s really stuck with me. Whereas the previous books looked at the possibilities of biological intelligence (in spiders and octopuses), this one focuses inwards.

I don’t want to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the culmination. I’ll just say that I think that by the end it posits a proposition that I don’t recall any other sci-fi work doing before.

Y’know what? Just because of how this one has lodged in my mind I’m going to give it an extra star.

★★★★☆

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

I think this is my favourite Natalie Haynes book so far. It also makes a great companion piece to another book I read later in the year…

★★★☆☆

The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh

I picked up this little volume of poems when I was in Amsterdam—they go down surprisingly well with some strong beer and bitterballen. I was kind of blown away by how funny some of these vignettes were. There’s plenty of hardship too, but that’s the human condition for you.

★★★★☆

Europe In Autumn, Europe At Midnight, Europe In Winter, and Europe At Dawn by Dave Hutchinson

I read the Fractured Europe series throughout the year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll readily admit that I didn’t always follow what was going on but that’s part of the appeal. The world-building is terrific. It’s an alternative version of a Brexity Europe that by the end of the first book starts to go in an unexpected direction. Jonathan Strange meets George Smiley.

★★★☆☆

The Odyssey by Homer translated by Robert Fagles

Seeing as I’m reading all the modern retellings, it’s only fair that I have the source material to hand. This is my coffee table book that I dip into sporadically. I’ve got a copy of the prequel too.

I am not going to assign stars to this.

Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan

Fairly navel-gazing stuff, and you get the impression that Nick Cave thinks so too. Just as Neil Young would rather talk about his model trains, Nick Cave would rather discuss his pottery. The music stands on its own, but this is still better than most books about music.

★★☆☆☆

Julia by Sandra Newman

Now this is an audacious move! Retelling 1984 from Julia’s perspective. Not only does it work, it also shines a light on some flaws in Orwell’s original (and I say that as someone who’s read everything Orwell ever wrote). I’m happy to say that the execution of this book matches its ambition.

★★★☆☆

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

So if I’ve been reading alternative perspectives on Homer and Orwell, why not Shakespeare too? This is beautifully evocative and rich in detail. It’s also heartbreaking. A gorgeous work.

★★★★☆

Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I enjoyed Natalie Hayne’s novels. It’s all good informative stuff, but it feels a bit like a collection of separate essays rather than a coherent piece.

★★☆☆☆

Best Of British Science Fiction 2023 edited by Donna Scott

I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of this from one of the authors. I love a good short story collection and this one is very good indeed.

★★★☆☆

Ithaca and House Of Odysseus by Claire North

Remember how I said that some of the Greek retellings started to blend together? Well, no fear of that with this terrific series. Like Margaret Atwood’s retelling, Penelope is the main character here. Each book is narrated by a different deity, and yet there is little to no supernatural intervention. I’m really looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series.

★★★☆☆

The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood

This is the one I was hinting at above that makes a great companion piece to Natalie Hayne’s Stone Blind. Two different—but equally sympathetic—takes on Medusa. This one is grittily earthbound—no gods here—and it’s a horrifying examination of toxic masculinity. And don’t expect any natural justice here.

★★★☆☆

Dogs Of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a real knack for getting inside the animal mind. This story is smaller in scale than his Children Of Time series but it succeeds in telling its provocative tale snappily.

★★★☆☆

Reading 84K by Claire North

I described Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series as Brexity, but this Claire North’s book is one that pushes Tory austerity to its dystopian logical conclusion. It’s all-too believable, if maybe a little over-long. Grim’n’good.

★★★☆☆

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

The first of Jennifer Saint’s books is also my favourite. There’s a fantasically vivid description of the arrival of Dionysus into the narrative.

★★★☆☆

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

I’ve been meaning to read this one for years, but in the end I didn’t end up finishing it. That’s no slight on the book; I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for putting a book down—I’m usually stubbornly completionist, which is stupid because life is too short. I hope to return to this at some future time.

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

Another vividly-written tale by Jennifer Saint, but maybe suffers from trying to cram in all the varied accounts of Atalanta’s deeds and trials—the character’s motivations are hard to reconcile at different points.

★★★☆☆

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

This was …fine. It’s the first in a series called Bomb Light. Maybe I’ll appreciate it more in its final context. As a standalone work, there’s not quite enough there to carry it (including the cutesiness of making a young Richard Feynman a side character).

★★☆☆☆

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This too was …fine. I know some people really love this, and maybe that raised my expectations, but in the end it was a perfectly good if unremarkable novel.

★★★☆☆

The Fates by Rosie Garland

Pairs nicely with Jennifer Saint’s Atalanta. A decent yarn.

★★★☆☆

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

I’ve just started this post-apocalyptic classic from 1949. Tune in next year to find out if I end up enjoying it.

Okay, so that was my reading for 2024. Nothing that completely blew me away but nothing that thoroughly disappointed me either. Plenty of good solid books. If I had to pick a favourite it would probably be Maggie Farrell’s Hamnet. And that Patrick Kavanagh collection of poems.

If you fancy going back in time, here are my previous round-ups:

Creativity

It’s like a little mini conference season here in Brighton. Tomorrow is ffconf, which I’m really looking forward to. Last week was UX Brighton, which was thoroughly enjoyable.

Maybe it’s because the theme this year was all around creativity, but all of the UX Brighton speakers gave entertaining presentations. The topics of innovation and creativity were tackled from all kinds of different angles. I was having flashbacks to the Clearleft podcast episode on innovation—have a listen if you haven’t already.

As the day went on though, something was tickling at the back of my brain. Yes, it’s great to hear about ways to be more creative and unlock more innovation. But maybe there was something being left unsaid: finding novel ways of solving problems and meeting user needs should absolutely be done …once you’ve got your basics sorted out.

If your current offering is slow, hard to use, or inaccessible, that’s the place to prioritise time and investment. It doesn’t have to be at the expense of new initiatives: this can happen in parallel. But there’s no point spending all your efforts coming up with the most innovate lipstick for a pig.

On that note, I see that more and more companies are issuing breathless announcements about their new “innovative” “AI” offerings. All the veneer of creativity without any of the substance.

Two books

I’ve mentioned before that I like to read a mixture of fiction of non-fiction. In fact, I try to alternate between the two. If I’ve just read some non-fiction, then I’ll follow it with a novel and I’ve just read some fiction, then I’ll follow it with some non-fiction.

But those categorisations can be slippery. I recently read two books that were ostensibly fiction but were strongly autobiographical and didn’t have the usual narrative structure of a novel.

Just to clarify, I’m not complaining! Quite the opposite. I enjoy the discomfort of not being able to pigeonhole a piece of writing so easily.

Also, both books were excellent.

The first one was A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. It’s sort of about the narrator’s obsessive quest to translate the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. But it’s also about the translator’s life, which mirrors the author’s. And it’s about all life—life in its bodily, milky, bloody, crungey reality. The writing is astonishing, creating an earthy musky atmosphere. It feels vibrant and new but somehow ancient and eternal at the same time.

By contrast, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood is rooted in technology. Reading the book feels like scrolling through Twitter, complete with nervous anxiety. Again, the narrator’s life mirrors that of the author, but this time the style has more of the arch detachment of the modern networked world.

It took me a little while at first, but then I settled into the book’s cadence and vibe. Then, once I felt like I had a handle on the kind of book I was reading, it began to subtly change. I won’t reveal how, because I want you to experience that change for yourself. It’s like a slow-building sucker punch.

When I started reading No One Is Talking About This, I thought it might end up being the kind of book where I would admire the writing, but it didn’t seem like a work that invited emotional connection.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I can’t remember the last time a book had such an emotional impact on me. Maybe that’s because it so deliberately lowered my defences, but damn, when I finished reading the book, I was in pieces.

I’m still not quite sure how to classify A Ghost In The Throat or No One Is Talking About This but I don’t care. They’re both just great books.

V for Vendetta

When I heard that V for Vendetta was being filmed, I was very, very nervous indeed. It has long been one of my favourite graphic novels, second only to Watchmen. The film industry hasn’t traditionally done a very good job of transferring graphic novels to celluloid.

When I saw a trailer for the film, my fears were not allayed. It all looked so slick, a million miles away from Alan Moore’s grim vision. I heard about the climax of the film featuring a gathering of people in V masks… that was most certainly not in the book.

I decided not to see the film in the cinema. I figured I’d just be as disappointed as Paul. I mentally filed the film away in the “watch it on DVD” category.

This week, I did just that. Even as the disc was sliding into the DVD player, I was still hoping that I could enjoy it, although I imagined I would probably spend most of the time nitpicking, comparing it to the graphic novel and finding it wanting.

Sure enough, it’s very different indeed. The story has been condensed. Characters have been changed. Everything looks cleaner and more up-to-date.

I should have hated it. But I didn’t. I liked it. A lot.

The graphic novel was a reflection of Thatcher’s Britain. It remains a product of its time. If the film were to stay absolutely true to the book’s look and feel, it would feel dated. Instead, the film is more in synch with the mood of Britain in the 21st century.

Most dystopian visions rely heavily on a sort of pathetic fallacy to show a world that looks dark, depressing and downtrodden. It’s easy, in such circumstances, to sympathise with any protagonist bent on tearing down the system. But what about a totalitarian society where everyone’s doing more or less okay? In a society where people are doing comfortably, with clean clothes and respectable jobs, would you still feel the same righteous desire to rip the fabric of society apart?

It’s this more ambiguous stance that made the film of V for Vendetta such a pleasure for me. In some ways, and this is a somewhat heretical thing to say, the film is superior to the book. Of course, it isn’t nearly as densely packed, but it does flow quicker, with a more cohesive structure than the episodic nature of the book.

I even liked the climax. I was afraid of some kind of Deus Ex Machina scenario, but instead the film builds towards the gathering at Westminster as an inevitable culmination of everything that has come before. It sounds like such a Hollywood ending, but it’s actually a reflection of our own world. Remember, when Alan Moore and David Lloyd wrote V for Vendetta in the ’80s, none of us had seen the embodiment of the human spirit in the gatherings of Eastern Europe or witnessed the sight of the citizens of Moscow facing down the tanks of a military coup.

But, plot changes aside, this film was always going to stand or fall based on one thing: the character of V. I was impressed with how the film depicted this man, and not just because they kept the mask on the whole time — something that’s almost unheard of for a leading actor. He is a hero and a villain. He is a murderer and a terrorist, yet he is charming and sympathetic. V was a complex character in the book, and he is equally complex in the film, thanks to Hugo Weaving’s great performance and the decision to keep V’s dense, lyrical dialogue intact.

I found myself enjoying V for Vendetta immensely. It was thrilling to see scenes from the graphic novel brought to life. And where the film veered away from the book, it always made sense in the context of the modern setting.

I was reminded of The Lord of the Rings. Watching that film, it became clear very early on that it was made by someone who has an equal love for the original material and the medium of cinema. The real art is reconciling those visions.

V for Vendetta certainly split the critics. Much of the negative criticism is aimed at the perceived politics of the film, as is much of the praise. In truth, the film is a cipher. It’s impossible not to bring in your own political opinions and belief system. Far from being a watered-down, wishy-washy Hollywood adaptation, this film turns on its audience, confronting them with uncomfortable juxtapositions and questions… much like the book. The film does the best possible job with the thankless task of transferring a much-loved cult work to a mainstream audience without compromising the integrity of the piece or insulting the intelligence of the viewers.

This isn’t a frame for frame, word for word adaptation of the the graphic novel. But it is faithful to the spirit of the book. Had the film-makers slavishly transferred the story from book to film, the result would have been a curious historical document. Instead, this is one of the most topical, engaging and well-crafted films I’ve seen this year.

V for Vendetta is available on DVD now.