Flying off my bookshelves this month…
September 2007
Andrew Roberts, “A History of English Speaking Peoples Since 1900”
The importance of speaking English cannot be underestimated. It’s why the Right Path Party has launched its "Don't Mind Your Language" campaign, to help new arrivals in the UK bone up on their p's and q's. But if you're looking for a blueprint for cultural diversity you won't find it here. For Roberts the literary achievements of poetic grandees like Desmond Walcott alone speak ill of all those who would snobbishly contend that the broken "riddims" of the West Indies belong in a separate linguistic category, along with the Africans and those from the Indian sub-continent, from native English speakers. And let’s not forget, Andrew Roberts is the self-proclaimed "Nostradamus of the right". So disagree with him at your peril!
August 2007
Elroy Bumforth, “Splendid Rides”
Summer is a time for cycling. Put all thought of work to one side, dust down your saddle, put some air in your tyres and peddle till you dry heave. But what is it that makes cycling such a pleasure? In this book Elroy Bumforth takes us on a journey around the Northwest of England in an attempt to find out. Rather than stick to the official cycle paths, Bumforth tries something quite daring, opting off the beaten track. Not just unorthodox, it's a "racy" strategy to say the least, especially when he decides to try some "freestyle shit" and ends up totalling his unicycle. The latter half of the book, in which Bumforth has to come to terms with being paralysed from the neck down, and being fed through a straw, is heartwarming stuff.
July 2007
Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul”
Not released officially until September 4, but luckily I got hold of a copy at a time when expectations about its release had been elevated to such an extent that fights were regularly breaking out outside the publisher's offices. I must say I was deeply moved to learn that nuns were force-fed LSD as part of the empirical research, and somewhat daunted by the fact that early drafts of the manuscript were used to suffocate tramps. However, the authors, although extremely erudite, are never remotely tempted to patronise their audience by proving their argument. This put me at ease and made me reconnect with God in a way that I last encountered whilst rummaging through compost. A spiritual feast.
June 2007
James Patterson, “The 6th Target”
Easy to put down. Got me thinking about the last time I visited Sainsbury's. A fabulous opening but lacking a plot. Get lost in this when you're on the beach this summer - but stay on the shore whatever you do.
Sandra Drake, “All About U”
Smashing cross between a novel and a telephone directory, Drake combines all the suspense of a fun children's romp with a gutless list of facts and figures about the 21st letter of the alphabet. Did you know that U once was A? And that a fibreglass U fell on the Queen? Drake has done her research all right, and she sure knows how to patronise the great and the good. But be warned: the appendix is a staggering 25,000 pages long!
May 2007
Captain T. Theodor Schnapps, “Send in the Slappers: Iraq and the Challenge of Democracy”
The "slappers", for those of you not up on your military shorthand, is an elite yet ultra-secret brigade housed in the same building as the splendid London Irish Rifles (who, we learn here, recently hired Canonn and Ball's front hedge for target practice). Odd to discover too, perhaps, that the Middlesex Yeomanry also once hired a two-mile stretch of hedgerow, not from Tommy and the other one this time, but from Robin Cousins? The Captain hedges his bets, advancing all manner of conspiracy theories in a web of army intrigue involving many of its top brass, before bottling out in the final chapter, which he gives the provocative title, "I Don't Know What I'm Talking About". That's brave. This should blow the lid on a whole load of double dealing and broken promises over Iraq too. The Captain's prose is dense yet compressed, often weaving together hundreds of concepts in a single footnote. Not destined to be the last time I don't throw it in the bin.
March 2007 Farn Gretred, "The Lover is a Window Broken"
My next door neighbour put me onto this. If you're out there Sally, can you pick it up asap? I would have dropped it in but don't know where you live. Not my cup of tea. More like weak coffee.
November 2006
Frederick Forsyth, “The Day of the Jackal”
Unprecedented insight into the French psyche, should be compulsory reading for O level students.
Karl Marx, “Daz Kapital”
Perfect bedtime reading, sends me to sleep in seconds.
October 2006
Michael Portillo, “Top 10 Harvester Wines” (unpublished)
He knows a thing or two about his grapes, and this delightful little pamphlet proves it. We can split hairs over claret all day long, and one expects a Spaniard to be biased, but my one reservation remains the 5 entry: Martini Bianca. No wonder publishers are non-committal!
John Pilger, “Hidden Agendas”
As well as being a wonderful writer, John’s become a great friend. Politically, of course, we’re further apart than a hooker’s bum cheeks, but that’s never prevented us from seeing eye to eye on the Big Issues: 11/9, political corruption, and celebrity screen time. John is the perfect communicator, his asymmetrical hair do and sticky out ears make him the sort of cove that people just shut up and gawp at. And he’s an Australian, which means his spiel gets submerged in a Neanderthal rap that one cannot help but find endearing.
September 2006
“Noddy and Big Ears Fun Book”
Not strictly mine, but still a sort of classic. It was my six-year-old daughter, Polly, who first put me on to the allegorical themes at work in these cutesy adventures. “Daddy,” she said, “isn’t Toy Town the sublated concept of a post-Nietzschean paradigm which only appears to be transcended by the fall of grand narratives, but which in actual fact relies on the possibility of a singular – albeit a-subjective – political act by the stranger in the Laruellian sense?” “For God’s sake,” I said, “if you don’t hurry up you’ll be late for your helicopter lessons!” On reflection, of course, she couldn’t be more wrong: the concept of “stranger” in the work of Laruelle is consistent with a nihilistic attempt to deconstruct Enlightenment thinking from within the post-romantic tradition of post-Kantian liberal discourse. There is nothing political or “utopian” about a putatively a-subjective topology – although Laruelle himself would presumably claim to endorse a post-topological approach to philosophy.
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