january 2020 books…

Waiting For The Last Bus (Richard Holloway): I love Holloway’s gentle wisdom and compassion. Holloway (former Bishop of Edinburgh) is now 86 years old and, for him, having spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, writing a book about life and death is both close to his heart and insightful for us all. In recent years (since 2000?), he has taken “an agnostic worldview and commenting widely on issues concerning religious belief in the modern world” (as described in Wikipedia) and his own theological position has become increasingly radical (he has described himself as an "after-religionist", with strong faith in humanity). I found myself agreeing with LOTS of his reflections, such as: the wonders of modern medicine and its ability to keep most of us alive well into our eighties but also with “signs of having a profoundly distorting effect on the balance of society as a whole”; and also in politics: “elderly voters are a powerful reactionary force in politics… they are more disciplined and consistent than the young in voting, so as they increase in size as a cohort of the population their envies and resentments are bound to have an increasingly distorting effect on political processes”. This is a wonderfully tender book – joyful and moving, challenging and comforting – which calls on its readers to think seriously about the meaning of life itself. I loved it.

Morning Glory On The Vine (Joni Mitchell): This is a very beautiful book, published in 2019, comprising some of Mitchell’s early poems, songs and drawings (she used to carry a sketchbook with her everywhere she went). In 1971, her manager and agent took a binder of her drawings and hand-written lyrics and had a limited edition of books made up for Mitchell to give out to friends as Christmas presents that year. There are some 25 poems and 35 song lyrics in the book. Obviously, as an avid Mitchell fan since the late 1960s, I was familiar with most of the song lyrics (although I had forgotten two or three from her 1968 ‘Song to a Seagull’ album – and another remained unreleased until 2009, on ‘Amchitka’). I love her sketches and suspect I might try to emulate her ‘style’ in a few of my sketchbooks in due course! It’s a book I’ll continue to ‘dip into’ for evermore.

Hope In The Dark (Rebecca Solnit): At a time when I’m feeling helpless and hopeless about so much in the world, I felt the need for something a little uplifting… hence this book. Solnit is an activist, columnist and cultural historian and this is a fascinating and well-written reminder of social change and activism (climate change, war in Iraq, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street etc) that has happened over the past five decades. The book comprises a series of essays and was first published in 2004 (this third edition, published in 2016, contains additional contributions). I certainly found it inspiring but, at the same time, was reminded of how often we come across history repeating itself, the ‘deafness’ of politicians and the same mistakes being made. But it was also a useful reminder of just how much progress HAS been made in so many areas – attitudes towards fossil fuels; the need to radically reduce carbon emissions; apartheid; homophobia; food banks etc etc - and also a reminder that ordinary people have frequently overcome powerful corporations and overturned political policies. So, yes, a hopeful book – but also a reminder of how much energy and determination is necessary to help make desperately-needed changes. 

The Sixteen Trees Of The Somme (Lars Mytting): I think I was destined to read this book (recommended by one of my lovely bookgroup friends, Emily)… a mystery that includes the isle of Shetland and the WW1 battlefields of the Somme. The novel is written through the eyes of Edvard, a young man in his 20s, who grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his grandfather. The death of his parents, when he was 3 years old, has always been shrouded in mystery. When his grandfather dies and it transpires that the undertakers already have a beautiful, highly ornate coffin set aside for him, designed and made by his estranged brother, Edvard embarks on a voyage of discovery which takes him on a long journey – from Norway, to the Shetlands and to the battlefields of France. It’s an evocative, intricate, complicated (at times perhaps overly complicated?), clever story about the love of wood and finding your own self. I really enjoyed it… it ticked all the boxes for me. It’s a very beautiful, satisfying book.

The Box Of Delights (John Masefield): This children’s novel (published in 1935) is the slightly unusual (perhaps even strange?) choice for our bookgroup’s next book. We’d decided to select a ‘Classic’ novel for our book choice and we’d all come up with various suggestions, but this one ‘won the vote’. It’s a fantasy tale of a 12 year-old boy returning from boarding school when he finds himself mixed up in a battle with an evil gang (and wolves), led by a magician, to possess a mysterious box. It allows the owner to shrink in size, to fly swiftly, to go into the past and to experience the magical wonders contained within the box. It felt a bit like Enid Blyton ‘doing’ Harry Potter (but very badly) - with ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and a smattering of ‘Dr Who’ thrown in. Yes, I accept that I need to take account of when it written and yes, it’s highly inventive and imaginative… but I found it all a little TOO ridiculous. There were several times when it seemed that Masefield couldn’t work out the next stage of the plot and so simply conjured something up (literally)(a bit like how Dr Who’s ‘sonic screwdriver’ always seems to save its writers when they can’t work out what happens next!). Yes, there were parts that I found amusing - especially the attitude and ‘logic’ of the police inspector and when the radio announcer asked the public “to co-operate with the Police by giving instant, accurate information of a red, white, blue, grey, brown or black motor bus – the colours had been variously given by various observers…”. ‘The Times’ apparently described the novel (and Masefield’s “The Midnight Folk” companion work) as “two of the greatest children’s books ever written”… but I’m afraid I was rather underwhelmed.