december 2017 books…

Modigliani (ed. Simonetta Fraquelli and Nancy Ireson): This is the excellent book that accompanies the Tate exhibition. Like the exhibition itself, the book follows the artist’s journey through his adopted city of Paris in the early years of the 20^th century… his influences, his friends, his fellow artists, his patrons, the sense of excitement and creativity, the café culture, the changing attitudes to sex and the way people dressed, the influence of early cinema, the First World War etc. Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis in 1920 at the age of just 36. It’s a very lovely book.
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (JK Rowling): My third Harry Potter book(!)… and my admiration for JK Rowling’s writing continues… intelligent, hugely inventive, dark, excellent characters and a brilliant joined-up plot. I could go on… but you’ve probably already read the book yourself!
Bodies Of Light (Sarah Moss): As I’ve previously blogged, I’d mistakenly read Moss’s “Signs For Lost Children” out of order… so I’m now ‘catching up’ by reading its predecessor (published in 2014)! When I first started reading it, I thought I would find it all pretty frustrating – reading about past events knowing, in many instances, how things would eventually pan out. But, actually, it gave a rather interesting insight to this family saga. It’s an incredibly powerful story (set in the 1860s and 70s) about a family in Manchester. The mother is a zealous social campaigner, who offers no hint of warmth+joy and inflicts domestic cruelty and control on her daughters (particularly eldest daughter Ally). The central character, daughter Ally, breaks free from the family to study in London as a medical student and, in 1880, becomes one of the first women physicians in Britain (the fictional Ally and her small band of peers is apparently loosely based on the ‘Edinburgh Seven’ - the first British women to bear the name of "doctor"). It’s a brilliant book and a constant reminder of the shameful attitude of male-dominated society towards women of that time… and how, indeed, such issues exist even today. I’ve also become aware that there is another, earlier book about this family, featuring Ally’s sister May, entitled “Night Waking” (published in 2011) which I also need to read… obviously!
Women+Power: A Manifesto (Mary Beard): Mary Beard is a bit of a hero (heroine?) of mine… I’ve been incredibly impressed by the way she’s handled the awful social media abuse she’s received over the years (but equally appalled that we, as a society, could act in such disgusting manner). This short book is based on two lectures Beard delivered, courtesy of the London Review of Books, in 2014 and 2017. In it, she traces the roots of misogyny to Athens and Rome (not too surprising, given her classicist background) and draws attention to the deeply embedded mechanisms of Western culture that silence women, that refuse to take them seriously, and that sever them from the centres of power – a very appropriate book to follow Moss’s “Bodies of Light”. What she says is powerful and pragmatic (sometimes depressing, but also frequently funny – she has a gift words) and she speaks not just for women, perhaps, but also for those who feel they have no voice.
Some Small Heaven (Ian Adams): Although this Advent book actually runs until Epiphany, with its daily reflections, I’ve already read the book a number of times (as well as using it for daily reflection) – so it seems reasonable to include it in my 2017 books, rather than over-running into 2018. I always find Ian Adams’s writing thought-provoking and challenging and this book is no different – exactly what I needed for this Advent period (I also used it as a basis for an Advent Walk around Bristol). Excellent.

Well, that’s it for another year… I’ve just added up the number of books I’ve read in 2017 and, somewhat ridiculously, it amounts to 80 in total! Essentially (and, yes, I know it’s not a competition!), that’s more than a book-and-a-half EVERY week… I think it’s called ‘retirement’!