january 2018 books…

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (JK Rowling): My fourth Harry Potter novel(!). Whoever would have thought that young-adult readers (and adult readers for that matter) would be prepared to plough their way through a 636-page book of fiction? Certainly I would never have done so in my youth (actually, my default was to avoid reading books, full stop). But I was wrong… very wrong, obviously. Rowling is a quite remarkable writer – a brilliant story-teller with a remarkable ability of knitting together complex scenarios. I think this was my favourite Potter book to date – albeit that I felt there might have been just a few too many layers of plot and intrigue? Rowling is a very clever author and I now completely appreciate why the Harry Potter books have been so successful.   
Beyond A Boundary (CLR James): First published in 1963. I feel somewhat embarrassed that I’d not previously come across James – born in Trinidad in 1901 (died 1989), a novelist, historian, cultural critic, political activist… and writer on cricket. This is a rather extraordinary book (some critics have apparently described it as the “greatest sports book ever written” – I personally wouldn’t go that far!); it’s part cricket reflections, part autobiography… but with the spotlight on cricket in the West Indies and a penetrating study of pre-Independence West Indian society – how only whites would be considered as potential West Indies cricket captains; how British Empire values(?) dictated so much of political and sporting life at the time; how people with light skins were considered more culturally acceptable to those with dark skins etc etc. Quite shocking – especially as such views still predominated as recently as the 1950s. The book also included, amongst others, some wonderful chapters on Learie Constantine, WG Grace and George Headley. A fascinating book.
Have You Been Good? (Vanessa Nicolson): Another random book picked up in The Last Bookshop. It attracted my interest because Vanessa is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson… and I’d previously found “The Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907-1963” (edited by Nigel Nicolson), which I’d read in 2011, fascinating reading. Vanessa Nicolson’s book is a memoir about her family and about her – made rather more interesting due to the family habit of “documenting everything” (including diaries and letters). She was born into an illustrious, privileged family. Her parents, Ben and Luisa - both art historians - had an unhappy marriage and appear to have taken very little interest or involvement in her childhood (she was an only child). Vanessa duly ‘took advantage’ of her disjointed childhood and reckless youth… including liberal boarding schools, early sexual experiences, drink, drugs, abortions (as well as the death of one of her own daughters, aged 19 – some of her daughter’s experiences seem to have mirrored her own). In the end, I found it a very annoying book! I only read it because of her family connections and ended up feeling hugely resentful (and perhaps a little guilty that I’d been drawn into her world) that she could end up ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ and make money by writing about her privileged background.
Andy Warhol (Wayne Koestenbaum): Another purchase from The Last Bookshop (£2.50). I thought it was about time I learnt more about Warhol (1928-87) and his work and so this biography seemed like a good idea. Warhol was a successful commercial illustrator, but began to attract recognition from galleries in the late 1950s. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising and went on to span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture (some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych from 1962); he was a leading figure in ‘pop art’. I have to say that the book didn’t altogether impress me. Author Koestenbaum, who never met Warhol (but who somewhat incongruously, for me at least, referred to the artist as ‘Andy’ throughout the book), is a poet, cultural critic and ‘Distinguished Professor of English’ at City University of New York. He had comparatively little to say about Warhol’s paintings and silkscreens, but went into lengthy and elaborate detail in describing his films (which frequently documented gay underground and camp culture) and his New York studio, ‘The Factory’, (which became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons). Of the ten photographs included in the book, only two relate to illustrations/silkscreens – the rest are devoted to film. I learnt virtually nothing more about his painting/drawing/silkscreening than I knew already.
The Poetical Works (Rupert Brooke): This is a collection of Brooke’s poems written between 1903 and 1915 (he died of septicaemia in a French hospital ship in the Aegean, April 1915). They include the famous ‘The Soldier’ (“If I should die think only this of me…”) and ‘Grantchester’ (“And is there honey still for tea?”) poems from 1914 and 1912 respectively. It seems that, in recent years, changing fashions in verse writing have meant that his work has been challenged by various critics, but I have to say that I do enjoy his poetry - particularly his later poems (but, hey, what do I know?!). In fact, my one criticism of the book is that Brooke’s poems (apart from unfinished ‘Fragments’ written during the voyage to Gallipoli in April 1915) are printed with the most recent poems at the front of the book and his early works at the back… so, in my view, it rather ‘peaks too soon’ – I would have preferred it the ‘other way round’.