august 2018 books...

A Recipe For Sorcery (Vanessa Kisuule): Earlier this year, Vanessa became Bristol’s new city poet. She’s also an occasional, but very enthusiastic and talented, member of our weekly Drawing Group. She and I have enjoyed coffee/red wine together (mine was the red wine, obviously!) and, believe me, she’s a pretty amazing woman. Over recent years, I’ve found myself reading more and more poetry (not something I necessarily find easy to appreciate) and have found reading Vanessa’s latest book of poetry remarkable, captivating and challenging. She’s also a performance poet and, after watching her ‘perform’ via YouTube, she really is rather spellbinding. But, hey, she’s a young, passionate, black woman who essentially writes about women and I’m just an old, out-of-touch, white bloke! Well, strange as it might seem, I really enjoyed this collection of her poems – incredibly honest and sexually explicit (uncomfortably so on occasions), frank, frequently funny and always thought-provoking. She has a wonderful way with language… I found myself reading every poem out loud (not quite with the same virtuosity as Vanessa, but it’s a start!). Frequently, there were times when I would have liked to ask her about the background to a particular poem. I think she’s a bit special.  
Notes On A Nervous Planet (Matt Haig): Haig is perhaps (or at least was) best known for his children’s books and adult fiction. Unwittingly, following his successful ‘Reasons for Staying Alive’ book (about his own experiences of anxiety and depression), I suspect he will gain a reputation as one of a small band of men who can write about emotions? Full of very sensible stuff. This is the first of Haig’s books I’ve read and so my knee-jerk reactions to it might be a little harsh and/or unfair. However, although I found the book both interesting and informative, I also felt that, at times, Haig had a found a rather glib way of writing a popular book and making a little easy money (yes, I know, that’s rather harsh!)… and that, actually I could have very easily written whole swathes of the book myself (yeh, right!)... I frequently found myself thinking “yes, but he’s only stating the blooming obvious”(!). Yes (as one tiny example), learning to restrict time on the internet or on your smart phone makes absolute sense… a couple of years ago, I changed my blackberry phone for an incredibly basic phone (with ancient text technology etc). I now use my phone simply to make and receive calls or somewhat laborious texts… I don’t bother with emails or the internet. I’ve found the whole experience both refreshing and liberating. But it’s NOT rocket science (and I also go for walks and stare at the sky… as he also suggests!)(and he didn’t even mention sketching, but he should have done). However, hats off to him when it comes to his writing about anxiety, depression and mental health.
A Conspiracy Of Friends (Alexander McCall Smith): I’ve read a number of Smith’s novels, but this is the first of his ‘Corduroy Mansions’ series I’ve read (in fact, I now realise that it’s the third book in the series). The stories were originally serialised online. Essentially, they’re about the lives of the inhabitants of a large three-story (plus basement) house in Pimlico, London. It’s all pretty mundane, undemanding, unexceptional stuff and yet Smith has the ability to conjure up pictures of beautifully observed characters and gentle, amusing normality. Easy, light, enjoyable holiday reading.
Talking To My Daughter About The Economy (Yanis Varoufakis): This is the second book on capitalism I’ve read in the past couple of months (scary!). Very different to Ken Barnes’s “Redeeming Capitalism” but just as effective – perhaps even more so? As you probably recall, Varoufakis became the Greek finance minister in 2015 and this book is a ‘brief history of capitalism’ but, as the title suggests, it’s addressed directly to his 13 year-old daughter in answer to her question “why is there so much inequality?”. He wrote it in 9 days and it’s the only book he’s ever written ‘without any footnotes, references or the paraphernalia of academic or political books’. And it’s pretty brilliant. Somewhat predictably, he’s massively critical of the banks (and rightly so in my view!), but he does so with the authority of someone who has, for many years, been a professor of economics in Britain, Australia and the USA (although he acknowledges that the reason he became an economist was because he refused to “leave it to the experts”). It’s a straightforward, no nonsense book - one reviewer described it as equipping “his readers with the beginnings of a new language, and punctures myth after myth” – it’s articulate, intelligent and talks a huge amount of sense. I was enormously impressed.
Slade House (David Mitchell): This apparently first started as a short story on Twitter. The story focuses on a building, Slade House… “on one side of a high wall lies a narrow, dank alley; on the other, a sunlit garden; and between them, a small black iron door”. So begins a mysterious, magical adventure… starting in 1979, and progressing to the present day at nine-year intervals, it tells five intriguing, dark stories. It mixes horror, humour, suspense and deception… with extraordinary imagination and cleverness. I was hooked!