Oh I do love Rebecca. It may be time for a re-read.
67 Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
This is a beautiful gem of a novel that I came across by chance - it reminded me in setting and tone a little of The Great Gatsby but I much preferred this. It's about the 1970s gay scene in New York and Long Island. Anthony Malone is a beautiful lawyer from the Midwest who turns his back on his past to embrace his new life and Andrew Sutherland is a drag queen and socialite who is interested in pairing him up with a millionaire so they can live the life they want. There's dancing, drinking, sex and drug taking, narrated by a cast of characters who remain largely anonymous. I'm usually wary of books that have cult status but this was absorbing and sad, and reading it now with the knowledge that AIDS is lurking on the horizon - the book was written and published in 1978 - is particularly poignant.
68 Our Universe by Jo Dunkley
This is a short explainer in the vein of the "Very Short Introduction to" books and really does cover pretty much the story of the universe from the Big Bang to what the end may look like. It was a good mix of science and scientific history and I was particularly interested in how we know what we know about the universe. There was a lot in here that went slightly over my head but if I'd paid more attention I think I would have been fine with the science, which is well explained and carefully presented. It was an excellent primer for some star gazing last week in a field in Devon, where the stars were incredible, and I'd recommend it to all my fellow dark sky campers on this thread.
69 Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore
I had this on my wish list for ages and it came up at the library - it's an architectural history of London, with a strong social and political argument threaded through it and a clear vision for the future and how that needs to be delivered by government, the private sector and citizens. The detail about areas of London I know and love was absorbing, and Moore clearly loves the city and feels passionately about the need for it to be designed and built to work for everyone, not just the few.
70 Murderous Contagion by Mary Dobson
This is a series of short essays (I don't think it was intended as such but it's certainly how it reads) on different diseases - bacterial, viral, lifestyle and parasitic, and how humanity has dealt with them. The detail of each was interesting, as was her account of their emergence and (in some cases) how we've eradicated them, but I really missed any kind of unifying story of medical progress or any real detail on the biology of the diseases. Even a conclusion at the end would have really helped pull it all together - she didn't really get to what I think is essential in the story of human disease, which is how we have learned so much but still undermine our own best efforts both through the lifestyles we lead and the way we interact with nature.
71 Magda by Meike Ziervogel
I bought this to support a small publishing imprint that did a good job on social media of urging people to buy a book direct from them. I picked this - a novella about the wife of Goebbels - because it sounded interesting and a little bit different. While there were elements that were well done it felt a little overwritten and overly self-conscious to me, compared with (for example) Dancer from the Dance which just sang and felt effortless.
72 The Universe Speaks in Numbers by Graham Farmelo
I read this to try to have a better conversation with my brother who is a physicist and very exercised by the link between maths and physics and how and whether maths underpins the physical laws that govern the universe. Farmelo makes a very good case for the fact that it does, although this is more a history of the dialogue between mathematicians and physicists and how they have worked together (or not) to inform what we know about the universe than it is a scientific book. It does the science very well, I think, with very little knowledge assumed on the part of the reader but it is still a lot to take in
73 Clothes and Other Things That Matter by Alexandra Shulman
I picked this up in the Kindle Daily Deal. I'm going to defend it in the face of Remus's criticism, though what she says is valid - Shulman is self absorbed and despite her protestations that she subverted people's expectations of a Vogue editor by not being a clothes horse that clearly isn't true. She gets given a lot of very expensive clothes by designers and there are lots of anecdotes along the lines of "I dashed into Balenciaga to avoid the rain during Paris Fashion Week and couldn't help but buy a £400 pair of trainers". But if you put that to one side, which I found easy enough to do, there are some interesting stories about the genesis of different items of clothing and some engaging reflection on the role that clothes play in our lives and our identities. It certainly made me feel differently about some items of clothing I own, and think about the way they have shaped my experiences and memories. Particularly poignant as I have just consigned to the rag bag a much loved and much worn hoodie that finally fell apart after many many years of being worn by camp fires on holidays. As a quick and diverting read I think this was ok. And to whoever asked, no socks but she does have a chapter on tights.