to everyone who has been having a rough time.
These are the books I recently included in my list but yet hadn’t written about, plus a few more:
144. To the Lighthouse- Virginia Woolf I had never read this before: I found it pretty hard going, but struggled through to the end. I found it bizarre that there was so little plot or dialogue.
145. The New Jim Crow- Michelle Alexander This really opened my eyes to the mass incarceration of young black men in the USA. As the writer explains, the War on Drugs is a racist policy in which police hang around the ‘hood’ arresting as many people as possible, who are then pressurised to plead guilty, usually without even seeing an attorney. Unlike most other countries, the USA often imposes long prison sentences for first time drug offences. When prisoners are eventually released, they have woefully little support, e.g. no access to food stamps or public housing, no help to find a job and, too often, their children are removed from their care. Frequently, their only option is to start dealing drugs again and so the cycle continues. In many states, ex-prisoners do not even have the right to vote, so their voices are not heard and it is almost impossible to change the system. The book is 10 years old but chimes with recent events, such as the racial profiling of stop and search victims. One surprising revelation (to me) is that much of the current situation dates back to Bill Clinton (who, in fairness, had to be very tough on crime to get elected). The author is not a particular fan of Obama or Biden either! This is not especially well written and rather repetitive by the end, but it is a very important book.
146. The Mayflower: a History from Beginning to End- Hourly History You know what you are getting with Hourly Histories, but actually it was pretty informative. There was quite a lot of background about the Reformation etc.
147. Eat that Frog!- Brian Tracy This was recently in the Kindle Monthly Deal, but I already have the paperback. It contains many techniques to overcome procrastination, some of which I’ve found helpful in the past.
148. The Secret Commonwealth- Philip Pullman As usual, I enjoyed the Oxford references and the continuation of Lyra's story the most. I couldn’t always be bothered keeping tabs on who all the new characters were. The cliffhanger at the end was annoying- now I have to wait for the final book to come out (which I didn’t with any of Pullman’s others, as I was so late coming to them). The swearing was amusing- I think I counted five ‘fucks’ or ‘fucking’, one ‘bastard’ and one ‘pissed off’- I can tell this trilogy is not intended for children!
149. Tess of the d’Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy I hadn’t read this for years and had forgotten most of it, but I loved it (although not as much as Jude the Obscure ). I managed not to cry, but it did make me angry.
150. Around the World in 80 Days- Michael Palin On BorrowBox, I listened to Palin recreating the journey of Phileas Fogg. He gets rather behind schedule at times but then, of course, Phileas Fogg is a fictional character. It is much older than I thought- it's mentioned that A Fish Called Wanda was just coming out, therefore it’s set in about about 1988. I always enjoy listening to Palin’s travelogues except for a, all the references to the TV series (none of which I’ve seen) and b, his foreign accents (which are often dodgy).
151. Ramble Book- Adam Buxton I listened to this on Audible after having watched all the old Adam & Joe Shows again on All4 during lockdown. I also heard Adam reading from it over Zoom recently (organised by a literary charity) which was brilliant: I was happy that my question was one of those read out at the end! The book is lovely, with a great deal about Adam’s dad Nigel (Baad Dad in the Adam & Joe Show, who died in 2015) and Adam’s friendships with Joe Cornish and Louis Theroux. There were plenty of pop culture references, including (inevitably) slightly too much discussion of David Bowie. I wish the book could have been written chronologically- there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason why it wasn’t (other than, I suppose, that’s not how Adam’s mind works). Despite these minor niggles, I really enjoyed it.
152. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me- Kate Clanchy I posted in praise of this a few days ago but hadn’t yet reviewed it. It is an inspirational memoir of Clanchy’s years teaching disadvantaged children, including asylum seekers and those in an ‘inclusion' unit. She changed their lives through poetry, her empathy and generally by being a good egg. I liked the Gregory’s Girl references and was amused by her rants against faith schools and grammars. She is clearly a woman with strong principles: she sent her own angelic, middle class, academically gifted, French-horn-playing son to the local sink school at which she taught (I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler, sorry). My favourite line in the book is when she writes of one pupil ‘He made my lessons worth planning, my job worth doing’.
153. The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins I’d never read this before and enjoyed it, apart from the rather silly ‘love interest’. I particularly enjoyed the first third of the book, which covered the build-up to the Games and general world building, but it generally held my interest throughout. I’m sure I’ll read the other books in the series.