From page-turners to page-burners: my books of the year

January 3, 2022, 4:34 pm , by Pageturner

Richard Lutz picks the best (and worst) of the bunch for 2021

THIS first week of a new year means scrolling through my annual book list, those that I’ve devoured, politely digested or slogged through like a route march in literary hell. It’s an annual disgorge of titles. Good, bad, indifferent.

I always try- and many times fail- to eat up a book a week. For those who can’t count past ten fingers, this means 52pa. For 2021, I squeaked by with 53 (whew).

First the big winners, some famous and popular, some found propping up a chest of drawers or a falling bedstead. Among those wreathed in laurels include:

• Broken Greek by British journalist Pete Paphides… or more importantly Birmingham journalist Pete Paphides as he grew up near where I lived in England’s second city. His family chip shop was a haddock’s throw from my old home. It’s a poignant tale of how he found himself caught between his parents’ Greek/Cypriot roots and his newly adopted Britain as he grew into his teenaged years of the 70’s and 80’s. The autobiography is embroidered with punk and New Romantic music (and their lyrics) of the times as he painfully chronicles his ups and downs, the internal strife of his family and the highs and lows of a questioning 12 year old kid. It’s a searingly honest and darkly wry story.

• The White Ship by Charles Spencer. First things first, the author’s name may ring a bell. Yes, it’s Princess Di’s brother and he is a well versed historian with a well researched story to tell: how the flower of the Anglo Norman royalty was wiped out in a shipwreck in 1120 (yes, 900 years ago). It meant a reckless young tearaway prince was crowned Henry I. He ruled during what was termed The Anarchy when rebel group after rebel group tried to wrest away power in Normandy and England. It’s an ignored chapter in Britain’s bloody chaotic past. Henry comes cross as a man placed on a throne he should have never occupied. Spencer acutely recounts a brutal story.

• Manhattan ‘45 by Jan Morris. The Welsh author focusses on New York as the Second World War ended. Returning soldiers, a city ready to burst with energy, new money, new ideas, new art, new architecture. Morris, a renowned travel writer, summons up an age- from development visonary Robert Moses to early Charlie Parker to the immigrants from Europe and the American south who helped this island become the world city it is today.

• And last….The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose. This is a journal handed over to me sight unseen and I couldn’t put it down. Roose was a Harvard undergraduate offered a year away and to live and study anywhere. He turned his back on London, Paris or Tokyo and opted to continue academic life at an Appalachian Christian fundamentalist college. He started as a snobby Ivy Leaguer writing undercover and slowly accepted that the staff and students had qualities he admired though he still scratched his head over some of the college’s more arcane worldviews. It’s a likeable book. Roose now writes for The New York Times, probably on the back of his initial success.

And plot twists that failed to twist…

Of course great reads of 2021 are sadly counterbalanced by the clunkers. I’ll whip quickly through some big losers: I dived right into Rhino Ranch because I’m a fan of the modern western writer Larry McMurtry. But this was trite and tired. Two old cowpokes are hired to tend young rhinoceroses on a Texas ranch. It was a sad plodding tale, packed with cliched characters and plot twists that didn’t twist. A second loser was a Bernard Cornwell sword and chainmail epic about the Dark Ages. Did this hugely successful novelist type Death of Kings on autopilot while wrapped in narcotic sleep? Trash. And thirdly, another dreary slog was a forgettable Dorothy Sayers piece of hackery called Whose Body. She’s the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey oeuvre, jolly, light, cute. This clumsy effort, Whose Body, was …well, creaky, dull, dated and tedious. Maybe the first draft should have been left in a dark drawer. Or burnt. Or both.

Despite the bottom feeders, there were a host of other good reads that are worth a peruse or two on the year’s list: Wednesday Early Closing by Norman Nicholson- an evocation of growing up in the 1930’s in the remote Lake District; Cakes And Ale by Somerset Maugham- boy, that guy could write. His style is effortless, his landscape of changing sexual mores decades ahead of the mob; Map of Knowledge by Violet Moller- her chosen seven medieval cities that kept classical western knowledge alive during the dark days, some of the cities will surprise you. And finally and happily, Tony Curtis’s autobiography….. salacious, deliciously namedropping, great gossip from Hollywood. A dirty delight.