My back pages

January 1, 2023, 10:29 pm , by Richard Lutz

Richard Lutz leafs through the books he’s digested in the past 25 years.

F or a quarter of a century I’ve religiously, systematically, thoroughly, tediously, listed the books that I’ve read year by year.

So maybe it’s a good time to run through them quickly and mention the best that have crossed my desk. And maybe one or two I’d advise avoiding.

But first, some backstory. Over the years, I have seen the system…my system….evolve organically. Each finished title is written down month by month. There are two categories: fiction (F) and non fiction (NF). I’m running at about 5/2 towards non fiction, alot of it British history. If a book is really good, it gets a star. If very good, only a handful per year, it gets three stars. I have no idea what happened to two stars.

The lists are contained in tiny pocket notebooks. A book must be more than a 125 pages. Compilations, such as Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour or Tolkien’s Hobbitt collection, are counted as individual books, not one.

If a book is substandard- badly written, boring, pompous, too long- it gets The Black Mark. If I open it and immediately smell a bummer, I am obligated to at least read 15% before I drop it like a fermenting potato.

I never count the number of books until the first day of the new year. My goal is a book a week. If I get 52, it’s a good year. High score has been 59. Low has been a measly 24. The first book in my catalogue in January ‘97 was A Trembling Upon Rome by Richard Condon. It’s a papal story lodged in the 14thc. I put a little checkmark next to it. I guess I liked it. I don’t remember.

The final listing, for December 2022, is the biography of poet John Donne. It’s called Super Infinite. It received a single star rating. I picked up this book because I’d always been intrigued whether Shakespeare and Donne had ever met: they travelled loosely in the same London circles. The author Katherine Rundell has an intriguing take on this question.

So without further ado, here are the best that I’ve read for the past quarter of a century. Each is a book that left a shred of loss when the final page was turned.

WINNERS

Lincoln in the Bardo/George Saunders: a stunning tour de force about the limbo between life and death. Abraham Lincoln grieves for a lost son whose spirit languishes amid the semi-dead. Saunders writes with a deft hand.

Men at Arms/Evelyn Waugh: Britain’s greatest 20th novelist? Perhaps. This is part of his WW2 trilogy about the fatal shambles of war told with humour as dark as oil and writing as light as air.

The Shipping News/Annie Proulx: a rollicking comedy of an innocent trying to find a life in Nova Scotia as he writes for the local paper. Proulx’s style is sharp and fun

Mr Norris Changes Trains/Christopher Isherwood: The comic novel about pre war demi-monde Berlin. The main characters outrageously ignore the impending Nazi takeover. Mr Norris himself is a major literary confection as he ‘changes trains’ over his sexuality. The film Cabaret is loosely based on the novel

American Wife/Curtis Sittenfeld: the fictional/nonfictional hybrid story of Laura Bush, the wife of President George W. The author said Mrs Bush allowed her to write it, warts and all, despite disapproval of the fictional approach

Days Without End/Sebastian Barry: The Irish writer describes the Ulyssean wanderings of two picaresque rogues in love during the American civil war. One of those books where you don’t know how it will end ‘til the final page

The Man Who Walked Through Time/Colin Fletcher: The Welshman is the first to have traipsed the length of Grand Canyon National Park beneath the rim. A great achievement and he did it solo. Powerful writing about the untouched world he wandered through

Naples ‘44/Norman Lewis: Italy as the Allies take Naples, its people starving, desperate, stripped of hope; Lewis the young officer out of his depth, horrified amid the human wreckage

1,2,3,4/Craig Brown: The Beatles bio that catches the silliness, the luck, the genius, the egoism of the Fab Four. The author, a gloriously witty writer, loves ‘em. But hates Yoko

Others that should have made it: The White Ship (medieval history of Henry I), Wheels of Fire (history of The Band), Million Dollar Mermaid (mucky, gossipy auto-bio of 1940’s swimmer/movie star Esther Williams), Second Sleep (dystopian future novel), East West Street (towering account of the Nazi regime and ensuing trials), The Old Ways (how Britain is embroidered with ancient paths).

MEANWHILE

Stinkers include: Rhino Ranch (Larry McMurtry’s tired tale of the modern west); Alan Alda (auto-bio, ludicrously lazy); Whose Body (who said Dorothy Sayers was a good writer?); Thursday Night Murder Club (Richard Osman mystery. Cheeky parody of twee beach reading? Or just a trite storytelling? He’s made a million out of it

Worst mistake: I like English novelist Robert Harris. So I was surprised when Castle Macnab, a spy story, proved unreadable. Wait a minute…the author was Robert J. Harris, an author who should fast reconsider his career.