Page turners

January 3, 2024, 9:00 am , by Richard Lutz

THIS first week of a new year means scrolling through my annual book list, those that I’ve devoured, politely digested or slogged through with gritted teeth, says RICHARD LUTZ

I try to pile through a book a week, that’s 52pa for those who still use their fingers to count.

This year, it was 56, most of them non fiction as I randomly scooped up books from big bookstores, second hand dealers, charity tables, libraries, friends’ shelves and even the local disused phone kiosk which has been transformed into a free literary swap shop. So, here’s the best…and worst:

Act of Oblivion: there’s little doubt Robert Harris is just about the finest British storyteller around. His latest is about two English fugitives on the lam in 17thc America to escape arrest during the vicious English Civil War. The pair are harried and chased by their royalist pursuers; they meet the kind, the villainous, the terrifying, the gentle as they hide with sympathisers in pre Revolution America. Harris summons up courage, fear and hope amid the beauty and starkness of Puritan Massachusetts. Loosely based on a true story.

Four Princes: exactly what do Henry VIII, Charles V of Spain, Suleiman the Magnificent and Francis the First of France have in common? Well, for a start, they were all born in the same decade. Secondly, as author John Julius Norwich points out, they were rulers who vied for power, sometimes friends, more often enemies, he writes. Their stormy reigns included the end of the Renaissance and the ensuing Reformation. This rich tapestry of early modern history takes in Da Vinci, Martin Luther, Anne Boleyn and a changing map of Europe. Plus, of course, the lads themselves, cunning, stupid, brave, treacherous.

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: this is a gripping family history of how the two sides of Daniel Finkelstein’s family were systematically murdered or survived the joint terror of Naziism and the Soviet state. They ended up in death camps, in hiding, in Siberian slave prisons and, thankfully, in Britain as they were overwhelmed by fascism. An immaculately researched family story.

A Postillion Struck by Lightning: first of all, love that title! Dirk Bogarde started his film career in light comedies such as the fluffy Doctor in the House series. Then things got darker. His story reflects the inner man, from an idyllic childhood in rural Sussex to being summarily chucked out of his home at 13 to live in Glasgow’s gloom with a distant aunt. This is the first of his multi volume autobiography, beautifully paced, elegantly written and never descending into self pity.

Zanuck: Hollywood writer Leonard Mosley hits the bullseye with this expansive and picaresque bio of movie mogul Darryl Zanuck. The man was as big as the stars and, in today’s perspective, an appalling predator and creep. But his life, well researched by Mosley, reveals what a powerful engine this Hollywood juggernaut was in his mid century heyday.

Adventures in Human Being: the author is an Edinburgh family doctor who can’t keep away from knocking out good reads. Gavin Francis takes a tour around our bodies so even a conceptual numbskull like me can understand exactly what a gall bladder or liver actually does. There’s chapters such as “Large Bowel and Rectum: A Magnificent Work of Art” which joyfully kicks off with a James Joyce quote. And digestible sections also on the brain, the limbs and the almighty pelvis.

’not writing but typing…’

And now, a descent into the mire of bad books. Unfortunately, there was dross among the lilies. Tedious, sloppily written, charmless rubbish that I mindlessly finished as I re-assessed my stance on bookburning.

Big losers include Catherine Cookson’s The Invitation (trite melodrama); Arthur the Lost King (frantic nonsense about who the mythic Arthur was…or wasn’t); and, Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. A sad drunken tale. His contemporary Truman Capote once quipped what the beat writer did ‘..wasn’t writing but typing…’. This book proves Capote’s point.

Others that failed were a Gene Hackman bio (a lazy visit to the cuttings library); Oh William by Elizabeth Strout (disappointing after her Olive Kitteridge novels); and The Unpunished Vice by Edmund White (tediously matching books to twists in his own life).

Finally, a book that doesn’t fit any category easily. So I’ll leave it as a successful footnote.

It’s a portrait of my adopted city called, funny enough, ‘Glasgow:The Autobiography’. It’s a series of articles and essays written down the ages compiled by Scots journalist Alan Taylor. All a bit rambling. Not sharp enough to be on a Best List. But readable and witty. The anthology includes writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, poets Liz Lochhead and Hugh MacDiarmid, Evelyn Waugh to Paul Theroux and Man U former boss Alex Ferguson.

It left me aware of the town’s sweeping history, from medieval river city to shipping capital to the hometown of comic king Billy Connelly to its drunken dance with alcohol and football. A grand tour, in other words, of words.