Books Wot I Read in 2022

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon’s famously unfinishable magnum opus. See my blog post about Gravity’s Rainbow for more.

Doctor Who: Iceberg by David Banks

Don’t mind the dandruff of Doctor Who novels in this list as I continue my lockdown-era goal of reading all the New Adventures.

The Aeneid Book VI by Virgil

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

Doctor Who: Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore

The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld

The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Andrew George

Hollow Coin by S. T. Cartledge

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

A dynastic saga set in Zambia that dips a toe into the realms of Afro-futurism. See my blog post about The Old Drift for more.

Doctor Who: The Dimension Riders by Daniel Blythe

Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World by Donald Antrim

The Aeneid Book VII by Virgil

May This House Be Safe from Tigers by Alexander King

King seems to be one of the most deeply unpleasant people whose memoirs I’ve read. He’s a sexist and a homophobe, despite how much he’ll protest to the contrary, and a hateful old drug addict, which he readily admits. I had originally written more about him, but decided against it because King’s opinions are so obviously dated that they weren’t worth the column space. All I wanted was a light-hearted read, but wound up getting lambasted with this guy’s pettiness and meanness at every turn. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, really. If you’re looking for something with a similar sense of humour but not written by a pathological git, I’d recommend reading S. J. Perelman instead.

Doctor Who: The Left-Handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman

Doctor Who: Conundrum by Steve Lyons

The Orton Diaries by Joe Orton, edited by John Lahr

I’ve previously appreciated Joe Orton as a controversial playwright and enfant terrible of the London theatre scene. Our culture has a macabre fascination with him — the young artist murdered in his prime by his partner Kenneth Halliwell. After reading these diaries, though, I’m done with Orton. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I’ve seen documentaries and biopics, but mysteriously everyone avoids mentioning that Orton regularly went to Morocco to bang kids. Morocco was a popular destination for gay men at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. They could go have a wild time in a warm climate without being arrested. Fine. But I’ve known plenty of gay men born in the 1930s and none of them went around raping children. And I’m not talking about sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds — Orton was abusing kids as young as ten or eleven. He even recounts with pride the time a friend’s three-year-old son hugged him and he got an erection. Fucking vile. So I don’t care how brilliant a satirist he was, fuck him.

The Aeneid Book VIII by Virgil

The Comforters by Muriel Spark

Somewhat coincidentally this is the second book I’ve read in the last month about characters who figure out they’re trapped in a work of fiction. In Steve Lyons’ Conundrum the Doctor arrives in the Land of Fiction and has to figure out that it’s not real. In The Comforters one character starts overhearing parts of the novel’s narration and figures out that she’s fictional. In both novels the characters argue with the author, and in both the characters point out that some details of their lives are poorly sketched because the author couldn’t be bothered to describe them. This somewhat takes the wind out of Lyons’ sails considering The Comforters was published nearly forty years earlier. I didn’t like Conundrum because I found the postmodernism to be smug and cheap (which by the way is the same reason I thought Inception was a hilarious and unwatchable movie), but Spark puts her postmodern flair to use in other ways. Instead of simply basking in her own cleverness, she’s running a commentary on the style of novel she’s satirising. It’s much smarter and a great example of postmodernism being used in a way that goes beyond just patting itself on the back.

Drama and Delight: The Life of Verity Lambert by Richard Marson

The Aeneid Book IX by Virgil

The Revolt of the Oyster by Don Marquis

Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby

Gadsby is a national treasure. In this memoir she writes about her upbringing and the circumstances that brought her to understand her own trauma and mental illness. This is not always easy to read because of the stark subject matter, but it is an important book. Gadsby’s startling honesty about her difficulties in being neuro-atypical helped me recognise some of my own behaviours and get a better understanding of the way my brain works. I had never been able to do this before because no-one ever talks about it. We’re all just chucked in the deep end and left to figure it out for ourselves. I hope we’re at the start of an era where our culture will be more open and supportive of issues like mental health and emotional education. Until then you can read Gadsby’s memoir and be thankful that people like her kick so much ass.

Doctor Who: No Future by Paul Cornell

The Day We Were Mostly Butterflies by Louise W. King

Kudos to The Neglected Books Page for bringing to my attention The Day We Were Mostly Butterflies and its sequel The Velocipede Handicap. In them a scatterbrained lesbian gets herself into all kinds of scrapes and her friend, a gay man, has to rush around trying to protect her because he’s terrified of getting in trouble with her violent trucker girlfriend. These stories are very cute and all the more interesting for being unabashedly gay in the 1960s. If King’s wit is not actually all that clever, it’s not for lack of charm.

Doctor Who: Tragedy Day by Gareth Roberts

The Aeneid Book X by Virgil

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

The Velocipede Handicap by Louise W. King

The Aeneid Book XI by Virgil

Doctor Who: Legacy by Gary Russell

I’ve enjoyed many of Gary Russell’s novels but I suspect even he knows this is a stinker. What gets me is why anyone would want to write a sequel to the two Peladon stories, “The Curse of Peladon” and “The Monster of Peladon”. In his introduction Russell talks about them with reverence and awe, but I think he’s the only one. By any measure they were both terrible television and, even though I’ve rewatched every classic Doctor Who many times, I have never had any desire to see these again. No-one had ever written a good story about Peladon, the planet of improbable wigs, and they still haven’t. Tell you what, though, I would absolutely love to see a good story written about Alpha Centauri. It’s not that they’re particularly interesting on their own, but I do love the fact that Doctor Who made a real attempt (far beyond its means, but still) to have a non-humanoid alien. I also love that Centauri makes a cameo in the new series. Can they get a spin-off or something? Like “The Alpha Centauri Adventures: Six Limbs and Loving It”. Is that a pseudopodium on your thorax or are you just happy to see me?

One Foot in the Grave and Counting by David Renwick

I am a massive One Foot in the Grave fan and this had me chuckling all the way through. It’s largely a repackaging of the old TV stories, but there’s enough new to make it worth your while. Renwick has updated a lot of his refereces for the 2020s and it was a real kick to see Mrs. Warboys addicted to her Facebook timeline because of course she’s one of those people. Renwick has a real talent for pathos even in the most funny, ridiculous, embarrassing, or dire circumstances — it’s the magic formula that’s made him so successful. Mrs. Warboys, for example, is corresponding with an inmate on death row in America. She’s too embarrassed to send him a photo of herself, so she sends him one of Margaret instead. Margaret has to go through the whole novel knowing that this young man is about to go to his death staring passionately at a photo of her. That’ll stay with me for a while.

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Emma Southon

Doctor Who: Theatre of War by Justin Richards

Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera by Vivian Stanshall and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall

Much as I love everything Vivian Stanshall has ever done, this was a rough read. The publisher did a very slapdash job of the typesetting, but the real problem is that the mad creativity of the live show doesn’t come through on the page. As a written work it’s just not very witty or interesting, but then it probably really popped when it was live with music and costumes. I’d kill to see a performance of this someday.

The Aeneid Book XII by Virgil

End to end in eighteen months! Not a bad time considering how rusty my Latin was at the outset and I moved house in the middle of it.

It’s hard to know what to say about the Aeneid that hasn’t already been said over the last two thousand years. People I’ve chatted with have had the gall to tell me various blasphemies — that the Aeneid is Augustan propaganda or that the Aeneid is intensely boring. First off yes, it is Augustan propaganda, the same way that the roof of the Sistine Chapel is Catholic propaganda. Most artists throughout history have been beholden to the patronage of richer men. That doesn’t diminish the value of their art and I can’t see how anyone who’s read it can let the few short segments that toot on about Augustus’ circle outweigh the volumes of Virgil’s pathos, poesy, and narrative skill.

I sympathise with the charge that it’s boring. There’s more than one book of the Aeneid that I could do without — the funeral games, or the interminable vignettes during the war with the Latins. But just as numerous are the books of action — the shipwreck in book one, the fall of Troy in book two, the love story with Dido in book four, the underworld in book six, and the vivid battle scenes in the last six books. The fact is that the Aeneid was written two thousand years ago and storytelling techniques were different. Not many people ever sat down and read it cover to cover. It would have been read out loud for an audience, and even then it wasn’t all twelve books in one go. It would be equally taxing to marathon all eight seasons of Game of Thrones.

Ultimately I loved the Aeneid as much as I did when I read excerpts in high-school and uni. It thoroughly deserves its reputation. Virgil’s skill as a poet is extraordinary and his work, though very much of its time, has a lot to interest a modern reader. Shout-outs go to the commentaries by R. Deryck Williams (my fave) and T. E. Page, and the Loeb translation by H. R. Fairclough. Fairclough’s translation, for those of you reading along at home, is not always very good or accurate, but it’s a nice reference point when you’re stuck. Williams’ commentary is the absolute best and really shines a light on questions of interpretation. Page’s commentary spent more time on grammar so it was a very handy fallback when a problem was not addressed by Williams.

After twelve books I’ll confess that I’ve read enough highbrow poetry for the time being. I’ve been wondering what I might wind up doing next now that I’ve dusted the cobwebs off my Latin. I think, to leap to the opposite end of the Julio-Claudian era, I might read Petronius’ Satyricon. Who doesn’t like a good clean dirty book? I’ve also heard good things about Apuleius’ Golden Ass (but hasn’t heard any about mine — har har). What vaguely concerns me is that I struggled through the Aeneid with the help of two books of commentary and one translation. Few other Roman writers are accompanied by the same quantity of scholarship so I might flounder if I dive into the Satyricon without my water wings. However it’s also true that it doesn’t get much harder than epic poetry so the low prose of Petronius will probably be a lot simpler. Let’s find out.

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe

There’s a lot to like about Monáe’s dystopia and her fight to defend marginalised people. This book, though… Hoo. It’s something. I don’t blame Monáe for being an inexperienced writer, but her editor and collaborators should absolutely have known better. I wanted to like this so much because I’ve really been enjoying an Afro-futurism vibe this year and was looking forward to reading something new and challenging. It was also given to me as a birthday present so I was trying to be grateful for it. I wound up reading my favourite bits to my boyfriend who alternated between looking horrified and laughing. The thing is, I hate to criticise something like this because I like Monáe’s enthusiasm and I recognise the style. I’ve been a bad writer too! I daresay I will be again. But when you’re not a celebrity people don’t publish your bad writing and gush about how great it is.

My favourite bit: “The obelisk has fully metamorphosed into its metaphoric counterpart now, a giant golden circumcised penis spitting white-gold ejaculate into the air like a pornographic Mount Vesuvius.” With every new story I read, I asked, “What fresh penises do you have for me today, Janelle?”

Kevin by Dan Noakes

Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson

A deliciously wicked novel about mediaevalists being catty to each other for 350 pages. The plot concerns Gerald Middleton, a chronically depressed English mediaevalist, who is forced against his will to pry into the truth about two things — one is the private lives of his children and the other is the legitimacy of an archaeological discovery he was involved with decades ago. The two issues wind up being one and the same, and in the end you have to question whether it would have been better to let sleeping dogs lie. At first I found the novel off-putting because everything was veiled in layers of irony and dry bitchiness. None of the characters is especially likeable and everyone is stuffy and unpleasant to one another. As it went, though, I warmed up to it and began to appreciate the sense of humour and the cleverness of its theme and plotting. From the reviews on Goodreads it appears a lot of people couldn’t get past that first impression, but I think it’s worth perservering with this one. By the end you’re left with a satire of English attitudes that runs pleasantly deep. I wouldn’t mind finding some more of Wilson’s writing.

Babycakes by Armistead Maupin

I read the first three novels in the Tales of the City series in the last eighteen months, and each time I picked up a new book I realised I’d forgotten everything about the characters. When I picked up this one, the fourth in the series, I realised I still couldn’t remember who was who. I was suddenly stricken by a wave of dread at having to spend another novel with these people. Maupin is such a talented storyteller that I didn’t notice until the start of Babycakes, but none of the characters has any personality. They’re all very forgettable. I just read this one and I still don’t know if I could describe any of the characters with more than about two words (Michael: gay, sassy; Mary Ann: journalist, I guess?; Mrs. Madrigal: maternal, stoner; Mona: fuck if I know). Right now I don’t have much motivation to keep going with the series. This is a disappointing way to leave things, especially given how much I enjoyed the books up until now. Maybe if I give it a little time I’ll get bitten by the bug again and have a crack at Significant Others, but right now if anyone’s looking for a boxed set, mine could go free to a good home.

Summa Technologiae by Stanisław Lem

Techno-philosophy and futurology from Stanisław Lem, an author best known for his science-fiction novel Solaris (though it is by no means his only or even, arguably, his best). See my blog post about Summa Technologiae for more.

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker

Doctor Who: Blood Harvest by Terrance Dicks

We’re starting to overlap with some of the novels I read shortly before I started reading the whole series from scratch, but I wanted to re-read this anyway to get it in the context of the series. In context Terrance Dicks is a little bit extraordinary. He was never a comedy writer, but he can be funny when he wants to and his jokes aren’t the struggling, lame things you get from people who aren’t as funny as they think they are. He doesn’t have much use for embellishment or flourish of any kind, but goddamn the man can tell a story. His word choices are nothing special, he doesn’t try any tricks, and he isn’t especially emotive or poetic. He just sits down and tells his story from the start to the end with a minimum of fuss. I don’t envy him his prosaic style but I have to give him this, he always succeeds in being enormously readable where others often fail (there are enough examples of this in the NA range alone). In many ways reading a Dicks novel feels like coming home because of course he was responsible for so many of the Target novelisations from my childhood. I was sad to hear that he’d passed away in 2019 to little fanfare, but just take a look at his Wikipedia page and you’ll see just how much he left for us to remember him by.

Doctor Who: Strange England by Simon Messingham

The School of Life: An Emotional Education edited by Alain de Botton

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

User Friendly by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant

Let’s play spot-the-books-for-uni. As I embark on a master’s programme and stare down the barrel of a million readings, I’m suddenly realising my personal reading list might be about to come to an abrupt end for the time being. That, or the entire rest of my reading will be lighthearted trash. Watch this space!

Doctor Who: First Frontier by David A. McIntee

Doctor Who: St Anthony’s Fire by Mark Gatiss

Reference Librarianship and Justice edited by Kate Adler, Ian Beilin, and Eamon Tewell

Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson

Ducks by Kate Beaton

Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre

Doctor Who: Falls the Shadow by Daniel O’Mahony

The Future of Information by Theodor Holm (Ted) Nelson

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, and Peter J. Weinberger

Fashionable Nonsense (published elsewhere as Intellectual Impostures) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont

Cryptid Club by Sarah Andersen

$ git commit murder by Michael Warren Lucas

Terror in Tiny Town (Deadtime Stories #1) by A. G. Cascone

The boyfriend got me this little gem as a stocking stuffer. I grew up reading Goosebumps in the 90s but was unaware there was this series of knockoffs called Deadtime Stories. If the copying sounds blatant, it’s because it is; not only is it published by Scholastic, the same as Goosebumps, they actually hired the same artist to do the covers. That means this was less of a rival to the Goosebumps range and more of an attempt by Scholastic to write R. L. Stine out of the picture. If I were him I’d have been highly pissed off that my publisher was trying to replicate my successes without me. Stine’s alchemy, however, was not so easy to recreate. The Deadtime Stories series doesn’t appear to have gone far, though it did inexplicably run to a TV adaptation fifteen years after the books were published.

Saltego Trans Jarmiloj de Jean Forge