BEST READS of 2015
I'm nerdy enough to keep a log of all the books I read. I usually get through about twenty-four volumes a year, but 2015 resulted in a tally of forty-three, and a renewed enthusiasm for the purchasing of actual print books, although the Kindle has proved to be a valuable tool in killing the lengthy commutes I endure daily.
My current preferences are for Roman literature, French and Russian writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and science fiction.
So, let's look at the reading highlights of 2015. Bear in mind that these are just the best of the best: many others I read were nearly as good.
EMILE ZOLA - THE EARTH
I'm a big fan of Zola's gritty realism, and this is one of the best of his 'Rougon-Macquart' twenty novel cycle of the late nineteenth century. This is a pastoral tale that doesn't romanticise the rural life, but paints a disturbing picture of French peasants whose back-breaking toil only just keeps them from starvation.
PHILIP K DICK - THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
I read this without knowing that it had been made into a TV series (which I haven't subsequently viewed). As usual with Dick, this is a short but dense read that will have your head spinning. The premise is a post-World War Two world in which the Axis have won and North America is divided between Japanese and Nazi occupation zones. Intense and often incomprehensible, it is nevertheless a great read, although as with every book by this author I'm left with the feeling that I haven't really understood it.
PETER F HAMILTON - THE ABYSS BEYOND DREAMS
I find huge grand-scope complex science fiction the perfect way to escape the daily grind, and Hamilton regularly delivers. No one could say that his prose is of the highest quality, but he certainly knows how to tell a story. This, the first part in a new two-book series, is set in the same environment as his earlier (and superb) Void Trilogy. Hamilton's is both scientifically believable, and contains elements of deep philosophy within the plot. If you haven't read the preceding works, and can't handle very long books with a huge cast of characters, then this is definitely not for you.
THOMAS PYNCHON - SLOW LEARNER
Pynchon dismisses this uncharacteristicly slim volume of early short stories as being mere embarrassing forays into storytelling before he hit his stride with 'V', 'The Crying if Lot 49', and so on, but the work contained herein is pure Pynchon and a delight for anyone familiar with his more famous novels.
TIBULLUS - ELEGIES
Albius Tibullus was a poet of the Golden Age of Roman literature (during the reign of Augustus) who has somehow fallen out of popularity, rarely mentioned in the same breath as his more illustrious contemporaries Ovid, Virgil, Horace and Catullus. However, his small oeuvre of elegiac poetry is a joy to read, and the Oxford World Classics edition has the parallel Latin text for those interested. This is love poetry, which I much prefer to martial epics (yes, Aenied, I'm looking at you!): there's lots of waiting around outside doors in the hope of slipping a message to your lover's slave, plenty of jealousy and insecurity, which puts a much more human face on the sometimes stern-looking Roman world.
Another doorstop of a book by the modern master of space opera, this is the first volume in the trilogy which made his name. Immense both in length and scope. Centred around a future rebellion with a disturbing twist, this is part horror, part scifi, and as noted before, while this won't win any prizes for the beauty of its prose, the storytelling is superb. I also read the second volume, The Neutronium Alchemist, in 2015, which was an amazing ride and the kind of book to read if you're going through a bad patch and need to be transported elsewhere.
RUSSIAN MAGIC TALES
I read my way through a large chunk of Russian literature when I was a teenager, and have recently been revisiting the territory. Here we have an anthology of folk tales, both those collected by ethnographers and those retold by well-known authors such as Pushkin and Platonov. Refreshingly different from the Western European tradition, these stories are filled with witches who live in huts mounted on chicken legs and other absurdities. Bizarre, but utterly enchanting.
FREDERIK POHL - GATEWAY
Pohl belongs to the classic age of science fiction, though not as familiar a name as Asimov or Heinlein. I read three connected novels in succession - Getaway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and Heechee Rendezvous. Short, simply written, but gripping and compelling tales of a future where the strange and often dangerous artefacts of a seemingly long gone alien civilisation are utilised by an expanding human race. Highly imaginative and entertaining, these books are recommended for those who can't face the enormous tomes put out by the likes of Peter F Hamilton.
OVID - EROTIC POEMS
This is another classics re-read, like the Tibullus mentioned above. Ovid is perhaps my favourite Roman poet, capable of a wide range of styles and themes. Here we have the books that supposedly got him exiled from Rome due to their immoral content. While they are quite racy in parts, overall they serve to remind us that humans never change in their basic behaviour. We learn where the best places in Rome are to pick up girls, and also what to do if, heaven forbid, we fall in love with them and they start to make our life a misery. Witty, amusing, and altogether human. If you read this work, be sure to get the Peter Green translation in Penguin Classics.
DAN SIMMONS - HYPERION
More science fiction, this time a cycle of four books based, oddly enough, on the poetry of Keats. If ever there was a series of books to elevate the genre to the same status as 'normal' fiction, this is it. Deep, erudite, philosophical and well-written, these stories are stunning. The first book, Hyperion, is akin to the Canterbury Tales in that it is a frame for a series of stories related by a group of pilgrims on their way to the Time Tombs to confront a mythical being known as The Shrike. Book two, The Fall of Hyperion, is where the main action takes place. The final two volumes, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion conclude the cycle. It is a testimony to how good these books are that I read all four in quick succession. It has everything - space opera, epic battles, mystery, mythology, philosophical ideas and was so moving that I admit that I cried towards the end.
CHINA MIÉVILLE - PERDIDO STREET STATION
This was my first dip into what some are calling 'weird fiction', a sort of melding of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Miéville creates an intriguing city both Dickensian and grubby, but with alien elements and a hodgepodge of technology past and future. Against this scummy backdrop a portly scientist gets sucked into a shadowy underworld of bizarre goings-on. Erudite, intriguing and somewhat violent, this lengthy tome is nonetheless a page turner.