MY TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR*




Here is my list of top 9[1] books of the Year, *not necessarily books published this year, but all read by me during the course of the last twelve months.

1.You Can’t Read This Book, Nick Cohen.

In my opinion the most important book produced this year. Cohen presents an outstanding analysis of the state of freedom in the Internet age, which also happens to be the age of the fatwa. This is a very radical book in the real sense of the word and challenges much of the received wisdom about increased freedom. It is written in two parts, the first concerned with religion, the second with the world of work and finance and is particularly incisive on the roots of the banking crisis.

2.Arguably, Christopher Hitchens.

A posthumous collection of some of the Hitch’s best essays.
If you have never read any Hitch then you could do a lot worse than starting here. Christopher Hitchens writes with wit, erudition, bawdy humour and with a precision not seen since Orwell.

3.Oblomov Ivan Gonacharev

The classic Russian novel, about as painful an analysis of lethargy and paralysis of the will as you will ever read. Written with great warmth and humour, it also has about it an all pervading sense of sadness about the human condition. The central character Oblomov rivals any figure to be found in Dickens. Oblomovism has entered the Russian Language as a term for lethargy and inaction, Lenin called it the Russian disease.

4. Kaputt Curzio Malaparte

I borrowed this book from the library not knowing entirely what to expect given its extraordinarily unpromising provenance. Malaparte was an Italian Fascist and a liar, or put more gently an inventor of autobiographical fictions. And yet this is a truly remarkable book. I do not know if he ever gained access to the Warsaw Ghetto, some aspects of his account do not ring true. Nor do I know if he ever really visited a brothel inhabited by doomed Jewish women, forced to provide sex, however the sheer poignancy of his account of these 'events' carry a deeper poetic and philosophic truth. You have to read the book, which has polarized opinion, to make a judgement. 

5.The Corrections Johnathan Franzen

Cheating a bit here since I have not yet finished it, however it is a long time since a novel so immediately pulled me in. Franzen has been compared to Roth and Updike and for me, and I am aware that it is a prejudice that I cannot rationally defend, only the Americans seem capable of producing really great modern adult fiction

6. Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding 

I was slightly reluctant to include this book, it is certainly far from being classic reportage, but given the events of the year I think it is something of a must read, not least for the glimpse it gives of the life of Bradley Manning; for it is manning not the self aggrandizing Assange who is the real hero and victim of the Wikileaks affair. Manning is currently standing trial in the US as I write this.

7. I Want To Live Nina Lugovskaya

The sad diary of a teenage girl growing up in Stalinist Moscow during the 1930’s, I have already written about this book http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/i-want-to-live-by-nina-lugovskaya.html  To quote Nina herself who saw clearly what was going on “…to proclaim outrageous laws so insolently in the name of the people, to lie as they do behind big words that no longer have any meaning like – ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism.’ …..This is the rule of the inquisition, not Socialism.”

8. Leave it to Psmith PG Woodehouse

A wonderful year of becoming re-acquainted with the finest comic writer in the English language; difficult to know what book to choose. The Blandings castle novels are truly wonderful, not least owing to the presence of Lord Emsworth the hapless and wholly innocent owner of a pig, the Empress of Blandings, the love of his life. Here Woodehouse brings together Blandings with one of his greatest comic creations, the dapper socialist Psmith who sees around him not strangers but comrades with whom an introduction has not yet been affected.

8. HP Lovecraft Against The World, Against Life, Michel Houellebecq.

This short book, it is really an essay with two short stories attached, is such a brilliant introduction to Lovecraft, with whom I was not familiar, that I went out and purchased his omnibus collected works. It is no surprise that Houellebecq was attracted to Lovecraft since both writers are misanthropes, quirky individuals at war with the world. I have previously written about Houellebecq, whose work I admire. However last year he produced a book, The Map and the Territory, which, if I were compiling such a list, would be among the worst books I have read, or in this case only half read, this year. I am afraid my willing suspension of disbelief snapped. A voice in my ear whispered, this is tripe isn't it? Answer came there none and I put the book to one side.

9. Culture of Complaint Robert Hughes

A cracker of a book, polemic at its best. Written in 1993 the book is just as relevant today as it was then. Hughes, who sadly died this year, dissects the malaise in liberal culture, the cowardice and the moral bankruptcy induced by ‘political correctness.’ It invites the cliché ‘a must read,’ for anyone concerned with the state of contemporary liberal culture.


[1] Defying the convention that  the agreed number for such lists.Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

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