31. On Grief and Reason - Essays, Joseph Brodsky (1996)
Photo: By Anefo / Croes, R.C. - [1] Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANEFO), 1945-1989 Bestanddeelnummer 934-3497, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20440470
Fluent, wise, insightful, frequently humorous essays on a range of a topics - 'How to Read a Book', 'Homage to Marcus Aurelius', the poetry of Thomas Hardy, and a speech to graduating students among them. Very readable.
32. Wordy -Sounding off on high art, low appetite and the power of memory, Simon Schama (2019)
'What I have always loved is literary abundance', writes Simon Schama, 'words that chomp, chew, suck, bellow and belch, that sound themselves into existence'. This volume has essays on Holocaust writing, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Bill Clinton, amongst many. It is witty, humane and thoughtful writing.
33. All quiet on the Western front, Erich Maria Remarque. Trans: A.W.Wheen (1929, 248pp.)
Written by a young German soldier, of his life and his companions - Tjaden, Muller, Knopp, Baumer, Kat - in the trenches of the First World War. Death, inadequate provisions, comradeship, poor medical care, rats, sergeants, poignant memories....
"We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands; in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room; flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? Formerly, we should not have had a single thought in common - now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so intimate that we do not even speak." (p.85)
"He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad that end had come." (p.248).
34. The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schnell (1982, 244pp.)
A classic now: the author analyses the probable effects of a nuclear war, especially the long-term effects, exploring the human, political, social and religious dimensions of contemporary military thinking and planning. It ends with an outlining of 'the choice' before humankind.
"A closely related and more serious perversion of religion is the suggestion, made by some Christian fundamentalists, that the nuclear holocaust we threaten to unleash is the Armageddon threatened by God in the Bible. This identification arrogates to ourselves not only God's knowledge but also will. To imagine that God is guiding our hand in this action would quite literally be the ultimate evasion of our responsibility as human beings - a responsibility that is ours because (to stay with religious interpretation for a moment) we possess a free will that was implanted in us by God." p.127.
35. Faces in the Water, Janet Frame (1961)
The novel concerns two hospitals - Cliffhaven and Treecroft - and their patients. It is told in the first person, by Istina Mavet, a young woman who spends over eight years at two mental institutions in New Zealand in the 1950s. Janet Frame herself spent eight years in a psychiatric institution, wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia. It is a disturbing, finely written novel.
36. The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann (1973)
"The more theology and the church attempt to become relevant to the problems of the present day, the more deeply they are drawn into the crisis of their own Christian identity." (p.8)
"Bonhoeffer's 'existence for others', to which so much appeal has been made, becomes meaningless if one is no longer any different from the others, but merely a hanger-on." (p.16)
"He (sic) who is of little faith looks for support and protection for his faith because it is preyed upon by fear."
37. The Commonwealth of Cricket, Ramachandra Guha (2020)
A Lifelong Love Affair with the Most Subtle and Sophisticated Game Known to Humankind
The author writes about his appreciation of cricket and his heroes (especially Bishan Bedi). He admired Sachin Tendulkar enormously but also thought that he played for too long, for his own goals rather than the good of the team in his final seasons. He is realistic about the commercial arm of cricket but does not write with too much nostalgia. He prefaces this very readable book with a quote from Australian Jack Fingleton -
"The longer I live, I am pleased to say, the less nationalistic I become. The outcome of a match is interesting but not, on the scales of time, of any great moment. What IS important is whether a particular context gives to posterity a challenge that is accepted and won, or yields in classical technique an innings or a bowling effort that makes the game richer, so that the devotee can say years afterwards, with joy ... 'I saw that performance'."
38. The Great Romantic, Cricket and the Golden Age of Neville Cardus, Duncan Hamilton, 2019
About Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus (1888-1975) - cricket writer and music critic
"He (Cardus) had witnessed the march of cricket's history from a front-row seat. He'd once glimpsed the semi-retired W.G. Grace in the bulbous flesh - grey-bearded and so big-bellied and arthritic that he couldn't bend down to pick up the ball. He'd sat in a state of constantly recurring astonishment as Victor Trumper played extravagant strokes, each attacking shot going off the bat with a bang. He'd followed Donald Bradman during his first tour of England, a pageant of scoring that made respectable his lust for hundreds and double hundreds.
Some of the names that swam out of Cardus's memory, such as A.C. 'Archie' MacLaren, Johnny Tyldesley and Harry Makepeace, were then complete strangers to me, as remote as figures from medieval England. But Cardus brought sharply back something of them he'd known long ago and so made the dead live again. This occurred especially when describing the man he called 'my idol, my hero', the imperious R.H. 'Reggie' Spooner. He spoke in bursts of love about Spooner, compelling you to love him too.
He did so in a genteel, slightly cracked accent, more redolent of the mellow Home Counties than the industrial Manchester of rain and factory smokestacks, the landscape in which he'd lived."
39. From Russia with Blood, Heidi Blake (2019)
Excellent, brave investigative journalism from Heidi Blake, at Buzzfeed News, formerly of the Sunday Times. Chilling findings about former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, Russian oligarchs in UK, traitors and 'mysterious deaths' outside Russia, ordered from the top.
40. The Silence of Animals - On Progress and Other Modern Myths, John Gray (2013)
English philosopher and writer John Gray is persistent in his claims that liberal humanists are deluded by notions of social progress; this is a radical denial of the abstractions and overarching narratives that undergird modern life. Or at least an argument that they are passing phenomena and humankind can at any time revert to barbarism. Develops themes I first read in his book, Straw Dogs.
