Reading in 2017

So, the last book I completed in 2017 was Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, whilst the first was Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. One of them I enjoyed more than the other. In between those two books I read a few other books.

I'm going to list my Top Ten, which as with all things is utterly arbitrary and might change as books settle in the mind and heart. Actually, I'm going to split them into Top Ten Fiction and Top Ten Non-Fiction. Just because.

TOP TEN FICTION

Autumn, Ali Smith
The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes
The Door, Magda Szabo
A Month in the Country, J. L. Carr
Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa
A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler
Exit West, Moshin Hamid
Sally Heathcote Suffragette, Mary M Talbot/Kate Charlesworth/Bryan Talbot
Under The Udala Trees, Chinelo Okparanta
The Monkey's Mask, Dorothy Porter

I actually made a concerted effort to broaden my fiction reading this year, which I did. So I am smugly pleased about that. There were two books I read this year that I actively loathed. I might name them later.

I've been influenced in my reading choices this year by a couple of podcasts. Firstly, Robin Ince and Josie Long's Book Shambles, which I've been listening to for some time. That's where I first heard of The Monkey's Mask. The other is Backlisted Podcast, which is why I ended up reading A Month in the County and The Year of Reading Dangerously. For non-fiction, I blame Dan Snow's History Hit podcast for throwing up lots of books I'd like to read. Too many for my wallet, unfortunately.

The Top Ten isn't in any particular order but I'd probably nominate Autumn, by Ali Smith as my favourite fiction read of 2017. It's a beautiful book. I couldn't put it down and when I finished I felt that little pang of grief that comes with finishing a brilliant book for the first time. I can't recommend it enough.

TOP TEN NON-FICTION

The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria's Rebellious Daughter, Lucinda Hawksley
Breakdown, The Crisis of Shell Shock on The Somme, Taylor Downing
In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, Jenny Uglow
All Behind You Winston: Churchill's Great Coalition, 1940-45, Roger Hermiston
Indian Summer, Alex von Tunzelmann
On Bullfighting, A.L. Kennedy
A Short History of Drunkenness, Scott Murray
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life, Andy Miller
Little Me, Matt Lucas
Julian of Norwich, Janina Ramirez

That's a mixed set of subjects. There are the usual Tony Cross obsessions there: World War One, World War Two and Churchill. All three are subject areas that are the gift that keeps on giving. Again there in no particular order, but if I had to pick one it would be Taylor Downing's book Breakdown, The Crisis of Shell Shock on the Somme, which is a well-researched and well-written book covering a subject capable of raising issues even now. It tries to be fair to the British Army, but there are still moments where I felt genuine anger about the way individuals (or groups) were treated.

The full list of what I read is below. If you've got any questions then feel free to answer. As you'll see from that list I did manage to read some poetry, but not as much as I'd like. I read two different Ted Hughes books. One, Crow: From Life and Songs of the Crow I struggled with. The other Tales From Ovid: Twenty-Four Passages from 'Metamorphoses' was fantastic. Make of that what you will.

FULL LIST OF BOOKS

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind	Yuval Noah Harari
The Owl Service	Alan Garner
The Noise Of Time	Julian Barnes
Myra Breckenridge	Gore Vidal
Blood River: A Journey Through Africa's Broken Heart	Tim Butcher
A Perilous Undertaking	Deanna Raybourn
The Door	Magda Szabó
The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria's Rebellious Daughter	Lucinda Hawksley
Breakdown: The Crisis of Shell Shock on the Somme	Taylor Downing
Man On The Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s	Tom Doyle
Jane Eyre	Charlotte Bronte
Hope In The Dark	Rebecca Solnit
Tales from Ovid: Twenty-four Passages from the "Metamorphoses"	Ted Hughes [Trans]
In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815	Jenny Uglow
The Pirate Planet	James Goss
Running Through Corridors: Volume 2-The 70s	Toby Hadoke & Robert Shearman
All Behind You Winston: Churchill's Great Coalition, 1940-1945	Roger Hermiston
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945	Ben Shephard
King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta	Marc Morris
The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove	Andrew Cartmel
The Moonstone's Curse	Sam Siciliano
Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone	J.K. Rowling
Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition	Nasid Hajari
Dynasty: The Rise & Fall of the House of Caesar	Tom Holland
The Age of Olympus	Gavin Scott
Truths, Half-Truths & Little White Lies	Nick Frost
Indian Summer	Alex Von Tunzelmann
If This Is A Man	Primo Levi
Space Helmet For A Cow: The Mad True Story of Doctor Who, Volume 2: 1990-2013	Paul Kirkley
Go Tell It On The Mountain	James Baldwin
On Bullfighting	AL Kennedy
Giovanni's Room	James Baldwin
Confessions of a Lioness	Mia Couto
A General Theory of Oblivion	José Eduardo Agualusa
A Whole Life	Robert Seethaler
The Sense Of An Ending	Julian Barnes
Reel History - The World According to the Movies	Alex Von Tunzelmann
Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulu - The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions	Lois H. Gresh
Money	Martin Amis
Sherlock Holmes: The Labyrinth of Death	James Lovegrove
Directed by Douglas Camfield	Michael Seeley
Selected Poems	Anna Akhmatova
The Underground Rail Road	Colson Whitehead
Exit West	Moshin Hamid
Stalin Ate My Homework	Alexei Sayle
Aeneid VI	Seamus Heaney
Autumn	Ali Smith
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow	Ted Hughes
A Study in Scarlet	Arthur Conan Doyle
A Kind of Blue: A Political Memoir	Kenneth Clarke
Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse	James Goss
James Baldwin: The Last Interview & Other Conversations	James Baldwin
Hero of the Empire: The Making of Winston Churchill	Candice Millard
Solar Bones	Mike McCormack
Fear & Loathing on the Oche: A Gonzo Journey Through The World of Championship Darts	King Adz
Little Me	Matt Lucas
A Short History of Drunkenness	Mark Forsyth
Blade of the Immortal - Omnibus I	Hiroaki Sumura
Julian of Norwich	Janina Ramirez
A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens
The Title: The Story of the First Division	Scott Murray
A Month in the Country	J L Carr
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life	Andy Miller
Introducing Fascism: A Graphic Guide	Stuart Hood/Litza Jansz
Sally Heathcote Suffragette	Mary M Talbot/Kate Charlesworth/Bryan Talbot
Penguin's Poems For Love	Laura Barber [Editor]
Under The Udala Trees	Chinelo Okparanta
The Story of my Teeth	Valeria Luiselli
The Monkey's Mask	Dorothy Porter
Rendevous With Rama	Arthur C Clarke

My Favourite Things from 2017

Well, I went to a lot of films and art in 2017. I also saw about 20 plays and 2 operas, although I left half-way through one of them, Jane Eyre at the National Theatre. I also managed to attend two plays in a week that failed to reach their end - Insignificance at the Arcola Theatre and Coriolanus at the Barbican - which has to be an unusual event.

So, my Top Ten Theatre/Opera were:

Salome, National Theatre
Incident at Vichy, King's Head Theatre
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Harold Pinter Theatre
The Seagull, Lyric Hammersmith
Kiss Me, Trafalgar Studio
Coriolanus, RSC at The Barbican
Art, The Old Vic
The Life of Galileo, The Young Vic
Richard III, Arcola Theatre
Aida, ENO

Salome, which was a new version by Yaël Farber. It took a little while for me to get into but it eventually blew my mind. A real example of what theatre can do with a story you think you know. Incident at Vichy is a Miller play that doesn't get performed often but seemed to be a play for 2017. The cast was astonishing and if a play had deserved a West End transfer then this was it. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf featured probably the best performance I saw from anyone in 2017, which was Imelda Staunton's Martha, although Greg Hick's Richard III was pretty astonishing. 

I saw a terrible Romeo & Juliet at The Globe, which managed to make one of my least favourite Shakespeare plays utterly awful. And as I said about we left Jane Eyre at the National Theatre at the interval. The less said about this the better. 

I wish I could go to more theatre as at its best I don't think there's anything as absorbing or as moving, even film. If I had the money and the time I'd go to the theatre every night. Almost. 

I saw 61 films in 2017. My Top Ten is

The Death of Stalin
Dunkirk
In Between
Logan
I Am Not Your Negro
After The Storm
Wonder Woman
A Ghost Story
My Life As A Courgette
The Road to Mandalay


Now that Top Ten is 2017 films. I also saw a number of films that were made before 2017. That included probably my favourite film of all time, A Matter of Life and Death, which I got to see in its new digital print. I finally got to see Le Samouraï on the big screen and found that sometimes the memory doesn't cheat. I saw Lawrence of Arabia again, which is as impressive this time as it was when I saw it last year. I can see a Lawrence of Arabia re-watch becoming an annual thing if I can find a cinema showing it because you really do need to see it on the big screen. That was the same with Abel Gance's Napoléon, which I saw last night. So here is my Top Ten Films I Saw in 2017 regardless of when they were made:

A Matter of Life & Death
The Death of Stalin
Dunkirk
In Between
Le Samouraï
Lawrence of Arabia
I Am Not Your Negro
A Star Is Born (Mason/Garland-obviously)
Logan
Cabaret

So, well done Carrie Dunn whose work on exposing me to musicals seems to have finally succeeded. That's two musicals in the Top Ten. Five films of 2017 itself still made the list. The Death of Stalin was darkly funny, superbly acted and was absolutely the best film from 2017 that I saw. It even nudged Dunkirk off the Top Spot, even though that is an astonishing film that had to be seen on the big screen. In Between was the film that surprised me most and probably moved me most if truth be told. I Am Not Your Negro was a stonkingly well-made documentary, which in the age of Donald Trump needed to be made. That's a fucking tragic thing to have to write.

I saw a lot of exhibitions at various galleries and museums in 2017. It helps to have lots of memberships courtesy of relatives and Christmas. (Thanks, Mum, Dad and Uncle Robin and Aunty Sue.) My Top Ten Exhibitions were:

David Hockney, Tate Britain
Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, British Museum
Australia's Impressionists, National Gallery
Gillian Wearing & Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask, Another Mask, NPG
Giacometti, Tate Modern
Fahreinessa Zahid, Tate Modern
Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell Collection, National Gallery
Jasper Johns, Royal Academy
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern
Opera: Power, Passion & Politics, V&A

But this list is utterly arbitrary really as there was so much good art to see in London in 2017. Obviously, the advantage of living in London (and having an income to afford these things) is that there are galleries, museums, cinemas and theatres everywhere. If I had a 2018 wish it would be to visit a few more of the smaller theatres and galleries. If I had the money. 

I should also put in a word here for the day I spent at the Royal Festival Hall watching a live reading of Primo Levi's 'Is This A Man', which you can find an audio version of here. It is worth a listen. 

I saw a handful of live music. All of which I loved. Gretchen Peters was fantastic as always, as were Depeche Mode and The Unthanks. I also saw a couple of classical music concerts, Yuja Wang and Benjamin Grove at The Royal Festival Hall. Both of which were amazing. 

So, there you have it. The only thing left is books, but that's a whole other column of its own. 

Thanks to everyone who came with me, bought tickets and/or memberships. So that'll be Aya, Emma, Mark, Chris, Leslie and Carrie. It's been a good year. It wouldn't have been so good without you all.