I read a lot of non-fiction this month, helped by a generous birthday gift from my sweetie. Bit of a mixed bag, quality wise, some disappointments, but also some of the best books I’ve read this year or longer.
The Grain Kings — Keith Roberts
A disappointing collection of short stories by a writer I thought was better than he actually might have been.
Bad Science — Ben Goldacre
An early birthday present. Ben Goldacre explains how all sorts of hustlers, quacks as well as respected mainstream companies are exploiting our ignorance of science and how the media collude in this. He manages to do this with a considerable sense of humour and some sense of perspective.
The Red Hourglass — Gordon Grice
A very entertaining look at some animal predators likely to induce phobias: black widows, rattlesnakes, tarantulas and pigs. Grice is an amateur biologist, a keen observer and an unsentimental describer of the killings he witnesses his animals do. Certain descriptions are gruesome, but not gratuitous.
Belching out the Devil — Mark Thomas
Bloody Mark Thomas forced me to stop drinking Coca Cola with this book. ‘Nuff said. But if you want to know more, it’s all about what lies behind the family friendly image of the Coca Cola company: the murder of trade unionists in Columbia, abuse the drinkwater of waterpoor Indian states, water pollution in Mexico, poor labour relations everywhere.
What’s Going On? — Mark Steel
Steel’s previous autobiography helped convince me to become a socialist; in this one he explains how he went through a midlife crisis as he hit forty while both his marriage and his almost lifelong commitment to the Socialist Workers Party both collapsed. He does that in the context of Blairism, the runup to the War on Iraq and the developments since. Somewhat depressing as what could’ve the most positive development on the left in a generation is squandered, but fortunately Steel’s innate humour comes through.
Vive La Revolution — Mark Steel
Another Mark Steel book, this one about the French revolution, based on the series of comedic radio lectures he did about it. A nice, readable introduction that skewers a lot of the preconceptions about it that are particularly current in the UK. If you ever heard him do one of his standup routines or comedy panel show appearances, you’ll recognise his mannerisms in print as well.
The General Strike — Margaret Morris
An excellent historical overview of the failed general strike of 1926 in Britain, which holds some key lessons for socialists and trade unionists. Morris showed the union leadership was far from radical, unprepared, unwilling to take the measures needed to win the strike, did not realise that they were fighting both the government and business until it was too late and had more invested in safeguarding the system they were part of than actually winning and facing the consequences of their victory.
The Course of the Heart — M. John Harrison
I knew Harrison had a reputation as an excellent but difficult to get into writer but so far the two novels of his (The Centauri Device and The Pastel City) I had read had only been good. This novel however completely blew my expectations. It’s an woefully inadequate description but the best I can do is call this a magic realist love story, in which the protagonist is more of a spectator than a participant in the events he describes .
Signs of Life — M. John Harrison
A much more hard edged novel than the previous one, but the narrator is equally as much a spectator and this is as much a love story.
Supercontinent — Ted Nield
I’ve read other good books on geology and the history of the Earth, notably Richard Fortey’s books, but this is the best one volume introduction to the idea of continental drift and the underlying dynamics driving it that I’ve seen. Nield is very good at explaining difficult concepts to a lay reader without simplifying them into incoherence.
Heat — George Monbiot
Global warming is real, we need to cut ninety percent of our CO2 output by 2030 to make sure we have some chance to safe some of our environment as well as ourselves, how do we do that and not have to become a third world country? That’s the challenge Monbiot sets himself, looking at various parts of our daily lives to see what can be done.
Agent of the Terran Empire — Poul Anderson
Another collection of Dominic Flandry stories. These started as light space opera, but the underlying politics and gloomy worldview Anderson soaks them in takes away a lot of the
pleasure. Pessimistic about the ability of humanity to establish anything better than an empire and even more pessimistic about its ability to keep the empire strong, Anderson bought into a lot of the myths the neocons believe as well.
Old Twentieth — Joe Haldeman
A 2005 novel proving once again that Haldeman probably is the quintessential baby boomer science fiction writer, written as it is around the boomers’ stereotypical twin obsessions of their encrouching morality and the sixties. Not a good novel, but interesting to take apart, so to speak.