paper, pages, pavements

What I love about Alan De Botton’s books is that they posit themselves in the style of light self-help books, when in fact they are rather studious and crackling with intelligent observation and insight. They are still self-help books in a way, but without the patronising and idiotic tone and form. While making philosophy accessible and readable is a huge challenge, all of Botton’s books contain illuminations that have stuck in my mind for years.

I read Bottons ‘How Proust can change your life’ about 10 years ago when I was running the Literary Criticism section at Waterstone’s Piccadilly. The shelves were weighed down with books on Proust, and as I knew little about him, I decided Botton’s book was a way in. It is an exceptional introduction not so much to Proust, but to an approach to life, and how to appreciate small, simple, ordinary and everyday things and draw pleasure from them. This is one of Botton’s methods of course, he claims to be talking about one thing, when actually it’s just a backdrop to discuss other matters, usually those of the heart.

I read Consolations of Philosophy later then I should have (after I finished my degree in Philosophy) – Here I discovered Seneca – again Botton provides a useful perspective on how to respond to challenges and difficulties in life.

I went on to read Art of Travel, and the Status Anxiety, and the excellent Architecture of Happiness (which I’m happy to say I’ve sold a couple of hundred copies of in the shop)

Now his latest: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. More on this when I’ve actually read it.

James Lasdun. The first book I read by him was The Horned Man, which I recommend to anyone as a tight psychological thriller and one of the best novels I’ve ever read. In 2005, I read Seven Lies, which was also great, but not as good for me as The Horned Man. What I actually remember most about Seven Lies is that I picked it up from a vast table of new hardbacks in Waterstones, took it to the counter to buy it, and bumped into my ex-boss Marc Valli, who was also in the queue buying the same book. Yet another of my many bizarre book / life coincidences.

Anyway, Lasdun is back with a bunch of short stories based in London. More once I’ve read it…

Sam Selvon’s excellent short novel from 1956 is unfortunately much more likely to contain reality rather than fiction. We follow the experiences of Moses Aloetta and several other West Indians, after their arrival in post-second world war London. Britain had put out the call across the Commonwealth for people to come and work, yet when the ‘windrush generation’ responded, arriving from Trinidad, Jamaica and many of the smaller islands of the Carribbean, they discovered they were not quite as welcome as they expected and their daily lives were reduced to hardship, seeking work, food and shelter. The creole-english narrative draws you in as do the descriptions of 1950′s London; although the landmarks and locations are all familiar, the happenings are less so. It could easily be a deeply depressing book, but this is also a comedic and warmly human novel. An important book, and an important perspective on London Life in the not so distant past.

Reading these at the moment, reviews later in the month…

Non-Places – Marc Auge
New edition with great new introduction.

The Gift – How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World – Lewis Hyde

I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying for a While – Taichi Yamada
Yamada is the author of Shadows and In Search Of A Distant Voice – both books I would highly recommend – contemporary Japanese ghost stories par excellence. Yamada has written many more books, but this is the third one to make it to English translation.

Michel Faber – Fire Gospel

Practical Wabi Sabi – Simon Brown

Cold weather, credit crunch, Amazon being such an addictive website, Book Mongers second hand bookshop in Brixton, a broken bike wheel … there are many reasons why January is a month of reading. This is what I’ve been checking in January:

Narcissuss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse.
This has been on the list of ones to read for about 8 years, and I’ve finally reached – wish I’d read it years ago! Narcissuss and Goldmund begin as monks in a German monestary – Narcissuss is something of an intellectual, dedicating his life to academic study and the philosophical world of ideas. Goldmund however, is attracted to the life of beauty, sensory and emotional experience. The two are close but irreconcilable friends. The novel focusses on Goldmund’s coming of age and journey into manhood and self-acceptance. Hesse addresses the interplay between the intellect vs the sensory brilliantly, but ties it in well with a rapid narrative tale, so while the ideas behind the novel are weighty, the story is brisk and highly enjoyable.

Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring
This book was listed on a design blog somewhere as one of the best publications of 2008, so I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it’s one of those novels that has some mad typographical business going on and loads of illustration dotted about the place. The story actually starts on page 30, prior to that there are lots of scribblings of the word ‘boring’. This kind of schtick is sniffed at in literary circles, but I find it all rather enjoyable. There are some exceptional novels out there that mess around with text and the reader. Obviously, The Life And Times of Tristram Shandy is the pioneer, but others such as House Of Leaves, The Raw Shark Texts, The Cheese Monkey’s and even The Corrections (which uses every writing technique imaginable) all use typography as device with great effect .
This is all just a justification for buying the book – I haven’t read it yet!

The Interrogation – J.M.G. Le Clezio
This grabbed me because, in over a decade of selling books, I’ve never heard of this author at all. Worse than not knowing who he is, is that he seems to be writing in the vein of Sartre, De Beauvoir and Camus – writers I am a bit obsessed with, so I basically missed him completely. Turns out most of his books have been long out of print, then he was awarded a Nobel last year, so everything has been re-published.

Designing Design – Kenya Hara
Muji, Japan, Minimalism, Simplicity, Extreme Function, Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison… elegant, serene and beautiful objects. Perfect.

Coming bundled with the new McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is this gem, available from Design Museum Shop as soon as we upload it.

Where to Invade Next
Edited by Stephen Elliott

On February 27, 2007, during an interview with Amy Goodman, General Wesley Clark described a 2002 Pentagon conversation in which he was told that America was planning to invade Iraq. From the same source, he learned of a classified memorandum listing six other countries the United States intended to “take out” over the next five years. Most of us will never get to see this memo, but we know it exists.

Now, editor Stephen Elliott, authors Jason Roberts, Eric Martin, and Andrew Altschul, and a team of twenty researchers have re-created this document for the present day. Where to Invade Next contains seven essays, 100 percent factual, laying out in stark detail how the arguments for invasion could be made. A biting look at the role of propaganda in foreign policy, this book outlines exactly how our leaders might make the case for war.