All posts tagged: Books of the Decade

Books of the Decade – Tony Bruce

Published by podmeister

Tony Bruce has spent pretty much his entire working life in books. First at Stockbridge Bookshop in Edinburgh (still going strong), followed by a stint at the epicentre of bookselling at Waterstones, Charing Cross Road (sadly no longer) before becoming manager of Waterstones at Goldsmiths College. Having had enough of bookselling he moved to Routledge in 1994, where he is now Publisher for the Philosophy list. He enlivens the routines of academic publishing by occasionally commissioning trade books, most recently with The Philosopher’s Dog by Raimond Gaita and The War for Children’s Minds by Stephen Law. He lives in Bath. A Lie About My Father, John Burnside (2006) A deeply thoughtful book, full of hurting, damage and repetition. It is a searing portrayal of first a father and then a son caught in an alcoholic and drugged loop of self-destruction. Yet it is as far as one can imagine from the recent slew of self-indulgent  “misery memoirs”. Burnside’s compassion  comes through on every page; he does not forgive his father but somehow refrains from judging …

Books of the Decade – Katy Derbyshire

Published by podmeister

Katy Derbyshire is a translator and co-editor of city-lit Berlin (with Heather Reyes, who recently featured in Podularity podcast 36). She writes biased and unprofessional reports on German books, translation issues and life in Berlin at her blog, love german books. Katy fell in love with German literature despite studying it at university, and was lured to Berlin in 1996 by a man, music and low rents. She stayed and now has a different man, a daughter and a lack of shelf space. Inka Parei, Die Schattenboxerin This is a wonderfully confusing short novel about a woman losing and finding herself in post-1989 Berlin. At first it reads like a detective story, but the psychology becomes more and more complex until the reader is just as disoriented as the protagonist. What I love about it is the way it captures the sad settings of East Berlin in the early 90s: decaying factories, a tumbledown former fairground, an all but vacant house. And the interim mood after the Wall had fallen but before the city became …

Books of the Decade – Steve Lake

Published by podmeister

Steve Lake is a producer for the Munich-based jazz and classical music record label, ECM, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year, and co-author (with Paul Griffiths) of a book about the company, Horizons Touched (Granta, 2007). He has written about music for many international magazines and newspapers, and about literature for Germany’s Akzente. His recent record productions include albums with saxophonists Evan Parker and Roscoe Mitchell, and with singer Judith Berkson, whose ECM debut will be released in 2010. Shirley Collins, America over the Water (SAF Publishing, 2004) Touching memoir of Sussex singer Shirley Collins’s personal and professional alliance with Texan folklorist Alan Lomax, and of their revelation-packed collecting trip through the American South in 1959. In Como, the then-unknown Fred McDowell walked out of the Mississippi forest to dazzle them with his bottleneck guitar playing. In Virginia their tape reels captured the rippling clawhammer banjo of Wade Ward.  On the Parchman Farm prison camp Lomax recorded work songs (which would resurface –half a century later – on the “O Brother Where Art Thou” …

Books of the Decade – Christopher Potter

Published by podmeister

Christopher Potter, after a distinguished career in publishing of over two decades, published his own first book this year: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe, which the Sunday Times called “wonderful stuff, the most thoughtful pop science book of the last few years” and which New Scientist praised for its “crisp, authoritative writing and deft handling of difficult subjects”. In August, Christopher appeared in programme 29 on Podularity – “A Walk across the Universe” – which you can listen to by clicking here. [Author photograph: © Joyce Ravid] Philip Roth: The Humbling (2009) The Humbling is Philip Roth’s seventh novel of this decade, and though far from being his finest, even Roth under par is more appealing to me than the work of almost anyone else alive and writing today. The Human Stain, published at the beginning of this decade, still resonates in my mind. With another novel already promised for 2010 – Nemesis – we can only hope for another decade of astonishing fecundity. Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of …

Books of the Decade – Kirsten Ellis

Published by podmeister

Continuing our series in which writers and publishers choose their favourite books of the past ten years, today’s guest is Kirsten Ellis. Kirsten is the author of Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope (Harper Collins). She is currently writing an historical novel and completing her MPhil/PhD in Creative Writing and teaching at Goldsmiths University. From the reviews of Star of the Morning: “In Ellis’s account… we have a very different Hester Stanhope [from previous accounts]: a woman who has inherited the mantle of her Prime Minister forebears (William Pitt the Younger was her uncle; Pitt the Elder her grandfather), showing due leadership, courage under fire, and a mission to count in the imperial power games being played in the East.” Lesley McDowell, The Scotsman “Ellis has unearthed fresh material, and retells the story with idiosyncratic panache… Ellis is a vivid narrator with an eye for detail: the perfumed dinners attended by naked female slaves; the dusk return of the swallows to the Umayyad mosque.” Sara Wheeler, Daily Telegraph To see …

Books of the Decade – Louise Foxcroft

Published by podmeister

Louise Foxcroft is a historian of medicine and the author of The Making of Addiction: Opiate Use and Abuse in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate, 2007) and Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause (Granta, 2009). Mary Crockett in the Scotsman called Hot Flushes a “gripping study of western attitudes to women of a certain age and older”. She went on: “The good news, sisters – and brothers, if you’re still reading – is that Foxcroft’s study, complete with extensive endnotes and an entertainingly compiled index, arrives at a constructive conclusion. The thrust of her message is: it’s time we changed our way of thinking on ageing. For starters, it’s a natural process, not a disease. Second, women aren’t in it alone, not everything being rosy in the male mid-life department.” Louise appeared in programme 25, “Menopause and Medicine”, on Podularity to talk about the book. You’ll find that podcast here. Philip Roth, The Dying Animal (Jonathan Cape, 2001) Had I read this book when I was thirty I would have felt threatened and …

Books of the Decade – Elizabeth Speller

Published by podmeister

Whoosh! There goes the first decade of the no-longer-quite-so-new millennium.  To mark the decade’s end, we’re launching a new series in which writers, editors and publishers are given the agonizing challenge of choosing just three favourite books from the more than two million published in English in the past ten years. Over the next few weeks you’ll be able to read the choices of a host of guest reviewers and, we hope, make some interesting new discoveries. And of course we’d be delighted to hear about your favourite books of the decade too. You can use the comment form on this site or else send me an email at george[at]podularity.com. I’m delighted that the first guest to make her selection is Elizabeth Speller. Elizabeth has already won acclaim for her poetry – her poem “Finistère” was short-listed for the 2009 Forward Prize – and for her family memoir (2006), Sunlight on the Garden. Of this book a TLS reviewer said: “There are echoes … of Sylvia Plath’s ability to combine beauty with irony, and suffering …