Dopper – Arthur Hofn

My reads, not the books that came out this year…

Once again it’s time for me to look back at my year in reading and recommend four favourites. This year I actually made a spreadsheet to keep track of the books I had finished; I’m getting old you know, the memory is not what it was. I’ve mentioned in previous year end blogs I tend to get everything I’ve read over the twelve months together and put them in a pile, just to see it; last year I even took a photograph, so I did the same this year! I’m quite pleased with that.

This year began with a look back at my Norwegian trip from the previous December. Investigating I came across several authors from that Nordic country and by far my favourite novel from all of that was Doppler by Erlend Loe, which I’ve already blogged about.

As the year progressed I completed a lot of books I’d been meaning to read for years, including one I bought as a kid in 1989, as well as discovering writers and novels I had known nothing about this time last year. I always like that idea, when I come to write the 2024 version of this blog, what will I have found and enjoyed in the next twelve months that I am ignorant of now?

As always I want to try and avoid spoilers, but just give you a taste of what to expect if you were to read any of the listed works below.

The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells. Yes it’s shocking it took me until 2023 to get round to this. Most known for War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells was one of the pioneers of science-fiction to the general English reading audiences, at least in Britain. The Invisible Man is about exactly what you would imagine, a man who is invisible. Published in 1897 it’s a short book, but as the story starts in the middle, at least for the titular character, there is a lot of ground already covered. There’s probably something to be said about how this novel deals with themes like the dangers of messing with sciences we don’t fully understand yet, but how do we learn if we don’t take risks? That is an interesting issue to discuss; but how much Wells intended this to be a message, and how much he just wanted to have fun with the concept of what would happen if people were invisible is a debate which would probably ruin the enjoyment of what at the time would have been a madcap adventure for an audience not as used to the realities and fictions of science gone wild as we are.

“Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations.”
― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – Laurie Lee. Published in 1969, this is the second in a trilogy recalling English poet Laurie Lee’s life. A few years ago I discussed the first in this series of books, Cider With Rosie, and as I very much enjoyed that I got hold of the other two. Whilst Cider With Rosie tells of life growing up in a small village in the Cotswolds, properly rural life in the early part of the twentieth century, this second autobiography details what happened when Lee left home; and he did it in style. The first few chapters deal with his life as a tramp in the south of England in the summer of 1934. By “tramp” I mean someone who just walked around England, which is not quite the image we have today. These were mainly men who led a nomadic life, wandering about the country, sometimes renting rooms for a while in the various towns they visited. Some would work where they could, or they would sleep out in the open, carrying all they owned with them. In the 1930s England and before, as life and transport was different especially for the lower classes, this lifestyle was not as alien to people then as it is to us today. Laurie Lee earnt his money by playing the violin, or finding building work.

After a while he leaves England and gets on a boat for northern Spain. Once more travelling on foot Lee makes his way, through the small villages and towns of that country, making observations and making do with the simplicity this lifestyle offered. I love this and I would say it’s my favourite book I’ve read this year, if I was in the author’s shoes back then, I think I would have done the same. The worlds encapsulated in this book are both idyllic and hard, ones I felt totally immersed in and so wish I would have been able to explore first hand, just like the Laurie Lee did.

“I felt once again the unease of arriving at night in an unknown city–that faint sour panic which seems to cling to a place until one has found oneself a bed.”
― Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Brick Lane – Monica Ali. Brick Lane is a real street in the east of London, I’ve been there many times, however the name is also a shorthand for the area of the city with a large Bengali population, as such this book, published in 2003, deals with life within that community from the inside. It’s writer, Monica Ali, was herself born in Bangladesh, where this tale begins, and moved to England when she was small so she knows what she is talking about. The novel is about Nazneen who is sent away from her homeland by her family to marry a man she doesn’t know in London. As the book explores her getting used to the strangeness of the city, whilst not being able to speak the language, we the reader get an insight into what life is really like for such women who really have had similar experiences not just in the East End of London but across the world, and at the same time get to see how different their culture can be to ours. This is a honest book, it tells the good and the bad and leaves the reader to decide for themselves if prices that are paid are worth it or not.

“You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved.”
― Monica Ali, Brick Lane

An Inspector Calls – J. B. Priestley. I read a lot of plays this year. A few years ago I’d bought a compendium of fourteen well known works that I feel I should know, and then I put it in the To Be Read pile to get on with other books. 2023 was the year I read it all! I may save some of the others from this tome for a later blog, so I’ll just take one for now. Like a lot of plays I believe you need to see them first if you can, rather than read them. As I’ve so far failed to go and see this play, and because I keep myself from spoilers, I therefore knew nothing much about it. It was first preformed in Moscow in 1945 because it seems all the theatres in London were already booked with other plays, it ended up in the UK’s capital the following year.

I really don’t want to spoil this one for you, so what I will say is that at a posh family dinner an Inspector calls, an incident that may well change the lives of everyone present. Something has happened and this family are to be questioned about it, even if there may not seem to be any kind of initial connection. There, I really hope I haven’t said too much. But there is a good question here about our culpability in things even if we feel we are innocent to them. Maybe in 2024 I’ll get to see it on a stage somewhere, and whilst I know the outcome, I hope there are many who will see it as it was supposed to be seen, with little prior knowledge.

“If you think you can bring any pressure to bear on me, Inspector, you’re quite mistaken. Unlike the other three, I did nothing I’m ashamed of or that won’t bear investigation.”
― J. B. Priestly, An Inspector Calls

Buy The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
Buy As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – by Laurie Lee
Buy Brick Lane – by Moni ca Ali
Buy An Inspector Calls – by J. B. Priestly