The Clocks – Arthur Hofn

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

December last year I complied a blog about some of the books I’d read during 2019. I normally do look back over what I’d read over the previous twelve months at this time of year as it gives me a sense of achievement and so I decided, as I had fun doing it in last time, to once again highlight some of my literary journeys of 2020; this is the first of a two parts.

It’s strange looking at last year’s blogs (which can be found here and here) as at the time of writing them I would not have believed what was coming, even only a few months later. If the me that is writing this here and now went back and had a word with myself I would think I too was telling a story.

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh. Before you ask I did know the author of this was a man before I started reading it (that’s important for later). In January when the world was in its previous state I took a trip to Tirana in Albania taking a copy of this with me. I knew a few facts about it before I started, mainly there was a teddy bear called Aloysius and it was set in either Oxford or Cambridge University. As it turns out the teddy bear wasn’t as important as I expected (not that I was thinking he was a main character) and the setting of Oxford is only in part of the grand tale that is woven over many years. I seem to have, by chance, read a lot of books written in the first person this year (a coincidence as I spent the first half of this year completing my first novel told in this style). Set in the 1920s the narrator is Charles Ryder, at the start a new student at Oxford. At first he is looking to be independent, but soon befriends Sebastian Flyte (owner of Aloysius) and ends up very much tied to not just Sebastian but pretty much the whole family. Many think this is a book about the friendship between the two young men, whilst it starts off that way the later parts of the novel deal with the implications of Charles’ dealings with the whole Flyte family. It seems a long time ago I was sat in a bar in Tirana drinking raki engrossed in tales of Upper Class England and I wish I was back there.

“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days – such as that day – when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

The Etymologicon – Mark Forsyth. Learning the origin of words is addictive. If you are looking for a fix and haven’t read this book, what’s wrong with you? To be honest this was the second time I’d read this. Starting with the word “book” the author leads you on a trail from one word to the next, as he goes he describes the history of each word as well as the secrets hidden in our vocabulary that once told you can’t believe you’d never noticed before. Words that we think of as unconnected are shown to basically be the same thing, or there are many occasions where meanings change so the original understanding may have been something completely different. “Down” is a great example of this, as is the fascinating connection between “black” and “white”. Also, why do we call some alcoholic drinks a punch? This is the type of book that you can start from the beginning and work your way through or just pick up and read a bit of every now and then, although that one section (generally about one or two pages long) will turn into several. The fun you will have discovering why men are gentle, what chickens have to do with pub games and why a race of people ended up being called British. I wish I could memorise it all and quote it at my friends, unfortunately my memory is not that good for which my friends are very grateful. My only wish is that there was an index as there isn’t one the edition I have, so trying to once more find something I vaguely recall is difficult.

“The medievals often mixed up their Gs and Ws, which is why another word for guarantee is warranty.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

The Clocks – Agatha Christie. I’ve given up trying to read Christie’s books in any kind of logical order. I see them cheap, I buy them and take a random one off the pile when I feel it’s time for another dose. The Clocks is typical of what you would expect, although billed as a Poirot novel he actually plays a small, although important, part; as it centres on a narrative by a Colin Lamb, who pretty much does all the leg work in investigating why a man was stabbed to death in odd circumstances. The clocks of the title are there for a reason, but the mystery as always isn’t always as straightforward as Christie wants you to believe it to be. I didn’t guess who was behind it all, but that doesn’t give away anything. This is comfort reading as you know exactly what you are dealing with here (rather ironic for a whodunit – but you know what I mean).

“He’s not dead. But I have a feeling he’s bored. That’s worse.”
― Agatha Christie, The Clocks

The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe. I didn’t realise this was a collection of short stories. It wasn’t until half way through the second that it dawned on me. I previously heard a Radio 4 adaption of the first story (of the same name) several years ago and liked it although I didn’t remember enough of the plot to realise that the whole thing had finished at the end of what I thought was Chapter One; and so I was somewhat confused as Chapter Two was no longer written in the first person and about something entirely different. There are nine prose stories and a long poem in the volume I have and, as is the case with anthologies, some are better than others. The headliner, The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner, is about a young man who has gone to Borstal and had been encouraged to train and compete in cross country races, during the practice sessions, alone in nature he has time to think. The text is very dense, reading a page felt like I’d read two or three, but I did enjoy it. The writer really gets into the head of this young man and presents the world from his viewpoint. The other stories are somewhat lighter, although mainly dealing with the working classes in the nineteen fifties and the tone is generally stark. It sounds like I’m being negative about this book, I’m not – I liked the worlds of which I was privy to, the private small scale worries of people trying to survive in a world that isn’t designed for them; sometimes grim and heavy is good, here it is.

“I run to a steady jog-trot rhythm, and soon it was so smooth that I forgot I was running, and I was hardly able to know that my legs were lifting and falling and my arms going in and out, and my lungs didn’t seem to be working at all, and my heart stopped that wicked thumping I always get at the beginning of a run. Because you see I never race at all; I just run, and somehow I know that if I forget I’m racing and only jog-trot along until I don’t know I’m running I always win the race. For when my eyes recognise that I’m getting near the end of my course -by seeing a stile or cottage corner- I put on a spurt, and such a fast big spurt it is because I feel that up till then I haven’t been running and that I’ve used up no energy at all.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

Buy Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Buy The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
Buy The Clocks by Agatha Christie
Buy The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe