Robert Salisbury
I seem to have devoured a lot of new or newish books this year, sometimes with much enjoyment but not often with unmixed delight. Perhaps the only exception was Owen Matthews’s Stalin’s Children (Bloomsbury, £17.99). I also enjoyed A Great and Terrible King (Hutchinson, £20), Marc Morris’s biography of Edward I.
Any Spectator reader will certainly be properly sceptical about slim volumes explaining our changing world and how it works in 180 pages. However, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organisations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, (Portfolio, £15.99) has some sharp observations to make about organisations, the internet and how to make things happen quickly and engage people. Those interested in politics and government take note.
There is also a serious and academic book about Lord Berners (Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter, The Boydell Press, £25). This in itself may be a Berneresque joke by Peter Dickinson, the author. However, even if it is not, it is worth looking at for the eccentric peer’s remark about the boa and the French horn.
Allan Massie
Human Love (Sceptre, £12.99) is not the best novel Andrei Makine has written, but it is better than any other new one I have read this year. Makine looks reality in the face, and yet retains a belief in beauty and the transforming power of love. The translation by Geoffrey Strachan catches the tone of Makine’s French perfectly.
The best works of non-fiction I have read this year are The Last Office (Weidenfeld, £25) by Geoffrey Moorhouse and Tom Holland’s Millennium (Little, Brown, £25). The first, focussing on the great Benedictine Priory of Durham, tells in exact and moving detail the story of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. The second offers an exhilarating sweep across European history either side of the year 1000; riveting.
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Hannü
December 20th, 2008 10:01pmDialogues Tibetan Dialogues Han is a travelogue from Tibet as well as a book of conversations with dozens of Tibetans from all walks of life in Tibet on a wide range of subjects - the Dalai Lama, polyandry, sky & water burials, the Muslims, the Han, Tibetan mastiffs, aweto, languages, thangka, Buddhism, independence and more.
Published this year, it is the most democratic and down-to-earth book to have come out of Tibet in decades.
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richard milk
December 7th, 2008 3:35pm'vim, gusto and enthusiasm' mr hensher? that wouldn't be a spot of tautology, would it? please stop the pompous posturing - it almost reads as badly as your books.
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Lisa B.
November 26th, 2008 8:37pmThere's an unsung little book out there, quite politically incorrect and one publishers appear fearful of backing. It's called "Up Dog Street" and seems to be available only on Amazon.com. This little tome seems to be slowly gaining a life and a following of its own and the unique, but timely theme, seems the reason. It's a story about an immigrant who's lived in England most of his life, but he spends his days pining for the tundra left behind and condemning the foibles of democracy We all know a few). The author has a powerful voice (an immigrant to America herself) and conveys the idea that birthplace and lineage mean nothing and that "nurture" is everything. It was a great joy seeing how the protagonist "Carlo" in this story, ultimately finds his English soul, from Sussex nontheless.All Western democracies have a lesson to learn from this story.
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