Marcus Berkmann
This seems as good a place as any to admit to one of my guiltiest pleasures. As a child I was an avid fan of the comic strip, ‘Peanuts’, and bought every single paperback selection published in this country by Coronet. Even during grumpy adolescence I maintained the collection, which now sits in a box in a loft somewhere. You grow up, you carry Garcia Marquez novels on public transport, you try and airbrush these childish enthusiasms out of your life.
Fashions change in the most unexpected ways, though, and since his death in 2000, Charles M. Schulz has acquired a critical approval he never really enjoyed during his lifetime. All sorts of important writers have marvelled at the glorious simplicity of his draftsmanship and his unerring jokecraft, all underpinned by a quiet melancholy and stoicism you don’t tend to find in four-frame daily comic strips. Now, by some miracle, the entire Peanuts oeuvre is gradually being republished in this country, by Canongate, over approximately a 20-year period, in lavishly appointed hardbacks (The Complete Peanuts Collection, £15 each). I had the first two — 1950-52 and 1953-54 — for Christmas last year, and have put in a pitiful, plaintive request for the next two this year. Unlike almost everything you read as a child, they are actually better than you remember them.
Oldish and newish novels I have particularly enjoyed this year include J. G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park (2006) and Amy Bloom’s Away (2007).
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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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