The book I have bought most copies of this year is Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Free (Penguin paperback, £7.99). Hodgkinson is only in his late thirties, but already he is tired of all the things I’m tired of: shopping, debt, television, pensions, cars, puritanism, waste and advertising. There are countless books out there telling us that modern life is rubbish, but only Hodgkinson seems to have any idea what to do about it. His manifesto is wonderfully straightforward: divest yourself of as many trappings of 21st-century striving as you can. Get off the career treadmill, stop worrying about money, stop worrying full stop, purge yourself of guilt and fear and jealousy, concentrate instead on fun and good books, drink more wine, spend time with your children, play the ukulele. It’s the most cheering book I have read in ages. I have given it to several people for their birthdays and will be stocking up for Christmas shortly.
Oldish and newish novels I have particularly enjoyed this year include William Trevor’s The Children of Dynmouth (1976), Primo Levi’s If Not Now, When? (1982), Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower (1995) and Andrew O’Hagan’s Be Near Me (2006).
Martin Vander Weyer
Mavericks of the money world fascinate me, but the books I want to read by and about them are often left aside while I tackle duller tomes for duty. So here’s a couple of years’ worth: if some are not new, that won’t diminish their freshness to the first-time reader. Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing On The Edge by Tom Bower (HarperPress, 2006, £20) mercilessly uncovers our former proprietor, who’s up for sentencing this month. Michael O’Leary: A Life in Full Flight by Alan Ruddock (Penguin, 2007, £14.99) does likewise for the strange, hard-driving Irishman behind Ryanair. How To Get Rich by publishing tycoon Felix Dennis (Ebury Press, 2006, £16.99) is engaging and occasionally poetic. The Maverick by Luke Johnson (Harriman House, 2007, £14.99) is a must-read collection of the outspoken entrepreneur’s Sunday Telegraph columns. And I’ve only just caught up with Jabez by David McKie (Atlantic, 2005, £8.99), a life of Victorian MP and fraudster Jabez Spencer Balfour — the Maxwell of his day.
Comments
David Bowden
November 16th, 2007 5:40pmAs good as it was to see Jane Smiley's vastly underrated "Good Faith" on the list, it was first published back in 2003. Whereas the equally excellent "Ten Days in the Hills" was her latest. Perhaps Mr. Mount bought it in the same pound-shop as I did?
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Tim Grafton
November 15th, 2007 7:34pmRupert Christiansen refers to Lloyd Davies novel Mister Pip. The author is in fact Lloyd Jones. Mr Jones is a New Zealander and not a welshman should that have given rise to the confusion.
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