Book List

not recommended by Robert
but the cover is great

"Books I have read in 2006 in the order I read 'em. Almost all of them wonderful except where indicated. Next time someone asks 'why don't you have a telly?', I can just quote this list." - Robert.

"A Little History of the World" - EH Gombrich
"Confessions Of An Economic Hitman" - John Perkins
"American Pastoral" - Philip Roth (not recommended, a sick pond of a book.)
"Loser Takes All" - Graham Greene
"A Man For All Seasons" - Robert Bolt
"The Price"/ "Incident At Vichy"/ "Creation" - Arthur Miller
"Cloud Atlas" - David Mitchell
"The Lonely" - Paul Gallico
"The Trial Of Socrates" - I.F. Stone
"Exterminate All The Brutes" - Sven Lindqvist
"Celestial Navigation" - Anne Tyler
"Saint Maybe" - Anne Tyler
"Nicholas Nickleby" - Charles Dickens
"The Kite-Runner" - Khaled Hosseini
"The Good Soldier" - Ford Madox Ford (Well I thought it a dull, empty meaningless waste of time. But then a friend, who also hated it, spooked me by saying "Yeah, all that unreliable narrator stuff, too." And I went: "Huh?" Now I fear that there's a whole level that this book was working on that I was too obtuse to see. But when the central-heating packs up in my house, this is going on the fire before many useful cardboard boxes.)
"Shah Of Shahs" - Ryszard Kapucisnki
"Black Swan Green" - David Mitchell
"Barbarians" - Terry Jones & Alan Ereia
"Power" - Bertrand Russell. This should be a much more influential book. In it Russell argues that redistribution of power ("as far as practically applicable") should be the central project of social justice, whereas we tend to act as if redistribution of wealth was the thing. He argues that understanding the drive for power tells us more about the world than the sex or capital-based ideologies of Freud and Marx. Power should be the central concept of social theory as well as of social justice.
"Getting To Know The General" - Graham Greene
"The Honorary Consul" - Graham Greene
"Upside Down" - Eduardo Galleano
"Ghostwritten" - David Mitchell
"Autobiography" - Bertrand Russell
"The Devil" - Leo Tolstoy
"On Beauty" - Zadie Smith
"Men Of Honour" - Adam Nicolson
"The Good War" - Studs Terkel
"City Of Glass" - Paul Auster
"Gertrude Bell" - Susan Goodman
"After The Victorians" - AN Wilson
"The Harder They Fall" -Budd Schulberg
"A Long Way Down" - Nick Hornby
"Theory Of War" - Joan Brady ( second time I've read this story which had stayed with me the first time)
"1599 - A Year In Shakespeare's Life" - James Shapiro
"Music and Silence" - Rose Tremain (second time for this one too.)
"The Well-Beloved" - Thomas Hardy

That took me to about end of September whereupon no more books are read in entirety at all. Because I began work on novel number 4 and have been reading only research material for the novel. And because the book is set in the olden days a lot of the written source material is not in book form as such.

Cultural Highlights of 2006

Best novel: a tie between Black Swan Green and On Beauty.
Best film: Borat
Best band: Arcade Fire
Best solo singer/songwriter: Declan O' Rourke
Cultural Event Of The Year: 'The Wire' Series 4: 'No Corner Left Behind'