My Favourite Books of 2015

I've been keeping a reading journal since 1997 rating and sometimes commenting on the books that I read over the previous year. This year I read 40 books; my average is about 50 - 60 per year so this was a substantially below average season. The reason for that might be because A) I'm getting older and losing focus or B) the books are getting shittier. Anyway these are the favourite books that I read this year, not all of them, of course, were published in 2015. There's a surprisingly high proportion of science fiction here and not a single history book which is odd because I read a lot more histories than I do sci-fi. My favourite history book this year was Max Hastings' book The Secret War, which was ok, but not quite good enough to break my top 20. My favourite novel of the year was The Cartel, my favourite travel book was Paul Theroux's Deep South, my favourite audiobook (if you don't count Patrick Tull's reading of Patrick O'Brian's Wine Dark Sea) was The Fold by Peter Clines. The most lyrically beautiful book I read this year was The Peregrine by JA Baker (talking about the call of the nightjar he says "if a song could smell this song would smell of crushed grapes and almonds and dark wood.") I read this year's Booker Prize winner and thought it was ok but not quite good enough to make my list. I read this year's Nobel Lit Prize winner and didn't think she was very good at all. The Prix Goncourt winner was good. The National Book Award winner was ok. I've written about the Edgar winner before. One book on this list you might not have heard of is The Rider by Tim Krabbé which is a novel that entirely takes place during the two hours of a bicycle race, that the surprisingly multi-talented Mr K rode in the early seventies. 





1. The Cartel - Don Winslow
2. Even Dogs In The Wild - Ian Rankin
3. The Peregrine - JA Baker
4. The Girl With All The Gifts - M R Carey
5. Deep South - Paul Theroux
6. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North (Catherine Webb)
7. A Little More Free - John McFetridge
8. The Rider - Tim Krabbé
9. The Devil's Making - Sean Haldane
10. And Yet - Christopher Hitchens
11. The Star Side of Bird Hill - Naomi Jackson
12. Never Mind - Edward St Aubyn
13. Songs That Saved Your Life - Simon Goddard
14. Moon In A Dead Eye - Pascal Garnier
15. Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
16. Voltaire - Ian Davidson
17. A Guide For The Perplexed - Werner Herzog
18. The Fold - Peter Clines
19. M Train - Patti Smith
20. Latest Readings - Clive James (even though he gets the Aubrey-Maturin books wrong, but wrong, I think, for comic effect.)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

light reduction is a big problem with 3D which is a
bit of a disaster for a 3D film set in a cave.

I finally got to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams. All six loyal readers of this blog will know that I’m a Herzog fanboy/acolyte. My favourite book of the year so far is probably Herzog’s account of the filming of Fitzcarraldo - Conquest of the Useless (and I hear there’s even an audiobook now read by Herzog which has got to be amazing).
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All this is a preface to a disappointed review of Cave. It’s a decent enough documentary but it is not up to Herzog’s usual high standards. It’s pretty obvious that Herzog just didn’t have enough material for a feature film about the Chauvet Cave and had to scurry to fill the time with archaeological finds from other caves in France and other digs in Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere. Herzog’s quirky style doesn’t really fit this material, which attempts to be a forensic documentary and at the same time a humorous look at the scientists investigating the cave. He doesn't commit to either scheme very seriously. Herzog did this sort of thing so much better in the superior documentary Encounters At The End of the World about scientists in the Antarctic - which is a must see, as is Grizzly Man, Herzog’s film about the late self styled bear whisperer Timothy Treadwell. Other recentish Herzog documentaries I'd recommend are: Little Dieter Needs To Fly, Wings of Hope and My Best Fiend which can be watched on YouTube, Google Video or, of course, DVD. Herzog's upcoming film about inmates on Death Row looks much more interesting.
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I really wanted to like Cave of Forgotten Dreams but I got bored in the middle portion and the loud angelic choirs and the camerawork eventually started to make me feel a bit nauseous. The 3D filming made the film much worse than it needed to be, indeed it is a particularly inappropriate technique for a film set inside a dark chamber. The fact that Herzog wasn’t allowed to use arc lamps, coupled with the light reduction caused by the silly 3D glasses meant that the film was very hard to see. 2D would have been better for this movie and I'm sure when I see it in 2D I will like it more. 3D as a concept is probably a busted flush: it’s a gimmick and the gimmick is wearing off again just as it did in the 1950’s and 70’s. Only teenagers and greedy executives like 3D, not adults or indeed, in my experience, young children. 

Werner Herzog and Errol Morris Talk Books

And its utterly compelling stuff:

One Of My Favourite Travel Writers Interviews My Favourite Director

Werner Herzog's Reading List

Werner Herzog's unorthodox film school, The Rogue Film School has 12 rules or guidelines. The first one should be "Do Not Talk About Fight Club" because really that's what he's setting up, either that or a cult, not a film school, however the last five are not only pretty amusing but they also contain Herzog's reading list:

8.Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance.

9.Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.

10.Related, but more reflective, will be a reading list. Required reading: Virgil’s “Georgics” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”. Suggested reading: The Warren Commission Report, Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “The Poetic Edda”, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular The Prophecy of the Seeress), Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”.

11.Required film viewing list: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, dir. John Huston), Viva Zapata (1952, dir. Elia Kazan), The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo), the Apu trilogy (1955-1959, dir. Satyajit Ray), and, if available, “Where is the Friend’s Home?” (1987, dir. Abbas Kiarostami).

12.Follow your vision. Form secretive Rogue Cells everywhere. At the same time, be not afraid of solitude.
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Something struck me about the list of the books mentioned in #10. I couldn't figure it out for a while but then it came to me: The Conquest of New Spain, Hemingway's Short Stories, Virgil's Georgics and The Icelandic Eddas were the books that Michael Forsythe was reading in my novel Dead I Well May Be. Does this mean that Werner and I are on some kind of wavelength or are these merely the books that you read before you turn you into a borderline sociopath? Perhaps these are the texts that all young men should read and then subsequently grow out of. I'm not sure. But they certainly are all of a piece. I'd add Christopher Logue's War Music and maybe Kinsella's translation of the Tain Bo Cuailnge.
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Incidentally, if I were forming a cult like Werner Herzog (and I'm ruling nothing out at this stage) I'd only have one book on my reading list and that would be The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin. I'd have my acolytes cultivate disenchantment and pessimism not ecstatic truth and Aristotlean virtue. I'd probably get a lot of goths.

My Best Fiend

With the permission of Werner Herzog, the entire documentary My Best Fiend has been posted on YouTube. Its a good introduction to Herzog and especially to his extraordinary work with the mercurial Klaus Kinski. Dont be put off by the first two minutes, the documentary is in English.