The Book Tower

Here’s my complete list. Reading has unfortunately taken a backseat in this Singstar heavy seasonal period, although I have an ever growing list to tackle in January…

Fiction

1. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian)
2. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (Man’s Best Friend)
3. The Girl at the Lion d’Or by Sebastian Faulks (Between the Wars)
4. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
5. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip)
6. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (Forgetting Cold Mountain)
7. Skin Lane by Nigel Bartlett (Living in the Past)
8. The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas
9. Day by A.L. Kennedy
10. The Book of Dave by Will Self (Screaming at the Future)
11. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (The Drowned World)
12. Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel (Spirited Away)
13. The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel
14. A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernières (Louis Lite)
15. Remainder by Tom McCarthy (Remainder)
16. Slam by Nick Hornby (Slam)
17. The Dream Lover by William Boyd
18. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
19. Gold by Dan Rhodes (Gold)
20. Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (End Game)
21. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (What Was Lost)
22. Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (Devil May Care)
23. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (Help, I’m a Fish)
24. Born Yesterday by Gordon Burn (Yesterday’s News)
25. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
26. The Quiet American by Graham Greene (The Quiet American)
27. Youth and the End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad (Youth, oh Youth)
28. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
29. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (The End of the Affair)
30. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (If on a Summer’s Holiday a Blogger)
31. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
32. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Child 44)
33. Tell No One by Harlan Coben
34. Man in the Dark by Paul Auster (Darkness Falls)
35. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (Sinister Matters)
36. The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce by Paul Torday (Sweet White Wine)
37. The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill (The Man in the Picture)
38. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
39. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (Road to Neverwhere)
40. Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
41. Just After Sunset by Stephen King (Just After Sunset)
42. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
43. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (Mother Makes Five)
44. Casting the Runes and other Ghost Stories by M.R. James

Non Fiction

1. Miracles of Life by J.G.Ballard (God Bless Mr Ballard)
2. Essays in Love by Alain de Botton (Love Letters)
3. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (Brushing Up)
4. Paul Weller: The Changing Man by Paulo Hewitt (Paul Weller)
5. Bit of a Blur by Alex James (Bit of a Blur)
6. When you are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (David Sedaris)
7. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Whicher’s World)
8. John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman (Life With the Lennons, Life With the Onos, Sometime in New York City)
9. Have You Seen…? by David Thomson (Have You Seen…?)

Comments [1]

David Thomson’s Have you Seen…? could easily be passed over as an old fashioned, frankly unnecessary brick of a book. At 1000 pages, this is a film guide that recalls the era when Halliwell’s, and then later perhaps Time Out, provided your unputdownable film reference. Do we need such a heavy manual in this age of gadgetry? Can’t we just look for reviews on our iPhones? Well we can, although Thomson provides a very refreshing collection of film writing that’s worth investigating if you have the muscle.

Have you Seen...? Have you the strength to lift it?

How do you read a heavy film guide? Do you simply plough in from the start? Do you do what I did and look up all of your favourite films from memory until you are exhausted? Thomson lists his reviews alphabetically, beginning with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and ending with Zabriskie Point. He also provides a chronology, listing the films he’s covered from 1895 (L’Arrosseur Arrossé) through to 2007 (You, the Living). He doesn’t provide an index, however, so if – like me on my second interrogation of the book – you want to look up specific actors or directors, you’ll find this harder to do.

Like every film reviewer, Thomson is opinionated, and, like every film book, you’ll find opinions you’ll agree with more than others. You’ll find opinions that will make you cross. The films left out can also annoy, so while he includes Kind Hearts and Coronets, he doesn’t include The Ladykillers. Where’s Get Carter? Where’s Billy Liar and A Kind of Loving? Why does he include some tv such as The Sopranos? And so on. It’s also very easy to tell who his favourites are; he’s obviously a fan of Ridley Scott (next time you’re in the bookshop have a sneaky read of the excellent Alien review) but not so much of Spielberg. And he’ dismissive of Star Wars to the point that it’s hardly worth him including it at all. Of all the film genres out there, he’s most baffled by horror, and repeats himself several times by stating that the genre dates badly. But when he does tackle it, for example Rosemary’s Baby and The Silence of the Lambs, he writes well.

Of all the geniuses of film, Thomson writes best on Hitchcock. On Psycho:

After one of the great night drives in American film, with torment in the rearview mirror, Marion comes to a shabby motel bypassed by the new highway – in the fifties, America’s rural character was erased by freeways. Yet something remained in the bypassed spots – rancor, regret, revenge, as mothers and sons huddled together in the same lamplight.

Elsewhere in the book there’s excellent musings on Hitchcock’s other major films, as well as interesting insight into the careers of Welles, Polanski and Kubrick. But this is a film guide beyond review, mostly because I’m still reading it, and I’ll be reading it for years to come. Now I’ve got to know Thomson, agreed to disagree in several areas, I’m moving on to the discovery phase – reading about the cinema I’ve missed, avoided or simply don’t know. Because this guy has seen an awful lot of films…

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