Books of the Year 2015

Books of the Year 2015

As  I have lapsed somewhat into inactivity on the book blogging front I hope to use this post to quell those pangs of conscience that niggle in the back of my mind when I think of all the books I meant to post about but never have.
I have also been reading less, even with the extra time I should have had due to the lapse in blogging. However I took up running and managed to lose three stone in the first few months of the year and have not put much back on since. Also my band has risen from the ashes, at least briefly. I guess I have a tendency towards single-mindedness and that means that when one thing comes to the fore, another slips back into its wake.
Another possible reason was the revelatory re-read of Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which rather than having it's edge blunted by the passage of time had the same impact as when it ravished me a few decades ago. It is my book of the year and re-calibrated my sense of the excitement a book should stir if it is to become a true favourite.

The Unfortunates

The Unfortunates - B.S.Johnson
"How did I not realise when he said, Go and do City this week, that it was this city?                 Tony.    
      His cheeks sallowed and collapsed round the insinuated bones, the gums shrivelled, was it, or shrunken, his teeth now standing free of each other in the unnatural half yawn of his mouth, yes, the mouth that had been so full-fleshed, the whole face, too, now collapsed, derelict, the thick-framed glasses the only constant, the mouth held open in a controlled scream, but no sound, the head moving only slightly, the white dried and sticky saliva, the last secretions of those harassed glands, cauterised into deficiency, his mouth closing only when he took water from a glass by his bed, that double bed, in his parent's house, bungalow, water or lemon he had to take frequently, because of what the treatment had done to his saliva glands, how it had finished them.               Him"

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry - B.S. Johnson

"It did not take him long to realise that he had not been born into money; that he would therefore have to acquire it as best he could; that there were unpleasant (and to him unacceptable) penalties for acquiring it by those methods considered to be criminal by society; that there were other methods not (somewhat arbitrarily)  considered criminal by society; and that the course most likely to benefit him would be to place himself next to the money, or at least to those who were making it. He therefore decided that he should become a bank employee."

I finally got to read something by B.S.Johnson and I will be looking out for more. This comedy of morals is an all out attack on the 'realist' novel and draws on a tradition that includes Nathanael West and Flann O'Brien. It is also easy to see the influence of this on What a Carve Up! by Johnson biographer Jonathan Coe.