To Be Read...

How did the 2012 reading challenges go?

At the start of the year I decided to tackle four reading challenges. I had enjoyed discovering new countries with the 2011 Global Reading Challenge, so decided to give it another go, and was also committed to trying to sutrvive until April 1 without buying a book. 

I also came up with two ideas of my own, to read 19 books from 1972 and to read a book written by an author born in every country I would pass through were I to walk from my then home in Northumberland to Zoo City, Lauren Beukes' vison of near-future Johannesburg.

Of these, only one was an unequivocal success. I did avoid buying a new book untilApril 1, but in the remaining nine months of 2012 I built up a formidable backlog, which I will again tackle as Challenge One.

I made the Global Challenge harder by trying to avoid countries I had visited before, and by only allowing one author per country, and also not including a book counted against another Challenge. Against these criteria,  I managed 17 countries out of 21, missing out two from Africa, one from Australasia (though I did read two Australian novelists and a New Zealander),  and read eight African novels as part of Read the Walk).

Surprisingly, the one real miss was South America, a favourite reading destination, but this was largely because I chose to try to stick to some big reads policy, too, but haven't yet completed Roberto Bolano's 2666 - it's a great book, but my hardback copy isn't made for trains and planes.

I did, however, give up on 19 from 1972. The idea seemed fun a year ago, but I soon discovered that the many of the Seventies novelists I wanted to read didn't actually publish anything in 1972 and those that did, for reasons I should have anticipated, didn't set the books in 1972.

None of the Class of 72 made my 10 strong Five Star Reads list - in fact, all six were three stars.

But three Global Challenge reads did merit five stars - Palace Walk (Egypt), An Easy Thing (Mexico), and Three Sisters (China) - as did two Read the Walkers, Lyric Alley (Sudan) andWhat the Day Owes the Night (Algeria).    

1972: The Past is Another Country

My idea of reading 19 books from 1972 is going rather slowly. Began with The Players and the Game, by Julian Symons, then stalled Michael Moorcock. An upcoming beach holiday seemed like the time to re-engage...

1972: What a momentous year...

How many of these UK authors published a new novel in 1972?

Here are some of the names I thought of when first contemplating my 19/72 Challenge (reading 19 novels from 1972): Kingsley Amis, JG Ballard, Malcolm Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Lawrence Durrell, Grahame Greene, David Lodge, John Le Carre, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, Anthony Powell, Colin Wilson and Evelyn Waugh.

Some rereads, and some famous names that had somehow passed me by... Splendid!

Then I started checking around.

As you will have guessed, but to my great suprise, the answer was, of course, that none of them presented the world with a new novel that year.

Perhaps I should have chosen 1973 - JG Ballard's Crash was 73, as was Grahame Greene's Honorary Consul. Muriel Spark published in 71 and 73, as did Kingsley Amis, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch; John Le Carre  selected 71 and 74. Lawrence Durrell published a collection of poetry in 1973, The Suchness of the Old Boy (but younger brother and my boyhood hero, Gerald's Catch Me a Colobus was 1972!).

Evelyn Waugh had been dead seven years...

 

The best selling books were Watership Down and Joy of Sex. PG Wodehouse published Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin

19/72: The Players and the Game, by Julian Symons

The Players and The Game opens with an extract from the journal of a deranged man, obsessed with Dracula and Frederick Nietzsche, who recalls watching a television programe in which people leaving a horror film were interviewed.

One chap said "I like it when the monster gets the girl. That's me I thought. That's me. But I've never met anybody else who would admit that.

He does however meet a woman who identifies with Bonnie Parker (as in Bonnie and Clyde). Nothing good will come of this.

Extracts from the the journal appear througout the novel, but most ofthe narrative centes around Paul Vane, marketing manager of Timbals Plastics. Against his wife's wishes, Vane moves to the leafy suburd of Rawley, to be closer to the management team at Timbals. It is a world of tennis clubs and dinner parties, and endlessly finessed social niches, dominated by the pig-like managing director Bob Lowson (who just happens to like £20 discipline sessions with a Soho 'doctor').

Despite him being a prolific crime writer, I an not sure I had ever heard of Julian Symons (Wikipedia) before reading a Martin Edwards Forgotten Books post. Edwards notes that "Symons shifts viewpoint rapidly, introducing a good many characters, but he sketches them with great clarity."

This is true, but forty years on some seem like stereotypes, and the names could be from Benny Hill - 'trick cyclist' Dick Service and Peter Ponsonby ('a bachelor in his forties, thought by some members to be queer').

Both Vane and his wife are socially rather inept, and don't quite fit into Rawley life. This seems more to do with Alice having some funny ideas, "I shouldn't be surprised if she is a vegetarian" - than that he has had a couple of incidents with very young girls that were frowned upon but were not sufficient to cost him his job.

Several girls go missing, and there seem to be links to Vane; certainly enough to interest the local constabulary, from the ridiculous Sir Felton Dicksee downwards. Vane has, for instance, some connection to Louise Allbright, who also knows newspaper reporter Ray Gordon, who mentions to a polce contact, Plender, that she seems to have disaapperaed.

"We did have a bit of a squabble last Saturday at the tennis club. She was playing with a conceited bastard called Vane, just come to live here, and we had a few words. Nothing really."

"How old?"

"Nearly 19."

"Doing a bit of cradle snatching, weren't you?"

Ray's embarrassment deepened. "Sounds like that I daresay, but she could look after herself. Well, in a way. She didn't exactly want sex, she wanted adventure."

Plender goes to the house and is met by an indignant father. "You've got to consider my position. I can't afford to be made a laughing stock."

"What is your position? Plender asked politely.

"I am at Timbals. Assistant works supervisor, Moldings division." He puffed out his chest as though a medal were on it.

"And why would you be a laughing stock?"

He looked incredulous. "What... if it got to be known that George Allbright can't control his own daughter."

• An author's preface states that Players has some similarities to the Moors Murders and the American Lonely Hearts murders, which suggests even more unpleasantry than that which unfolds. Apparently Ian Brady was obsessed with Nietzsche, but quite why this is flagged up I am not sure.