November and December were very productive for me in terms of reading — eight books, most of them very good, and I hope to finish another one or two by the year’s end.
The best nonfiction book I read was “Radical Candor”, by Kim Malone Scott, who has worked at Google, Apple, and Dropbox. It’s about how to be a good manager, emphasizing the need to have good personal relationships with the people who work for you and to build a culture of candor, admitting mistakes, giving very sincere criticism. It felt like a management book with real, concrete applicability.
I would be hard-pressed to decide the best novel I read: there were six excellent ones.
“Behind the Scenes at the Museum”, by Kate Atkinson (who is becoming one of my favourite contemporary authors) is the story of a girl called Ruby Lennox, and of three generations of women in her family. It is funny, tragic, and narratively sophisticated, richly rewarding the reader’s attention to detail. Here is an excellent review by Hilary Mantel.
“A Children’s Bible” is a contemporary version of The Lord of the Flies, only much better: children forced to fend for themselves amid a climate catastrophe. Short and brilliant.
“Magpie Lane” is a thriller about an eight-year girl who goes missing in Oxford, narrated by her nanny as she’s being interrogated by the police. Definitely HBO material. I stayed up late past my bedtime to finish it, very compelling.
“One by One” is the second retelling of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” I read this year (after “They All Fall Down”), this one is far better. A Swiss chalet, an avalanche, a series of murders, and an absolutely tense final quarter that was absolute agony to read (in the best way).
“Snow” is a detective novel set in 1950s Ireland, with intersections of Church and politics and a heady dose of smooth literary pastiche.
“The Moonflower Murders”, Anthony Horowitz’s sequel to “The Magpie Murders” is, like that book, an homage to the golden age of detective stories (Agatha Christie et al). While it’s still clever, it’s more forced and less surprising than the first book — and the writing is competent but not captivating.
Finally, the only less-than-stellar book I read in these two months was Haven’t You Heard?: Gossip, power, and how politics really works, on how rumour and gossip influence British politics, from the point of view of politicians, journalists, lobbyists, etc. Fine but unremarkable.
