Some recent reads in brief

It’s one of those times that I’m going to summarise a few recent reads – I don’t have a huge amount to say about them, for one reason or another, but wanted to give them a mention. Some of them will go on my A Century of Books list; some of the others are just here because… well, why not. Inspired?! On with the show!

If Only They Didn’t Speak English (2017) by Jon Sopel

I heard Sopel speak at the Hay festival, and he was very good, so I was pleased when I found a cheap copy of his book. The subtitle is ‘notes from Trump’s America’, but it’s really about the path that led to it – or trying to introduce non-Americans (specifically Brits) to the culture and identity of Americans that might have made way for so dreadful a president. (Sopel doesn’t quite say that Trump is dreadful, but he’s not far off.)

The title comes from the idea that, if Americans didn’t speak English, we Brits would find it easier to recognise that it’s a whole other culture. Sopel devotes chapters to guns, patriotism, race, exceptionalism, faith, and so forth. He assumes a complete lack of knowledge from his reader – even explaining who Rosa Parks is. I think Sopel is better when speaking than he is at writing (which is perhaps just as well, given that his job is reporting) but I still really enjoyed it. I’d love to read something similar about England, to be honest (I suppose Kate Fox’s Watching the English is pretty close.)

The Cat’s Cradle Book (1940) by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This was a lovely gift from Jane a while ago, who knows that I (a) love Sylvia Townsend Warner and (b) love cats. Her novels are a mixed bag for me – I love Lolly Willowes but really dislike some others – but she is a wonderful short story writer.

This collection is framed as being a series of stories passed down the generations by cats – so they’re pretty Aesopian. A rather long introduction looks at how the framing narrator discovered the stories, and then goes into the stories themselves. It was fun to read it, but I think Warner is much better when she’s talking about the poignant or unusual moments of everyday life.

Concert Pitch (1934) by Theodora Benson

I liked Which Way?, which I read in the Bodleian years ago, and picked this one up in 2012 in Hay-on-Wye. It’s all about the romances and feuds of a bunch of actors, and… it’s not very good. I never quite managed to disentangle the characters, because they’re all very similar, and I found it a bit of a trudge to get through. Oh well.

None Like Him (2016) by Jen Wilkin

My church small group read this book together, over the course of many weeks. Supposedly it’s aimed at Christian women, but there isn’t really anything in it that would exclude men. Rather, each chapter goes through the attributes of God – eternal, omnipresent, infinite, sovereign, and so forth – and looks more into them. And each quality is slightly unnerving when you first think about it and, the more you read about it, the more you realise it’s amazing and joyous.