Books I’m reading this year…

That feeling where you’re looking forward to an early night so you can read your book. And then you remember you finished it the night before…

… That’s basically how my first book of 2024 went. I really enjoyed it.

In an attempt to read more, I tracked all the books I read in 2022, first in a twitter thread and then later in a long blog post here. I didn’t do it in 2023 and found I missed looking back through it. So, 2024 is a new start. I’m not aiming for a particular number, reading is for me pure pleasure. There is so much that could be read and life is so short, so this page is mostly for me. But in case anyone else finds my rather random book taste worth a look, the 2024 reading thread is now live.

14. Two books about building bonfires: Bogen om bål (The book about bonfires) by Flemming Møldrup and Bål (bonfire) by Thomas Svardal

Book number 14 is actually 2 short books. I’ve grouped them together because they are on the same subject, both beautifully illustrated, and yet quite complementary. Sitting around a camp fire in the open air must have been once one of the most common human experiences, but it’s probably one our urban world is, (or maybe was ?) starting to miss out on. In the friluftsliv culture of Denmark and I suspect more widely, across the Nordic countries, having a little bonfire to make fresh coffee or bake twist bread over is an extremely common activity. Often a normal part of going for a walk, whether hiking in the Norwegian mountains or walking in the Danish beech woods. These 2 books both touch on the philosophy of having a bonfire as well as the practicalities of building and lighting fires.

Thomas Svardal’s gorgeous photographic exploration (translated from Norwegian ) is very much focused on the techniques, different ways to construct, the differences between types of wood, which is better in the soaking rain, which in the snow, how to light them, and has some fascinating input from Sami traditions. It’s the kind of almost lost knowledge that  makes you realise just how skilled our ancestors must have been to survive in difficult conditions. He encourages the reader to try out different methods of lighting a fire and provides an expert tick list of techniques to go through. There is also good advice on helping children to discover the arts of enjoying a good fire.

Flemming Møldrup offers also some good practical information but his book, also beautifully illustrated with pencil and watercolour sketches offers both history of fire, and puts the human relationship with it in perspective. His narrative is also a personal philosophical discussion on the importance of going out into nature to rediscover that we’re part of it too. It’s a satisfying book, particularly for anyone who has ever struggled to light a fire. His philosophy is almost one of mindfulness – it’s hard to light even a small fire in the forest without concentrating on it, planning properly and  doing everything in the right order. The book is structured around the whole process, from gathering the wood, making the tinder, generating the sparks, building the fire to making sure it is completely out, clearing up the fire site and leaving the place clean and tidy.

Both books skate a little lightly over the environmental impact if everyone in the world suddenly started burning wood (this would not be good!), though Flemming Møldrup argues convincingly like John Muir, that leaving the towns to get closer to nature is essential if we should learn to protect it and learning to make fire is part of what makes that experience so special. Having a campfire in the forest is in the end a luxury of time, resources and access. In Denmark (and across the Nordic region) we’re lucky to have access to a huge network of shelters and camp fireplaces, as well as plentiful wood to burn. These are both good and complementary guides as to why and how to make the most of those resources. Both books have much to recommend them and are guaranteed to have you outside making coffee over an open fire at the first opportunity.

13..The Mighty Dead: why Homer Matters: Adam Nicolson

I can’t really make my mind up about Adam Nicolson.

He’s a journalist by trade, but from a wealthy upper class family with a background in Eton, Oxford and all the rest. I’ve read 2 of his other books, about the Shiant Isles and about the ocean, both of which occasionally had moments of brilliance but also moments that had me wondering if what I was reading was actually accurate or just plausible bullshit. Perhaps exposure to Boris as Prime Minister has simply made me allergic to the Ancient Greek obsessed upper classes?  (The 5th Baron Carnock, for it is he, does at least produce better prose than a large language model).

His full canon of books are on a surprisingly broad range of topics, none of which he seems to have an officially acknowledged expertise in, but which seem in general to be well researched. I think my difficulty is that he blends scholarly insights (rarely his own given the extensive footnotes) with wild guesses and suppositions and it’s not always clear where one ends and the other starts.

The overall effect is rather like one of those late evenings as an undergrad at university with perhaps too many bottles of wine open on the table where the world seems to fall marvellously and significantly into place, but the next morning you’re left trying to work out exactly what was said that was so significant and if any of it was half as profound as you thought it was?

My local library apparently has had a theme on the Iliad and I picked up this latest book about Homer’s works from that table – I’m glad I read it and I did enjoy it. But it didn’t particularly make me want to read either the Iliad or the Odyssey again..

Which is really a pity because I think there are some really interesting insights in the book about Homer, even if there are also a few wild geese chased and there is a glorying in the violence and especially sexual violence of Homer that is frankly disturbing. On the other hand perhaps that’s just the source material? I think the insights into the Iliad as a clash of nomadic steppe people versus civilised cities of the Mediterranean interesting as an idea, but I wonder if there is really much evidence for this? Likewise his suggestion of a much earlier provenance than typically assumed. Much of the Odyssey is skimmed over but the section on Odysseus’ journey to Hades being actually located in Spain seems more than a little far-fetched. But again, I don’t know, it’s not my field and that’s the problem, he seems too certain and brings in too many outside lines of evidence that seem a bit thin.

Nonetheless it’s an interesting book and a really good guide to interpreting the way Homer is written down, with the linguistic overtones particularly well brought out. The writing is often beautifully lyrical, with real skill in incorporating the lines of Homer within the narrative of the book without it feeling clumsy. However, he rarely uses a sentence when a paragraph will do. Even more editing would help. I get it though – this has clearly been a labour of many years of research and the author clearly didn’t want any of it to go to waste. The effect is slightly like reading a PhD thesis though, rather than a more popular work.

I’m not quite convinced Homer “matters” on the basis of the book, but there are still some startling parallels with Europe’s current moment where peaceful civil society is again threatened by gangsters motivated largely by plunder and some twisted notion of “honour” (which doesn’t include respecting women, children or indeed civilians or the rules of war). It’s probably a good introduction to Homer and to the history of the studies of Homer, though be warned there are some graphic descriptions of violence and sexual violence in the book.

12. Till Topps I Norges Nasjonalparker: Gjermund Nordskar

Appropriately for a book about Norwegian national parks, I finished this while on holiday in the Norwegian mountains.. As it’s written in Norwegian bokmål I can understand it reasonably well and the back story of a sudden illness, disrupting a long-planned gap year is simple enough. The author recovers sufficiently, after 6 months of rehabilitation, to decide to use the remainder of his gap year ascending the highest point of every Norwegian national park. It’s a fairly gruelling undertaking given they decide to do it in one go and as far as possible on skis. Some of the peaks are pretty straightforward, others require 3 goes to get the weather conditions sufficiently calm for the ascent, or the assistance of a friendly snowmobile driver or even semi-professional climber. The final two peaks involve sea kayaking..

It’s a fun book, not exactly a candidate for a Nobel prize qua writing style, but it actually also functions as a good taster guide to the 37 (in 2014) national parks of Norway. The author Gjermund has that appealing enthusiastic can-do attitude of the young that makes me want to dig out the skis and rucksack straight away. I’ve made several mental notes of places I’d like to visit in the future and I suspect this will be on my “planning mountain trips” shelf for a good long while.

11. The land of short sentences: Stine Pilgaard

I loved this book. It’s hard to explain why but it’s just a perfectly crafted piece of warmth and beauty that somehow manages to be warm without being sentimental, funny without being condescending and awkward and strange and absurd without ever leaving contact with reality. It’s a great introduction to the højskole movement and almost made me want to move to Jutland, without being a pæon to an imagined place. In the form of little vignettes, through the course of a year with an unusual narrator, an oracle of the problem pages, it’s an easy one to pick up and enjoy when you can fit it in. And as for plot, there kind of isn’t really one, other than the normal life we all live through, yet nevertheless there is a tender development of character through the academic year at an ordinary high school. The travails of parenthood are particularly brilliantly presented. There are also some hilarious scenes featuring Anders Aggers, a kind of danish Louis Theroux..

Really, just put this book on your reading list. It’s wonderful. (It’s actually a danish book but I read it in the English translation, I didn’t realise that at the time I picked it up from a library table in my kommune’s main library. Yet again, Frederiksberg librarians are demonstrating their worth as “kulturformidler” – cultural providers (?)).

If you are Danish, you’ll probably find the fun højskole sangbog occasional songs extremely amusing too.

10. Nefertiti’s Face: The creation of an icon: Joyce Tyldesley

A slightly curious book about the beauty that is the famous Nefertiti bust, currently residing in the Neues Museum in Berlin. The book does a good job describing the history of the finding of the bust, and some interesting background on Akhenaten and Amarna. Mostly what I’ve taken away from it though is how speculative so much of Egyptology actually is! A lot of what we “know” about Egyptian history turns out to be guesses, supposition and based on pretty weak evidence. It is in any case an interesting diversion and a welcome antidote to some of the wilder speculations on the History channel and it’s ilk …

9. Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail: Cheryl Strayed

A compelling book that once I’d started I didn’t want to put down, and yet it felt a bit like it ran out of energy before the end. It’s the story of a woman going through a breakdown.

8. Krigens Logik (the Logic of War): Anders Puck Nielsen

It seems a hideous concept that war can have a logic, but after reading this book I find it strangely comforting to think that we can at least partly explain how and to some extent why wars are fought. 

I’m interested in history, but I’ve never read Clausewitz’s On War, or indeed going further back Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but the former at least is quoted several times in this book. Anders Puck Nielsen is an analyst in the Danish military academy and has clearly done his research. I particularly liked that each chapter starts with an actual wartime incident,which he then uses to illustrate a particular point of the logic of war.

We are, as he also points out, mercifully unused to wars of aggression in western Europe after decades of peace, which probably explains why so many of us have found the Ukraine invasion (since 2022, though the original invasion in 2014 is also discussed in some helpful detail) so disturbing.

The events since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has torn up all our assumptions about how the world works. That “Peace Dividend” in western Europe is looking more than a little shaky. (I acknowledge by the way that this is not true if you live in many other parts of the world, as does Puck Nielsen). He rightly points out too that only by having politicians and militaries that understand the logic of war can we defend ourselves, as well as seeking to find ways to understand our opponents. This is really the point of the last chapter on atomic weapons- putting ourselves in their position to work out how they will react is surprisingly difficult, but absolutely essential if we’re to avoid nuclear oblivion in the coming century.

Other chapters on new technology and especially drones and cyber warfare are particularly relevant, not having been around when Clausewitz was writing. They bring a new calculation to how governments need to prioritise and plan their defence strategies that is not as immediately apparent as I’d thought.

The chapter on hybrid warfare was fascinating. And quite scary. He describes very well how Russia was able to very cleverly take advantage of the fog of (hybrid) war (there’s Clausewitz again) and take over eastern Ukraine and Crimea before anyone in the West was at all clear on what was going on. I remember following the situation on twitter in 2014 and feeling utterly confused – it was clearly an invasion, or, was it? Later events have proved pretty definitively that it was an invasion and we should have been much more proactive in preparing and punishing Russia for it. Puck Nielsen doesn’t really talk about how the individual can learn from the Logic Of War, unless one happens to be a defence minister, general or other high level official of course, but to my mind, the most important lesson was from this chapter. We need to be prepared both physically in terms of individual and societal resilience, but also in terms of the information war. Those of us bruised by Brexit or engulfed by culture wars on social media can affirm all too well, how dangerous and difficult misinformation can be to deal with. We need to be much better at dealing with it. And on a societal level too. How do we inoculate our children who spend so much time in online worlds we barely use against this?

Other concrete examples from the Korean war, Libya and the Tanker war in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s were also really illuminating, explaining clearly how events that happened before I was born, or that I only vaguely recall, played out. And more importantly Why they occurred as they did.

This is perhaps not the most relaxing book to read, but I firmly believe that knowledge and understanding is empowering. If we understand how wars work, we can start to see how we can defend ourselves against it. Like, I suspect many, though perhaps not enough people in Europe, I fear we have lived too long in a fool’s paradise, ignoring what was happening beyond our borders. It’s time to account for that. At the very least, readers will come away understanding that the war in Ukraine is indeed one that should concern us all.

This is one of those books that you read and wish was translated into English (and other languages) so you can pass it around your non-Danish friends. In the immediate absence of a translation, I can only recommend you check out Anders Puck Nielsen’s channel on YouTube, where some of the same principles are reflected in his extremely informative videos (in English). The book however is a really comprehensive overview that tackles many of the fundamentals so I hope it will one day also be accessible outside the Scandinavian countries.

Please make it so publishers!

7. Gå-bogen (the walking book): Professor Bente Klarlund Pedersen

Another find from my lovely library – definitely not the kind of book I would normally go for, its beautifully presented with lots of charming Danish photos – perfect for the Instagram influencers generation was my first thought. However. I recognised the woman on the cover as an eminent Danish researcher in especially lifestyle diseases like diabetes. Not just the usual fluff exhorting us to eat less and move more then? Flicking through it quickly I detected a much higher than usual concentration of actual science in the book so dropped it into my bag when I checked out..

The book is indeed an exhortation to exercise – but more specifically to simply walk more. She blends it very nicely though: research on all sorts of lifestyle influenced diseases like heart disease and cancer, with philosophical, spiritual and cultural meditations on the meaning and transformation that just walking can and can’t do. She ends with a particularly identifiable chapter (to me at least) about how exercise and walking shouldn’t necessarily be an end in itself, that walking is good for the soul and forces us to take time out.

Overall a very thoughtful and informative book and considerably more in depth than I’d expected when I picked it. Another win for the Frederiksberg librarians.

(As an aside, the author thanks her 4 children + 9 grandchildren in the acknowledgements. As always when reading these kind of things I can’t help wondering how rare that must be in other countries: a woman professor who has 4 children and an eminent career? I occasionally think that I’d either not be a scientist or not have kids if I’d remained in the UK. That may not be entirely true, but role models like Prof. Klarlund are important and she’s far from the only one I know of here. The social democratic principles of Denmark have clearly been getting some things right.)

6. Broderier (Embroideries): Marjane Satrapi

Very funny, poignant and tragic but most of all utterly realistic. I can absolutely imagine this marvellous group of women chatting around the tea pot after a big family meal. There is a true element of the sisterhood, whatever that means here, that the state sanctioned suppression of women’s rights seems to sharpen into this biting satire. These women have sometimes terrible choices forced on them and awful things happen but they still manage to support and laugh at and with each other. I’ve been a huge fan of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. This is a short book, which I finished in less than half an hour, but I’m adding it here too because graphic novels for adults have been a huge discovery for me – I don’t think they were very widespread when I was a kid, but I really enjoy the experience of reading them.

5. Earthsea: Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m almost tempted to count this as 4 books, which is how it was originally published, but let’s just say I was so gripped by the first book I read the whole volume of 4 books almost in one go – staying up far too late a couple of nights to demolish it in basically 3 sittings. And what a book it is.

If you haven’t read it, you really must. It’s beautifully lyrical, a fantasy novel that deserv s to be considered great literature for the quality of the writing alone… It also has wonderful empathetic characters and some knife edge plotting, plus a streak of something that is politically aware but always very light of touch, but nonetheless there. A rare gift to make you examine your own assumptions and prejudices without it feeling intrusive. The settings are so beautifully described and there is real development of character and plotting through the books.

I had originally thought I’d re-read Lord of the Rings after watching the films (again), so glad I spotted this in our wonderful library where a sympathetic librarian had laid out a full table of Ursula Le Guin’s works.

An absolute treasure, I only wish I’d discovered her writings earlier. It’s the kind of book that I can’t wait to discuss with my family and friends. So beware. If you’re visiting my home you may find a copy pressed into your hand with an urgent entreaty to read it…

4. Parable of the sower: Octavia E. Butler

I hadn’t expected to be updating this page so soon. I settled down with a new book at around 9pm and for the first time in a very long time read it in one sitting. Which I suppose tells you something about how gripping this book is. It’s again one I wouldn’t have chosen except for its prominent position in a stack on one of my local library’s themed tables. The librarians are really on top of their game right now.

I confess to finding dystopian novels generally a bit unconvincing, they tend to think the worse of people and I am generally a little more optimistic than that. Possibly that is my white middle class European privilege shining through. Especially the latter part of this novel suffers a little from horrific but somewhat unconvincing societal breakdown. But then, we could look at several countries (Venezuela anyone? Lebanon, parts of Mexico perhaps) and give them as counter examples so perhaps I had better not be too comfortable. Some elements I find terrifyingly convincing, the slow degradation of a society and services and decay that no one notices, the changing climate that acts as a stressor and threat multiplier. And we don’t have to look far to find some scary parallels, the Jungle in Calais, the rolling back of worker’s rights and the near slavery conditions of modern agriculture in at least some states and countries, police brutality and the privatisation of essential services like fire fighting, the opioid and spice epidemics. Other more positive parts are convincing too: neighbours and friends banding together happens much more often than not, solidarity, reciprocity are invariably part of the response to natural disasters. The idea of growing as healing, that education is important and literature and poetry can free us. The idea of earthseed is compelling.

Other elements of this book are extremely creative and even optimistic: the sharing, the idea that in 2024 we’d have astronauts on Mars and a joint base on the Moon is however sadly further out of reach than it must have seemed in the early 1990s when the book was written.

Altogether, a really excellent book and a huge recommendation for near future Dystopia with an optimistic angle that the horror and violence doesn’t manage to overwhelm. I will have to read the next volume in the series now, and I’m a little surprised as it’s not the kind of novel I’d normally read.

So, all in all, bravo the brilliant Frederiksberg librarians…

3. Maus: Art Spiegelman

There are books that haunt you forever and there are books that after you’ve finished them you want to sit quietly in a blank room and think back over what you’ve just read. Maus, which I picked up at our local library while on the hunt for something else, is a graphic novel and, like Persepolis (which it predates), it fits in both categories.

I’d started it once at a friend’s house but never finished it and when I spotted it again I remembered that it has recently been banned in some US schools, which seemed like a good reason to start reading it again.

It’s a poignant and often quite funny book given that it’s about one family during the holocaust. The transmuting of the characters into animals makes the horror bearable. I found it very compelling and after a certain point read on and on, it was difficult to put down.

I wouldn’t necessarily take it to the beach, as especially at first it needs some concentration, but it’s a book everyone should read and digest. I can’t really say more than that. It’s actually perfect.

2. Bonnie Garmus: Lessons in Chemistry

I hadn’t expected to be posting so soon but I stayed up far too late in order to finish this book… It was a gift and not one I’d have necessarily chosen myself, but once I’d entered into the weird, wonderful and difficult world of Elizabeth Zott, a fiercely independent chemist and single mother in the early 1960s, I couldn’t put it down. It was hugely enjoyable but also rather thought-provoking. The sheer viciousness of the cage put around white middle class women who want to work and have their own lives in that time should be enough to counter the 1950s nostalgia that seems a little too prevalent for my liking. The main characters are spiky but very likable, if not always very believable.

There are some of the usual plot and character clichés in this kind of book that I find a little disappointing, and a Deus ex machina towards the end brings it all a little too neatly together but it is an entertaining and thoughtful novel, with a strong but not overpowering feminist message, and a clear theme on the importance of being an ally. This makes it all sound far too worthy.. It’s actually a really fun book and I’ll be passing it on to my younger teenage female relatives as I’m sure they’ll also enjoy it.

1. Halldór Laxness: The fish can sing

My first book of 2024.. I read Laxness’ Nobel prize-winning “Independent People” years ago when I was a PhD student in Iceland. This makes me want to read it again. I feel my tastes have matured. I got a lot out of this book. It’s very comical, absurd and funny but also rather poignant, dark and Laxness certainly doesn’t take prisoners. He revels in puncturing the self-important as well as those captured by nostalgia. I remember praising independent people to an Icelandic scientist, years ago. She told me that he was not always popular in Iceland because he wrote about times, places and actions that people would rather forget. Or perhaps look back on and mythologise. I definitely can see that in this book. But both this and the aforementioned Nobel prize winner are really great context for considering Iceland and how it became the land it is. And some of the themes are scarily up to date. It’s really a brilliant piece of writing, Iceland’s George Orwell, in many ways, if Orwell had managed to develop an absurd sense of humour.

The protagonist is the young Álfgrímur, an adopted young boy growing up in idyllic but humble circumstances in Reykjavík who becomes interested in his (almost) kinsman, renowned Icelandic singer Garðar Holm. But the plot of the story is very much by the by. The beauty of this book is in the characters, the atmosphere and the language. The translation by Magnus Magnusson is marvellous.

• • •