Book report for October 2024

Two histories and one terrific novel this month. All worth reading, though The Wolf Age may require prior interest to hold one’s attention.

Because I expect a call to join the Trump cabinet any day now, I must make a full financial disclosure in anticipation of a contentious confirmation hearing: If you follow a link and buy a title from my store on Bookshop.org, I receive a modest commission. Quite modest when compared to the off-books travel enjoyed by US Supreme Court justices, but still, one wishes to be aboveboard in all aspects of one’s life.

Thank you for reading, dear Jogglers. In the next few days, a new essay on beauty as a fourth state of matter will land in your inboxes. Now that I’ve announced it, I will have to finish it. See what I did there?

Completed

• The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire, Tore Skeie. A history of the continual warfare, decade after decade, between the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavian warlords. The flood of Scandinavian names bewilders, but the reader comes away with a vivid impression of an age at once familiar from pop culture and alien in its reality.

• The Notebook: A History of Writing and Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen. A lively anecdotal history of the humble notebook. That might not sound promising, but the development of this most basic of intellectual technologies is more interesting than I’d assumed. As he approaches our modern time, Allen loses a bit of the story’s drive, but he’s written a fun book all the same.

• Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes. This is my third Julian Barnes, and I’ve become a fan. Superb prose, exemplary intelligence, creative verve, he brings it all. Flaubert’s Parrot is a nearly plotless novel about a retired doctor and amateur Flaubert scholar in France to visit various landmarks and think about his favorite author. Sounds like thin material, but not in Barnes’s hands.

In progress

• Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez
• The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, Elizabeth Rush

Purchased

• North Woods, Daniel Mason
• Fire, George R. Stewart