"The Best Minds of my Generation," by Allen Ginsberg

Non-fiction, 2017

Write up of 1977 university course, surveying some of the Beat Generation's most celebrated practitioners. A curious, patchy, though ultimately rewarding mixture of biography (which is great) and literary criticism (a little less so - though probably something which would best work in an actual lecture). Sections on Jack Kerouac are particularly good, although the overall sense is of a serious look at a period of great creative energy and excitement, with boundaries pushed in fiction and poetry.

"The Forensic Records Society", by Magnus Mills

Novel, 2017

A book, like others by the author, in which a scene is set - quite an odd, quirky but essentially familiar, humdrum scene - and then nothing really seems to happen in quite brisk, glorious fashion. The establishment, growth and fall of different shades of seven inch vinyl appreciation and their nuances and power struggles within and between give this novel more of an allegorical feel than some of its predecessors. This is glorious stuff indeed; easy, odd, perplexing in places and, for all its inbuilt mundanity, hugely entertaining.

"4321," by Paul Auster

Novel, 2017

Epic, sprawling account of the journey into adulthood of Archie Ferguson, or more accurately, the four alternative Archies, determined by events and subsequent consequences. While the writing is excellent, this is a hefty tome which promises more than it delivers, with Auster's penchant for coincidence and meta-fictions relegated behind more straightforward episodic story telling which smoulders without ever fully igniting. The attention to history is detailed, though again, at times, feels just a little claustrophobic.