Another year-end review, this time books I've admired

Around this time of the year many people rush into print or go on line or in front of the TV camera with their pronouncements about the 10 best books, best movies, best hamburgers or whatever, of the past year. I seem to have acquired a reputation as a reader and get asked for my ideas about books worth reading, so I'll have a go at compiling my own very short list.  I could use posts on this blog to jog my memory but I don't need to because the outstanding books are unforgettable.  In approximate order - only approximate because they are in different categories - here are my top five books:

The better angels of our nature, Historical social and behavioural science, by Steven Pinker
Bring up the bodies, historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn by Hillary Mantel
Joseph Anton, a memoir of life under a Fatwa by Salman Rushdie
Mr g, a metaphysical novel about creation by Alan Lightman
A man of parts, a fictional biography of HG Wells, by David Lodge

I'll add an outstanding novel that I've reread this year for the second time, Cutting for Stone, about the intertwined lives of people with roots in India but living in Addis Ababa, by Abraham Verghese.  I've discussed almost all of these books in posts on my blog  I could add a dozen or two dozen more, some light, some heavyweight. Alexander McCall Smith's latest episode in the life of Isobel Dalhousie, editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics and her family and friends in Edinburgh flagellates all my nostalgia for that lovely city; Neil Turok's Massey Lectures on cosmology and much else stretched my mind comfortably until he left me struggling out of my depth in the last few pages of the final lecture. Ian McEwan's latest novel, Sweet Tooth is up to his usual excellent standard, confirms his place as one of the best, perhaps the very best, of contemporary British novelists. Annabel Lyon's follow-up after her prize-winning novel about Aristotle's life during the period when he was tutor to Alexander the Great is another very good novel about Aristotle's daughter Pythias, giving the author a chance to ventilate about the status of girls and women in Hellenist Greece 3 centuries before our era - not much different from the status of girls and women in modern Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. JK Rowling's very adult novel, A Casual Vacancy, is an excellent social - and political - study of almost uniformly unpleasant people in a small English town, a dark but believable story that focuses mainly on the youths of the town, randy, sexually active, amoral, unprincipled. Only one character seems to possess a spark of human decency, and she comes to a bad end. I wish JK had created at least one character like the youngsters who give me hope for the future.

There is much more to say about several of my top 5 + 1. Steven Pinker provides good evidence to support his claim that violence among humans has declined in the past 500 years. He attributes this to increasing empathy of humans for one another. I've reflected a great deal on changes in human values during my lifetime; some of my reflections and speculation about reasons for changes in values have been subjects for posts on this blog. My conclusions, although tentative, accord with Pinker's. I could put it even more simply. As knowledge grows, so does empathy. Pinker's book is a very important contribution to our understanding of the human condition, and offers some guidelines on ways we could enhance the human condition further. Unfortunately it's unlikely that any action towards this end will materialize. National leaders have other priorities than reducing violence and enhancing empathy, and the slightest hint that achieving such aims might require investment by what these leaders describe as "taxpayers" probably dooms the suggestion before it is even made. As I wait impatiently for Hillary Mantel's third novel in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and his times flashes of memories from Wolf Hall, the first volume, and Bring up the Bodies, the second volume, bubble to the surface. These are two superb novels, both worthy recipients of their Booker Prizes. They are much more than historical novels. They are political, psychological studies as well as meticulously researched histories of Tudor times in England.   I'm sorry I gave away my copy of Wolf Hall, because I'd like to reread it, even though with my short remaining lifetime I probably shouldn't allow myself the luxury, as I've just done for instance with Cutting for Stone, and will doubtless do again before long with other much-loved books.

I got much more from my second reading of Cutting for Stone no doubt because it was more leisurely,  more reflective than first time. I noticed among other things the son's relationship to his father, much like my relationship to my father, and the subtle yet profound differences between Ethiopians and Eritreans. And the profound differences between the front-line New York hospital where Marion Stone works, and the luxurious Boston hospital where his father works. I am more convinced than ever that this novel will become a classic.