There are hundreds of thousands of new books published in the United States every year – probably a little over 300,000 in 2013, for instance, although exact figures are impossible to determine – and that places a great immovable weight on the head of any serious reader. That weight is always there, pressing down, and readers cope with it through various well-concealed surrenders. Some proudly say they only read nonfiction; others proprietorially claim all genre fiction is worthless; some stay so resolutely plugged into ‘the scene’ that they’ll only skim the latest novellas by authors under 30 living and smoking in Williamsburg. All of these dodges no doubt genuinely reflect personal likes and dislikes – but they’re also meant as built-in surrenders in the face of that 300,000-title onslaught.
I make similar dodges. For instance, I rule out whole categories of books as incapable of serious content: all health and exercise books, all cooking books, all craft manuals, all business books, all “self help” books, nine-tenths of the pabulum published by religious houses, all computer books, etc. And there are plenty of categories I mostly rule out as well: most sports books, most mysteries or thrillers, most children’s or teen books, most political books, and so on.
I’m no happier about these exclusions than I should be, especially since virtually every year at least a few books emanating from those categories prove to be, in fact, worth serious attention (there was a cookbook on one of my lists last year, for example, and there’s a sports book on one of my most important lists this year). Like any conscientious reader, I’m continually haunted by the thought of all the good stuff I’m missing, and this feeling actually increased in 2013 as my reading in the unbounded Wild West of self-publishing astronomically increased. It all boils down to a simple and mortifyingly humiliating fact: the more you know is out there, the more you know you won’t ever read it all.
I came closer to that unattainable goal in 2013 than I’ve done in any other year of my life. Pitifully, infinitesimally closer, but closer just the same. I read more newly-published books this year than I’ve read in any other year; I beat my tally in 2012 by a margin so significant I’m actually still inwardly reeling at the thought of it. In reaching that tally, I had all of my old advantages (I read very fast, I have well-taught powers of concentration, I require very little sleep) and one new one (I all but stopped working and devoted almost all of that freed-up time to reading), and as amazing as the final number is, it could have been more amazing still except for one reading habit of mine that I can’t shake and wouldn’t if I could: I love re-reading. I love revisiting books I read last year, or ten years ago, or half a century ago, and I love it so much that it represents a significant chunk of my annual reading (during the years in which I was mostly traveling, it tended to represent all of my annual reading, and wonderfully too).
And even when it comes to re-reading, the 2013 book-industry was happy to enable me! It was another banner year for literary reprints – so strong a year, in fact, that a list like this one is possible without a single recourse to the ever- expanding library of The New York Review of Books Classics line so slavishly followed, bought, chattered about, and even sometimes read by the rank and file of book-snobs throughout the English-speaking world. The NYRB line had some true gems in 2013 (I’m thinking particularly of Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook and The Hall of Uselessness, the collected essays of Simon Leys), and despite persistent design flaws (the covers, for instance, printed on the cheap, curl up like sardine-can lids after about six minutes, and the pages tend to leave a slight gluey residue), it very much deserves the Golden Calf status it’s been accorded by the literati. But even in this ocean allegedly being line-trawled by the Internet, there are still plenty of other reprint-fish in the sea! Here are the ten best from 2013:
10. Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington (Penguin Classics) – If one of the side-effects of the impending centenary of the First World War is the flushing-out of great fiction associated with that war, we’ll all be the beneficiaries, and this novel by Aldington – who fought in the war and as wounded on the Western Front – is one of the best, a hugely sad work that’s also shot through the with the sheer rage against cant that would later animate the author’s hilariously incendiary biography of Lawrence of Arabia. Penguin Classics, as always, is to be congratulated on a fine choice.
9. Her Privates We by Frederic Manning (Serpent’s Tail) – Lawrence of Arabia himself would have given the prize for WWI fiction not to Aldington but to Frederic Manning, who in 1929 printed privately his equally-scathing fictional treatment of the war under the title The Middle Parts of Fortune, Her Privates We. The good folks at Text Classics (a superb series reprinting Australian classics) issued Mannigs’ book in 2013 under the title The Middle Parts of Fortune; the choice at Serpent’s Tail was riskier, since Her Privates We was the title under which a chopped and bowdlerized version of the book was first published and by which that inferior version was known for years. This is the real text, however, and it’s as harrowing an account of the very personal stupidity of war as has been written.
8. Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green (University of California Press) – War forms the necessary backdrop for this great reprint too, Green’s superbly written and masterfully detailed study of the life and times of the great Macedonian world-conqueror. You can read my full review here
7. The Wise Men by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster) – Carping critics, of whom there were slightly more half a century ago than today, might well have said that ‘world conquest’ was also on the minds of the six men – Charles Bohlen, John McCloy, Robert Lovett, George Kennan, Dean Acheson, and Averell Harriman – who form the subject of this 1986 classic, although the exact opposite was really the case. Both the book’s authors have gone on to write many more best-selling and well-regarded books, but bless the crew at Simon & Schuster for keeping this essential work of 20th Century nonfiction alive and in bookstores.
6. West with the Night by Beryl Markham (North Point Press) – And speaking of essential works of 20th Century nonfiction! Markham’s beautifully-written memoir (the second book on our list so far to be praised by Ernest Hemingway) belongs on any shortlist of such works, and it’s presented here in an attractive new paperback. You can read my full review here.
5. The Windward Road by Archie Carr (University of Florida Press) – While I was praising Carr’s wonderful natural history of sea turtles I made a quick side-note for all of you to read also The Windward Road, Carr’s utterly winning, unsentimental memoir of a lifetime spent on behalf of those great and fascinating creatures of the sea, and I second that urging now! We owe so much of our knowledge of – and sympathy for – sea turtles to Carr, and it’s very good of the University of Florida Press to remember his achievements with this handy reprint.
4. The Gil Kane Superman from DC Comics – And talk about handy reprints! Before this excellent hardcover volume of the Superman work of the great comic book artist Gil Kane, I had to make do with my moldering old individual stapled issues, some of which have grape jelly stains, many of which are filled with beagle-hairs, and all of which are showing distinct signs of age. In this one sturdy volume I can enjoy and re-read all of Kane’s surreal work in complete peace of mind. You can read my full review here.
3. Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation by Aldo Leopold (Library of America) – In 2013 the Library of America made some outstanding choices, and this volume, collecting not only Leopold’s hugely famous and successful Sand County Almanac but also a great heap of letters and speeches the ordinary reader would have had trouble finding conveniently anywhere else, was the best of them. You can read my full review here
2. Napoleon by Frank McLynn (Arcade Publishing) – Also far more conveniently found now, thanks to this lovely reprint from Arcade Publishing, is this 1997 biography of Napoleon by the mighty Frank McLynn (who published nothing new in 2013, the slug-abed). Even in just the last six years, there’ve been some heft new works published about Napoleon, but this volume, full of all McLynn’s signature scholarship and wit, stands right alongside them all. You can read my full review here
1. The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope (Oxford University Press) – But as worthy as all these other entrants are (and half a dozen more I could list, including the spate of JFK-related re-issues that sprang to life to cash in on – er, excuse me, to solemnly observe the 50th anniversary of that day in Dallas, foremost and best of which was Back Bay Books’ new edition of William Manchester’s The Death of a President), one stands above the others as the best reprint of 2013: this splendid set of Anthony Trollope’s hugely enjoyable “Palliser” series of novels, which wasn’t intended by its indefatigable author as a series (at least at first) and which has far more accurately been called the “Parliamentary” series, since the dangerous siren-call of election to that great body can be heard in the background of all these novels, calling some men on to their ruin and others to the highest of prizes. Among the former group would be one of Trollope’s most despicable villains, George Vavasor of Can You Forgive Her? … and one of his most intriguing villains, Ferdinand Lopes from The Prime Minister, and towering among the latter group is Plantagenet Palliser, the immensely wealthy and titled closest equivalent the series has to a main character (and standing even above him is his strong-willed and vivacious wife Glencora, the true star of these books and the most immediately lovable character in English literature since Elizabeth Bennet)(Indeed, so gravitational is she that the complications of an entire novel – The Duke’s Children, the final one in this set, happen only because she isn’t any longer around to sort them out with one flippant command). Trollope likely had no over-arching message for these books, and although there’s some merit in seeing them as an unconscious record if the slow, agonizing birth of 20th century England, the main reason to read them is the same as it’s always been: they’re thumping great reads – and they’ve never looked better, thanks to Oxford University Press.
