On a chilly, damp afternoon in London recently, just after Christmas, I spent a really enjoyable few hours walking around a part of London’s South Bank.  It occurred to me afterwards that it might also be a great itinerary for anyone visiting that part of London over the next few months.  Your interests will have to be similar to mine – art, food, London pubs, local history, and good theater – but who doesn’t love those things?  Here’s the tour I recommend, all done on foot and several miles in total.  I’ve inserted a few links for further information if you’re interested.

• The Radical Eye at Tate Modern.  This exhibition showcases a small fraction of Elton John’s wonderful collection of photography.  I’ll be writing a separate post on this shortly, so it’s enough to say here that this is an unmissable show if you find your self in London before May 2017.
• Borough Market.  I know, this wonderful food market hasn’t been a hidden gem for many years and it’s often very crowded, but it has got to be experienced at least once.  Try to avoid the temptation to taste what’s on offer here if you’re planning to follow some of my later recommendations!
• The Market Porter.  This historic pub at the heart of Borough Market featured in one of the Harry Potter films, but its attraction for me is the range of real ales.
• Bermondsey Street.  This street is the heart of a neighborhood rich in history and now very much gentrified and re-born as a center for contemporary art.  (We passed David Schwimmer, aka Ross from Friends, during our stroll in Bermondsey).  It’s well worth a look to see the historic storefronts, the White Cube gallery, and the lovely church of St. Mary Magdalene.
• The Woolpack.  There are dozens of places to eat and drink on Bermondsey Street, but The Woolpack is an especially cute pub with an excellent seasonal menu and some great ales.
• The Garrison is that rare thing, a gastropub that has retained a lovely, comforting neighborhood vibe.  Don’t miss its excellent food.
• Nice Fish.  After far too much food and drink, I needed the 3 mile walk along the Thames that took me from Bermondsey to the heart of the West End to see Nice Fish, a play starring Oscar-winner Mark Rylance.  Set on a frozen Minnesota lake, it has echoes of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter and is very funny.

A simple, but wonderful day in a lovely neighborhood in the world’s greatest city.

My final book of 2016 proved to be one of the best.  Judas, the most recent novel by Amos Oz, is set in Jerusalem in the late 1950s.  Shmuel Ash, a young biblical scholar, forced to abandon his studies and recently jilted by his girlfriend, finds work as a resident caregiver for a cantankerous old scholar called Gershom Wald. Living with them in the old Jerusalem house is Atalia Abravanel, the widow of Wald’s only son and the daughter of a disgraced Zionist leader.

The novel works brilliantly on so many levels.  It’s a tender love story and a sensitive coming-of-age tale.  It’s also a piercing, deeply intelligent study of betrayal and of the soul of the state of Israel.  There is some beautiful writing here, with passages I found myself re-reading several times.  It’s a story that stays in the mind long after you turn the final page, much like a biblical tale from which the novel draws its title. It was my first novel by Oz and now I can’t wait to read others.

With this wonderful novel my reading in 2016 comes to a close.  It started in Saxon England in a mysterious landscape of ogres and warriors and ended in Jerusalem in 1959.  Where will next year’s books take me?

2016 wasn’t a great year for reading.  Having said back in January that I would follow my nose when it came to choosing books, it turned out my nose wasn’t always reliable.  Looking back on the reviews written for this blog, I find I simply chose too many books that proved to be disappointing and mediocre.  Ho hum.  I hope for more discernment next year.

Just as I expected, fiction dominated, accounting for 80% of everything I read.  Several good novels are on the list – Addlands by Tom Bullough and Helen Dunmore’s Exposure, for example – and one very good one (Mothering Sunday), but many were fodder, entirely forgettable.  Biography was more rewarding in 2016 with outstanding accounts of the lives of Ted Hughes and Kenneth Clark among my favorites of the year.

A truly great book changes you forever, altering your perspective and outlook or moving you intensely. I was privileged to read one of those in 2016, Night by Elie Wiesel.  That, without question, was my book of the year.

Now it’s time for some reading resolutions for 2017.  Braver choices.  More unknown and young writers, voices from other worlds. Maybe it’s the year for some of the great authors of the past whom I’ve wholly or largely neglected: Thomas Mann, Evelyn Waugh, Tolstoy, Katherine Mansfield, or Virginia Woolf?  Isn’t it finally time to read Proust?  Less fiction, and especially contemporary fiction, more biography, history, and poetry.  Watch this space!

Exploring an unfamiliar neighborhood is one of my favorite things to do when I travel.  All the better if it’s a neighborhood that draws few other visitors.  I spent a little time recently in the 12th arondissement of Paris, a district with few attractions on a typical tourist’s “must-see” list.  It has the Bois de Vincennes, L’Opéra de Bastille, and not much else, but I had a wonderful few hours threading my way through the mostly quiet streets of a mostly residential neighborhood.  On a chilly Wednesday evening in late November, many of the locals were sensibly holed up in small, unassuming bars and brasseries.  Others were checking out the cute, artisan stores in Le Viaduc des Arts.

If, like me, you find yourself getting hungry and thirsty wandering around Le 12eme, I recommend two places very highly.  Chez Habibi on Rue Traversière is one of those perfect, tiny wine bars that only Paris produces, and to round off your evening, head to Maguey on Rue de Charenton and check out their “mystery menu”.  You won’t be disappointed.