I had been coveting the monumental two-volume review of Freud’s work ever since Phaidon published it in 2018, but with a price tag of $500 I was unlikely to ever give in to the craving.  I must have dropped a few heavy hints along the way because these beautiful books showed up on my birthday this month.  I can’t imagine a more perfect gift.  With more than 600 pages and nearly 500 illustrations, this is a wonderful piece of publishing and an entirely fitting tribute to one of the greatest painters who ever lived.

The two volumes are arranged chronologically and begin with an insightful essay by Martin Gayford (who previously wrote a captivating account of sitting for a portrait by Freud).  The illustrations are simply sumptuous.  These are books to pore over, to return to time and time again, and to savor.

I know very little about Arabic literature and don’t recall ever having read anything by a Syrian novelist before starting Khaled Khalifa’s most recently published book.  Shame on me.

The dying wish of Abdel Latif is that he should be buried next to his sister in their native village of Anabiya. What would have been a simple enough request at any other time becomes in Syria’s civil war a terrible three-day odyssey for his children as they transport his remains from Damascus to the family burial site.  In a landscape shattered by years of violence, the siblings pick their way through one checkpoint after another, bribing or negotiating with soldiers and militia men loyal to the regime or rebel groups, and racing against time before the corpse begins to decay.

Death is Hard Work is a meditation on loss. Lost lives, lost loves, lost freedoms. Don’t read it to learn about what happened in Syria. Read it to learn about regret, disappointment, and loyalty.

What has happened in recent years in Syria will stand as one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our era, an episode of appalling brutality and cruelty, and an indictment of those Western governments that did little or nothing to stop it.  Khaled Khalifa refused to leave the hell that is Syria today, staying to be a witness to what happened in his country, and he has given us an important, beautiful, and sometimes darkly comic chronicle of what really happens in a time when evil prospers.

I almost never abandon novels before finishing them. I can’t remember the last time I did. It isn’t a matter of stubbornness.  I tend to choose books that have been recommended by friends or by reviewers and that generally has the effect of weeding out things I’m likely to end up hating. But then I bought Julie Orringer’s latest novel, The Flight Portfolio.

The signs were so positive.  A glowing review in The New York Times and a recommendation from a friend who knows me well and whose taste in novels I trust.  So, why did I dislike The Flight Portfolio so much, to the extent that I had to abandon it because every day felt like a miserable slog? Three reasons. First, the writing is often clunky, clichéd, and over-elaborate.  The author simply can’t resist extraneous adjectives and adverbs and inevitably chooses the most obvious ones. Second, the novel is far too long.  Cutting by a third would have improved it. Third, such a promising plot (the true-life extraction from Occupied France of artists, writers, and intellectuals threatened by the Nazis) was almost suffocated by a silly, romantic sub-plot. What do these mistakes have in common? A bugbear of mine: insufficient editing.  Far too many literary novels in my experience are being published without any obvious editing (or with an obvious lack of editing). The Flight Portfolio could have been so much better with judicious, expert editing.  Without it, it ended up bland, uninspiring, and slightly pretentious.

Kate Atkinson writes the kind of novels you gulp down greedily and quickly.  That’s especially true of her Jackson Brodie series, in which Big Sky is the fifth and most recent installment.  It’s a novel that zips along quickly, thanks to Atkinson’s wry, easy, slightly conversational style. And it’s precisely that style that’s the problem here.  Big Sky is about corruption in high places and more specifically about human trafficking and child abuse. Few subjects are as serious as that, yet Atkinson’s tone throughout is unwaveringly light and jocular.  It seemed hugely inappropriate and it spoiled completely my enjoyment of a novel by a writer I usually admire very much. I can only assume her intention was to make the horror of abuse even more horrific by setting it in a quiet seaside town and populating it with slightly clownish characters.  If so, her plan didn’t work.  The effect (on me in any case) was to trivialize an enterprise that destroys everything it touches and that’s inexcusable.

The term safari derives from the Kiswahili word for journey or expedition.  In recent years “going on safari” has become a slightly pretentious way of talking about something that for most tourists means little more than staring at and photographing wild animals from the comfort of an air-conditioned 4×4 or minivan. Safari is big business and a key money spinner for countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, and South Africa.  Go in high season to the Serengeti and the Okavango Delta and you’ll see traffic jams as well as wildlife. Like so many forms of mass tourism, safari is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand its economic importance has led governments to clamp down on poachers and that’s helped protect some endangered species. On the other side, hundreds of thousands of visitors in tens of thousands of vehicles have inflicted significant damage on wild habitats.

The Masaai Mara is one of the most popular safari destinations.  A thousand square miles of savannah grasslands dotted with acacia trees and with blue-tinted mountains on the horizon, it’s home to one of the Earth’s richest concentrations of wildlife. It’s a place of singular, wild beauty and environmental significance, a place that inspires and intimidates.  I went a few times in the mid-1980s when tourism in Kenya was still relatively undeveloped, setting up camp with a few friends and guided and protected by local Maasai tribesmen for a little money.  It’s a very different place today.  Dozens of lodges give accommodation to large numbers of visitors, especially in the high season, and scores of vehicles shoot around its roads and tracks looking for elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos and giraffes.  The experience can feel more than a little preposterous.  And yet there’s real magic to be found.  On a recent visit in the low season, I watched a hunting party of five cheetahs stalking their early morning prey, walked along the bank of the Mara river and saw crocodiles and hippos feasting on the carcasses of wildebeests who had drowned during the recent migration from Tanzania, and sat under an acacia tree watched by curious baboons.  And throughout those precious few days I felt so privileged to be in a place of such dramatic, extravagant beauty and to get close to so many wonderful creatures.

Perhaps I did a little good in those days. Contributing a little to an impoverished economy and adding myself to the crowd of visitors that reminds the Kenyan government that these precious places and animals need protection and conservation. But maybe I did a little damage also. Damage to those vulnerable habitats and damage with my carbon footprint.  Something to think about as I remember time spent in one of the most beautiful places in the world

The subtitle of Mark Boyle’s latest book – Tales from a Life Without Technology – gives a bare bones summary of its theme.  In the winter of 2017, he decided to unplug from the world and to live, initially for a year, without electricity and everything it powers. No telephone (mobile or other), no computer, no running water, no car. With the proceeds from a previous book, he bought a smallholding in rural Ireland and set about building a home (with hand tools only, of course) and making a new life. His motives for disconnecting changed over time but it was as much to do with savoring the world as it was about saving it.  He wanted to slow down, to connect with himself and his tiny corner of the Earth, and to push away what he had grown to see as the silly and dangerous distractions that for most of us make up more and more of the center of our lives.

Covering the four seasons of a single year, The Way Home charts Boyle’s new daily life and his reactions to it: building his home, fishing, growing vegetables, chopping wood, getting to know his neighbors. What seemed simple proved to be surprisingly complicated, less for practical reasons than for emotional ones. Abandoning phones and computers made it much harder to stay in touch with friends and family, for example.

Boyle is careful not to proselytize and accepts freely that his life choices are unlikely to appeal to many.  His tone is gentle, reflective, and nonjudgmental (though smugness occasionally creeps in), and it’s hard to conclude at the end of the book that he is anything other than a kind, sincere, and honest truth-seeker.  His reflections on what we’re doing to ourselves, our relationships, and our planet are often profound, alarming and true. We can’t all live like Mark Boyle but we ought to try. Trying might just be enough to change the world.

I spent a few days in Nairobi recently, more than thirty years after my last visit.  What I remember as a slightly sleepy backwater in the 1980s has been transformed in the intervening years into a vibrant city of more than 3 million people.  For most visitors taking vacations in Kenya, Nairobi is little more than a launching point to their safari destinations and it’s probably fair to say there isn’t much to detain them.  A quick visit to Nairobi National Park, the giraffe center, and the David Sheldrick conservation center for elephants, and they head off to the Masai Mara, the Aberdares, or wherever in search of animals in the wild.

Anyone with the time or inclination to dig a little deeper, however, will find a city of contrasts.  It’s certainly not a picturesque place.  At times it feels like a massive construction site, choked by traffic, with every road dug up and countless cranes on the skyline.  It’s also a city marked by horrible inequality.  The wealthy live in grand houses hidden behind high walls topped with razor wire, while outside the blind, disabled, and homeless weave between the cars begging for a few coins. The city’s energy is undeniable and it’s a place where the hustle is on 24 hours a day.  Nairobi’s citizens, so hospitable and warm, are quick to complain about corrupt politicians and the Chinese investors using the city as stepping-off point to the markets of East Africa. They deserve better leaders.

There are thousands of publishing brands that mean nothing to even the most dedicated book buyers.  A few, however, make that very rare breakthrough, and become associated in readers’ minds with particular qualities.  Knopf and FSG, for example, stand for me for excellence in literary fiction, to the point where I might buy one of their titles whether I know the author or not.  Among British readers, Faber & Faber has attained a similar status.  For decades it has stood as the preeminent publisher of poetry and literary fiction.  Its list is a roll call of some of the greatest writers of the 20th century: T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, Thom Gunn, Philip Larkin, Samuel Beckett, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Larkin, and many more. The founder’s grandson, Toby Faber, an accomplished author himself, has now written a wonderfully engaging and entertaining account of the company’s history.

The book strings together excerpts from letters and company memoranda, interspersed with explanations and occasionally wry commentary by the author, to tell the story of Faber & Faber from its foundation (originally as Faber & Gwyer) in 1924 to 1989. If that makes it sound dry, I can assure you it isn’t.  Founding a publishing business and running it for decades is hard and risky work, and there were several times in Faber’s history when its survival was threatened, but there was no shortage of fun and one of the enduring memories of reading this book is how committed the company’s leadership has been to publishing the best books, to staying independent, and to enjoying the ride.

There are so many gems from the F&F archive reproduced here, but I have a few favorites.  Even at a distance of more than seventy years, it’s painful to read the rejection letter sent to George Orwell by T.S. Eliot, a letter that deprived Faber not only of Animal Farm but also the chance to publish 1984. Ouch. The Faber reader’s initial assessment of the manuscript that became Lord of the Flies (“Rubbish and Dull. Pointless“.) might have been calamitous if the brilliant Charles Monteith hadn’t thought otherwise. The affectionate friendship between Geoffrey Faber and T.S. Eliot revealed in these pages is nothing short of a revelation to those of us who thought Eliot so buttoned-up as to be incapable of such displays of feeling.  His remarks at Faber’s memorial service are lovely.

F&F is fast approaching its centenary as an independent publishing company.  Anyone who knows anything about the books world will understand what’s required to reach such a milestone.  Luck, for sure.  The royalties the company continues to enjoy from the success of Cats was a piece of immense good fortune that kept Faber afloat in rough weather.  But luck alone is never enough.  Great authors and the ability to spot them and nurture them – that’s been the key to survival and occasional prosperity.  Long may it continue.

I wasn’t so naive to think that at 11:30 in the morning on a rainy Monday in June I would  be the only visitor to Van Gogh in Britain, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for a crowd so large that it was almost impossible to see the pictures.  When did looking at art become so popular? The problem has now become acute. The experience of visiting such exhibitions has become so uncomfortable and unsatisfying that organizers will have to take steps to reduce overall numbers or to spread them more evenly across a longer opening period. Unpalatable as it may be for galleries and museums, they will soon have no choice but to announce an exhibition as Sold Out, just as theatre and concert promoters have done for years.

After (partly) seeing Van Gogh in Britain, I had lunch with a friend who happens to be on the Tate’s board.  I wasn’t the first to complain to him about how it had become impossible to see works of art at these “blockbuster” exhibitions, so overcrowded had they become.  Although sympathetic, he explained that the enormous costs of mounting such exhibitions made it impossible to turn away paying customers in order to make the experience more comfortable and satisfying. Many of the obvious remedial measures are impracticable.  Galleries, dependent on the loan of pictures from other institutions around the world, are unable to hold on to items for long periods. Charging more (to reduce demand) is unfair to those on lower incomes, students and pensioners for example, and has more than a whiff of the elitism that institutions are rightly keen to avoid.  It’s a conundrum. All I can say is that unless it improves, I’m inclined to limit my gallery visits to less popular shows.  The irony wouldn’t be lost on Van Gogh, penniless and unrecognized in his lifetime.

After waiting patiently for the crowd to disperse, I finally found myself up close for the first time to a painting I had wanted to see for years, Prisoners Exercising.  And yes, that one encounter made the whole experience worthwhile.

I admit it freely.  Dublin is not my favorite city.  It’s not even one of my favorite cities. Just saying that out loud makes me feel better because Dublin is one of those places that tells you continually and none too subtly that you ought to be enjoying yourself.  Fun (with several exclamation points) is what Dublin is all about. And it’s a particular form of fun – the craic – the type of fun you have with a pint of something in front of you. Now I like a good pub as much as anyone (and there are some excellent ones in Dublin), and I agree with Benjamin Franklin that beer is God’s way of telling us he loves us, but Dublin tries too hard.  Parts of the city center, and Temple Bar in particular , with its countless watering holes and restaurants, have become nasty and squalid to the point that no self-respecting Dubliner sets foot in the place in the evening, leaving it to the stag and hen parties instead.  I have a suspicion that all my Irish literary heroes – Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, and so on – didn’t flee Dublin because of its provincialism or intellectual narrowness, but because they felt guilty they weren’t enjoying themselves enough.

Having got that out of my system, I admit there’s still much to like in Dublin.  Just don’t try looking for those things on a Bank Holiday Monday, as I did on a recent business trip.  The Chester Beatty Library? Closed.  Ulysses bookshop? Shuttered.  Every third rate pub, restaurant, and tattoo shop was open, but not one of my favorite spots.  Even Christ Church Cathedral, open but now charging visitors €7, seemed to be testing my patience. I realize these are tough times for churches, but the velvet ropes blocking access to the nave were telling the pious and the penniless alike “Keep Out.  This isn’t a place of worship, it’s a tourist attraction”.

Dublin’s leaders have worked hard to attract tourists and maybe they have been too successful because the city was crowded during my stay.  As other small cities have discovered (Amsterdam, Venice, etc.), you make a pact with the devil when you commit to encouraging mass tourism.  Much is gained but much is lost also.