My Favourite Books of the Year 2021
My Favourite Books of the Year 2021 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 15 December 2021 2021 has been a dramatic year - defined by COVID and the incompetence and deceit of Boris Johnson’s Tory administration. For myself, the year was divided between the first eight months on Glasgow’s Southside followed by moving to Kirkcudbright for the rest of the year and beyond. That entailed packing eighty plus boxes of books, then unpacking them and putting them on newly built shelves – as well as thinning them out. Unconnected to all this (so it is claimed!), within two months of moving
My Favourite Books of 2020
My Favourite Books of 2020 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 16th 2020 Since 2014, I have compiled an annual list of my books and publications of the year (as well as music), and for the first time this year have undertaken it for Scottish Review. My rules for inclusion are that I have read the book over the past year and think it worth commending; I have a bias towards books published in the past twelve months but include some older titles as I have read them during this year. Section One: Scotland Scotland: General Murray Stewart Leith
My Favourite Books of 2019
My Favourite Books of 2019 Gerry Hassan December 22nd 2019 This is a list of my favourite books of the year. It is the fifth year in a row I have done this – and undertaken separate book and music lists – the latter coming in the next day. It is a totally subjective and idiosyncratic list: made up things I have read, come across, been involved in or inspired by and which have stopped me and made me think. The biggest reason I do these lists is for my own enjoyment: looking back and reflecting on reading and listening,
My Favourite Books of 2018
My Favourite Books of 2018 December 22nd 2018 Gerry Hassan This is a list of my favourite books of the year. It is a totally subjective and idiosyncratic list: made up things I have read, come across, been involved in or inspired by and which have stopped me and made me think. There is a bias towards books out this year but as it is my list and a reflection of what inspired me it is a deliberate mixture of old and new. This is the fourth year in a row I have done this kind of selection and recommendations
My Favourite Books of 2017
MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2017 December 15th 2017 Here is a selection of my books of the year. By its nature, this is subjective - made up of books I have read, enjoyed and been impressed by, and isn’t thus an attempt to comprehensively cover every subject. While the vast majority of books listed were published this year, there are a few from late 2016, and a couple published before then. Scotland: My Favourite Books of the Year James Robertson, Michael Marra: Arrest This Moment, Big Sky Press This is a beautifully produced book on a precious talent -
My Favourite Books of 2016
MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2016 December 19th 2016 The political upheavals of 2016 will be captured for many years to come through books and publishing. I enjoyed my wide reading over the year, while still feeling that events and crises were racing ahead of publishers and writers. I revelled in researching and writing my own book - Scotland the Bold – on the country, its politics, culture and ideas and prospects for change. Writing at book length always gives you permission and discipline to read widely – and beyond narrow subject categorisation – which is a joy. Anyway, without further
My Favourite Books of 2015
MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2015 December 24th 2015 NEW BOOKS: SCOTLAND Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided, Joe Pike, Biteback A brilliant access all areas account of the chaos of the ‘Better Together’ campaign in the indyref. To think there was an even more Armageddon-ish‘Project Fear’! Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland: Male Homosexuality, Religion and Society, Jeffrey Meek, Palgrave Macmillan At long last a serious study of Scottish gay culture (focusing just on gay men) and in particular the period between Wolfenden (1957) and decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England
What Gerry’s Reading
Here is a wee selection of some of the things I have been reading: Momus: The Book of Scotlands An imaginative tour de force from the idiosyncratic and fabulous singer-songwriter. Momus outlines one hundred and fifty fictionalised Scotlands of the past, present and future. Some are no more than a line or two, some are short, crazed essays. There is so much to choose from here that is hilarious and revealing; in particular I like the 1950s story of Alan Lomax and Alfred Kinsey touring the land studying the sex habits of the Scots fiddler; it all sounds so plausible!
What Gerry’s Reading
Here are some of the books that in the last couple of weeks I have been reading: Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, University of Chicago Press 2007 Hayek is one of the two great bogeymen of the New Right (the other being Milton Friedman) and this is Hayek’s most famous and influential book. It is actually a powerful and convincing case against the tyranny of the state and collectivism, and a book whose eloquence and logic was widely recognised when it was first published in 1944 by even left-wingers such as George Orwell. And this despite
What Gerry’s Reading
Sue Palmer, 21st Century Boys: How Modern Life is Driving Them Off The Rails and How We Can Get Them Back on Track Sue Palmer is the one-woman force that brought us ‘Toxic Childhood’, a powerful and wonderful polemic about how we relieve the modern pressures piling up on parents and children. 21st Century Boys sees her bring her mixture of good old-fashioned ‘commonsense’, impatience and radicalism to what has gone wrong with boys and how they are portrayed. Palmer believes in the power of play, but ‘free play’, not the ‘structured play’ of policy-makers and is damning of the
