Books of the year, from indie presses

Deciding to put my money where my mouth was, in 2010 I only read books from independent presses. Excluding thin volumes of poetry, and children's picture books, I read 61 books. This is down on a normal year - Five Leaves' annual report (see last posting) makes it clear why. The year is not quite over but I know that the books I am due to read by the end of the year will not make it into my top ten, as they are for background research. I should confess the number does include three books from conglomerates - a William Trevor book I read to settle an argument (don't ask), a Stanley Middleton novel, because I wanted to remind myself what he was like and The Time Traveller's Wife, because I had to lead a discussion on it. There are some very big independents here - Bloomsbury being the most obvious, but they are members of the Independent Publishers' Guild, and Quercus. But I did say indies, not small indies. Here's my top ten - in no particular order. Not all were published in 2010.
* Bringing it all back home - Ian Clayton (Route) - a memoir of music, and working class life in Featherstone
* Just my type: a book about fonts - Simon Garfield (Profile) - stories about typesetting
* Once upon a country - Sari Nusseibeh (Halban) - Israel and Palestine, Nussebeibeh lives in East Jerusalem, and I read his book while staying down the road from his mother
* Even the dogs - Jon McGregor (Bloomsbury) - a novel, by the best fiction writer in the East Midlands
* The lowlife - Alexander Baron (Black Spring) - Hackney Jewish life in the 1960s, round the dog track
* Before the earthquake - Maria Allen (Tindall Street) - another Nottingham novelist. Her first novel, set in rural Italy a century ago
* A bookman's tale - Ronald Blythe (Canterbury) - not his best set of essays but many are still excellent
* Millennium Trilogy - Steig Larsson (Quercus) - cheating I know, but I read them one after another
* Common Cause - Francis Combes trans. Alan Dent (Smokestack) - the story of communism, in verse, on the basis that next time we'll do it better
* Depresso - Brick (Knockabout) - a graphic novel on depression; read it twice to spot the visual gags scattered throughout
runner up - White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)

Did I feel that I missed out by only reading books by indie presses for a year? Not really. But I would have read, and will soon start Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet, Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, and Stanley Middleton's posthumous A Cautious Approach. And, gritting my teeth, I'd better read The Finkler Question.

Back in the USSR

Andy Croft, a Five Leaves' regular, is also a publisher. Over at Smokestack he publishes thin volumes of verse by lefties from this country, from Eastern Europe and "the other America". Now we have a thick volume, 312 pages of poetry and a 313th page listing leftie poets and the like who made it possible. The volume is Common Cause by Francis Combes, ably translated from French by Alan Dent of Penniless Press. Massive in size, massive in scope, a study of communism the idea, over two millennia, and Communism in practice. Among those listed on page 313 is the Northern Region of the Communist Party of Britain which is nice of them as the book does not hold back in criticising what went wrong. Just as Rabbi Hillel could shorten the Torah to something like don't do to others what you find hateful for people to do to you, Rabbi Bradshaw could shorten this book to the slogan painted on a statue of Marx in Berlin after the Wall came down "We'll do better next time". The slogan appears in the poem "Berlin '89". As a set of very short essays on ideas, people, places and events the book works wonderfully. Some purists might argue with the work as poetry, but some purists wouldn't know a trade union banner if it came up and bit them. Anyone who likes Bert Brecht (who makes a cameo appearance) will like this book. You can order copies from www.inpressbooks.co.uk/common_cause_francis_combes_i022000.aspx