Good Reads '92

An old reading list from 1992 takes me back like a well-loved mix tape.

It’s that time when the rest of the family are setting reading goals for the new year. They try to encourage me to participate in their GoodReads listings, so we can share our progress against the target. 52 books! 100 reads! 2% achieved! That kind of thing.

I will no doubt agree to join in, to help the cause, but will fall down after three weeks.

Listing the books I have read, or the films that I have seen, requires a level of fastidiousness that I can’t muster. It is the same reason that I can’t handle contact lenses: far too fiddly to maintain.

It probably has something to do with my belief that those lists are more about Trophy Hunting, rather than the pleasures of reading. It is the sort of activity that it promoted by the productivity gurus on YouTube, you know, the ones that think your life would be enhanced by keeping a notebook. Who cares about the number of books you read, other than you?

SCRAPPY BOOK

I didn’t always have this attitude about list of reading accomplishments.

I recently found a scrappy piece of paper that measured what I read in 1992. It was obviously close by my side as the year unfolded as it has a hole for a drawing pin. Each book read, diligently scrawled on the list.

Looking at it now, I realise that this reading list reveals a lot about me and what I was doing at the time. Each title from the list transports me back in time to particular moments, thinking about the physical shape of the book, the illustration on the cover and where I was reading it. For example, I was on my break at B&Q, the DIY superstore, in a red boiler suit, tucked away in the corner reading Notes from the Underground to make me look more interesting. None of my fellow workers were impressed. Instead they mocked my inability to master the tannoy system, “I thought you had a degree in Communication Studies?”

I was the first of my family “in a hundred generations” to go to University, so I was still riding on the coat-tails of being a graduate life. I was totally obsessed with the campus novels of David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury. ‘Nice Work’ in particular led me to read more of Mrs Gaskell. Are campus novels still a thing? or is a genre that has disappeared like Magical Realism, which I was also keen to explore.

At this time, if I was asked, I would have said that my favourite author was Angela Carter. She had died in the February 1992 leaving an extraordinary legacy. She brought together the gothic, magic, hauntology, feminism and comedy in a unique mix that was always captivating to read. Her books probably aligned with my genre reading at the time which was the fashionable science fiction that was branded ‘slipstream’; where literary fiction hit SF to create cyberpunk with A levels. Simon Ing’s Hothead is probably the best example in this list, with its layered complexities, and experimentation it challenged genre conventions (and was a pretty difficult read).

I was reviewing for the British Science Fiction Association’s Paperback Inferno at the time, so there’s a few books on the list that reflect a more conventional approach to science fiction such as Arthur C Clark and Ben Bova. Reading that stuff was becoming more like a chore, I wanted my science fiction to be cutting-edge, and unreadable.

TORY TEA

This was also the year that the predictions of a Labour government, after 13 years of Tory rule, were confounded by John Major, a year into the job as PM, successfully winning another term for the Conservatives. I still shudder about it. At the time it felt like were never going to get an alternative government in my life-time.

In ‘92 I started to read all of Tony Benn’s diaries. He charted his political career through the 60s, 70s and the long opposition years in the 80s in private journal that always reads like it had the weight of history on its shoulders. I’d like to say that I developed a political insight from reading his meticulous entries about the machinations of party politics and negotiating personal political ideology within an hegemonic system that preserves the dominance of capital over the society. I can’t say I can recall much about it, other than his love of stamps (he delighted in being the Post Master General and consulting the Queen about stamp designs) and being impressed by his tea consumption.

READING WITH INTENT

At GROGMEET ‘23 there were various discussions about reading. It feels like everyone finds it difficult to find the time to read nowadays. Sure, doomscrolling your phone and responding to the latest notification, or falling down internet rabbit-holes very absorbing, but it rarely has the same sense of accomplishment as completing a book.

I managed to increase my reading last year by reading first thing in the morning, picking up a book instead of my phone while the kettle was boiling, and staying with it while drinking a cup of tea.

It sets you up for the day and, if you keep the book with you, it’s possible to find stolen moments here and there. Ten minute chunks can be found, if you look for them, just hide your phone in case it steals them.

The list in 1992 finished in August. Did that mean I stopped reading? Well, I did get married a month later. It might be that the ‘avenue of pleasure’ was closed, however it is more likely that it was unpinned and packed away when I moved house to resurface 32 years later. It’s not an excuse I can use with my Good Read failures.

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