Books We Read in 2013 (Part 1)
Posted on 2013/12/16 , tagged as Simon Flynn
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2014 is nearly upon us! This week, the Icon Books team will be sharing with you two books that we’ve each enjoyed reading in 2013, including one book of our own. Let us know which books you’ve enjoyed this year in the comments or @iconbooks!
Stacey (Sales and Marketing Executive)
The Science Magpie by Simon Flynn was one of the first lead titles I got to work on here at Icon Books and it has been one of the most fun, from gifting our sales reps with magpie broaches to sending our in-house toy magpie to roam the Science Museum, and this year we published the paperback. I read The Science Magpie during my morning commute, engrossed in the wonderful collection of scientific facts, poems, anecdotes, stories and illustrations. I particularly loved the especially quirky titbits that I unfortunately didn’t get to learn in school, such as the geological time piece, real molecules with silly names (my favourite is Penguinone!) and Darwin’s list of the pros and cons of marriage. Whether you’re a science buff or just like to learn new facts, The Science Magpie will have something that’ll fascinate you.
I’d love to start reading more graphic novels and one that everyone told me I had to read was The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Maus became the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and it’s not difficult to see why. Art Spiegelman pieces together the harrowing story of his father’s experience as a Polish Jew surviving Hitler’s Europe, with minimalistic illustrations that manage to capture the harshness and terror that the family experienced. Spiegelman depicts Jews as mice, non-Jewish Polish as pigs and Germans as cats. Maus doesn’t just serve to be a history book but is a memoir; a story of one couple not only experiencing torture and starvation at the hands of the Nazis but disbelief as they are betrayed by members of their own family. Art Spiegelman sensitively captures his father’s anger and bitterness and puts it into context to deliver this honest and moving graphic novel.
Andrew (Sales and Marketing Director)
It’s not often, even working for a publisher exclusively focused on upmarket non-fiction, that you get to work on a book which unearths some genuinely new information about a key moment in history. But Peter Padfield’s Hess, Hitler and Churchill does – the most exciting parts of it cover Rudolf Hess’ flight to Scotland in 1941. Along with most other people, I’d understood this to be the lone flight of someone disaffected by the horrors of war and possessed by the strange (given his personal biography) though understandable (for most humans) idea to sue for peace with Britain. What the book shows is incredible evidence that Hess was actually flying on Hitler’s orders, with a plan to exchange withdrawal from occupied Western Europe with peace with the UK – that’s pretty amazing, but even more so is the evidence that this was all covered up on Churchill’s orders. Had the Americans – at that point, before Pearl Harbour, just an onlooker – got wind of this proposed deal, they would never have risked American lives to help the UK out.
Peter Padfield tells us this with just the right balance of careful, well-balanced research and the sense of drama that it can’t help have. It’s well-worth reading even if, like me, you feel you’ve almost had your fill of WW2 history over the past few years.
This year I’ve really gotten back into reading fiction and I think first among many highlights – which have included Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil and The Letter Bearer by Robert Allison (forthcoming from Granta next year and my big tip for all the prizes) – is Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner.
It’s a pretty short novel following a disaffected, unsure-of-himself twenty-something aspiring poet and hash-smoker as he lollops around Madrid. Lerner’s language is generally quite simple and unshowy but the novel soon takes on a lyrical quality and is impossible to put down. Very little happens, really, until near the end, but you find yourself nostalgic for your lost youth, wishing that all you had to do was sleep in parks and drink beer in warm evenings and think about poetry.
The cover uses – obliquely – of of my favourite paintings too, The Garden of Earthly Delights which hangs in the Prado in Madrid. Perfect for a chilly evening in England!
Stay tuned tomorrow for more books from the team!
