Books of 2017 Part 2: 40-31

40) I’ll Take You There – Joyce Carol Oates

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This is a strange and somewhat disjointed narrative overall, but compellingly written. Oates begins with flourishing brush strokes, painting huge amounts of detail in her descriptions of a college campus and the sorority house that our narrator resides in. Piece by piece she reveals aspects of our narrator's past, her psychology and the strong, accurate pointillist detail suddenly gets rambly and unfocused as our narrator's mind gets cluttered and overwhelmed. There are three sections to the narrative, each one quite distinct and throughout, it's hard to get full traction on who she is - possibly not helped by the fact that she never gives her name - and the final sentence of the book actually gives a final little twist to the character and why she has been recording the memoir in first person. It's wonderful writing, but I was left a bit confused and unenlightened by the overall narrative arc. Is it semi-autobiographical? I feel like it has to be, to make any sense. Otherwise the lack of real elucidation would be seen as a weakness of the story rather than a sly trick. I'm a bit undecided but I was engrossed throughout.

39) Aiding and Abetting – Muriel Spark

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Trust Muriel Spark to take a bit of folklore and weave an interesting story around it. In this case she takes as her subject the character of Lord Lucan, who infamously accidentally murdered his children's nanny (thinking she was his wife) then tried to murder his wife before going on the run for the rest of his life. Spark introduces us to not one, but two Lord Lucans, who both visit a psychiatrist in Paris. The psychiatrist who becomes our protagonist is herself under an assumed identity to escape her own nefarious past as a religious con artist, and she suspects the two Lord Lucans (are either of them genuine? Which one?) are in league and trying to blackmail her. What ensues is a bit of a caper, as two old acquaintances of Lucan seek to hunt him down while the psychiatrist tries to escape her own past. At its heart this is a discussion about criminality in its various forms, the life of a criminal trying to escape their past, and the various degrees to which people will cover for their friends and others of their 'set'. It's a little vacuous towards the end, maybe, but it's otherwise very entertaining and quite intriguing.

38) Party Going – Henry Green

#FinishingOffMyBookshelf

So I finally finished my Henry Green book; I think I mentioned this book in last year’s writeup of Living, but I bought this three-novels-in-one package due to the first part, Loving, being part of TIME’s top 100 that I read a few years back. So after tackling Living last year, this finally polished it off. This is quite a fun read, definitely the least of the three in terms of its importance, though. It more like a Green sketch than a full-fledged story, with a Murdochean cast of characters who are stuck in a railway hotel when fog prevents their journey abroad. The reason it feels like a sketch is simply that it doesn’t draw out the characters quite as much as the other two Green novels in this volume, and feels more of a light portrait, raising questions then quite quickly answering them and not leaving much ambiguity. Because of the large cast of characters as well, none of them really go through as many vicissitudes as in his other work, they just go through some turns and come out the other side feeling clarity or possibly refreshed, rather than completely revolutionised. It's quite a light-hearted, curious but ultimately shallow sketch of rich people behaving badly under captivity.

37) As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

#ClassicsIShouldRead

So this is the last for me to read of what I'd consider ‘essential Faulkner’, for those who would have themselves an essential Faulkner list, and it's quite a relief. He just has a way of writing that somehow combines a bit too much southern drawl and lingo with a bit too much stream of consciousness and elusive modernism. This one is no exception but thankfully this, unlike some others, has a pretty clear plot and it's kind of an affecting one that also lends itself to some dark humour, which I always enjoy. I'd put this up with The Sound and the Fury in terms of my favourites, just because the tone of this is one that resonates well with me: the story is of the days up to and following the death of Addie Bundsen, and her family's mission to take her body miles down the road to bury her in Jefferson (MS?) as per her wishes. It's in many ways a southern Gothic novel, with the characters all having aspects of the grotesque, while having this strange sympathetic persona as well. I do find that Faulkner's prose takes me quite far out of the moment because it's so authorial and self-conscious, and this narrative is written in a very choppy way, with characters taking turns to tell the next part from their perspective. With some exceptions too, there's a fair similarity between them all so it feels like a clunky modernist device shoe-horned in rather than a really necessary way to give different aspects of the tale. I like the story, and I like the humour and I like the pathos, but I genuinely wish it were delivered in a more straightforward way, with a consistent voice and none of Faulkner's elusiveness. It just becomes an effort in reading and it could be more engaging. I guess Faulkner’s a writer who rewards closer reading, but also demands it.

36) Marcovaldo – Italo Calvino

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It took me a while to get into this, because the first couple of stories don't quite convey Calvino's wild imagination; plus the contemporary, everyday setting seems like a confined space for him to operate in. But a series of really excellent bits of satire of late twentieth century consumerism - starting with "The Moon and Gnac", about the bottom four letters of a neon sign advertising a cognac brand that outshines the night sky - gain some great momentum. His opening disclaimer that some of the stories are set in the Italy of neo-realist cinema helped me to acquaint myself with the settings and imagine Marcovaldo, the protagonist of the stories, as an impoverished de Sica character. There's a lot of really Calvino-esque savage irony about the big corporations and their various effects on ordinary people. The stories that don't have that satirical element - even those with humorous irony - are less successful, but in its best moments this can compete with the best moments of the Cosmicomics.

35) Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne

#ClassicsIShouldRead

This is an honest, good old-fashioned adventure story. My first time reading Verne and I'd have to describe his writing style as serviceable. I find him in many ways superior to the similarly minded H G Wells, simply because his characters here (with the exception of the preternaturally reliable Icelandic guide Hans) are both scientifically minded, so the action and dialogue are all rooted in scientific theory, while the action as they go down is all centred around their observations and taking note and arguing over theories about gravitation and geology, and so forth. At times it certainly feels a bit academic given how fantastical and far-fetched is the premise itself, although the action scenes are effective in keeping me engaged. It feels like Verne maybe ran out of imaginative steam at one point as well, because it feels like there’s more in the premise to explore but instead he finds an escape route (oh you better believe that pun was intended) and takes it quite quickly. There's definitely some interesting ideas and interesting descriptions (I was more nostalgic for Iceland though than completely engaged in the centre of the earth) but I don't know if it really explored all the ideas it could have and, like a lot of Wells that I’ve read, it fell a bit short.

34) Lost in a Good Book – Jasper Fforde

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More madcap fun from Fforde. It starts out intriguingly, with a whole lot of different storylines that follow on from The Eyre Affair (my #24 book of 2015), and it wasn't long before I started wondering what, ultimately, would turn out to be the plot here. Is it Thursday's internal affairs issues? The repeated plot to kill her? Something to do with her uncle's retirement? The trouble with the new, arguably improved, ending of Jane Eyre? It's both all and none of these, as it takes a couple of weird hairpin turns - first her husband is 'eradicated' from existence, then she is apprenticed to the enforcement of order & plot in the world of fiction under Miss Havisham (yes, that Miss Havisham). And, in short, the whole book becomes a bit of a hot mess about halfway through. As it turns out, part of the reason is that Fforde has no interest in tying up loose ends in this book; it's all part of an ongoing world and franchise creation, so only one of the plots (oh, I forgot to mention, the world is also going to end in a few days) is resolved by the end, and even the conclusion of that story isn't especially conclusive. it's fun, it's wildly imaginative, there are plenty of wry meta- literary and intertextual jokes (I'm so glad I'd read Great Expectations before this, as it would otherwise be completely spoiled for me), but it's an annoyingly convoluted read that feels unsatisfying because there's just too many story threads and not one feels like it's run its course. I know I'm meant to want to pick up the next in the series now, but I just wish he could have been more judicious in his plot construction so that some of those periphery threads didn't feel as intrusive and didn't muddle the faltering central plot.

33) The Idea of Perfection – Kate Grenville

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I don't really get the idea of this book. There's a certain sweetness to it, I guess, in some ways, but the sweetness that it has feels kind of assumed rather than earned. For one thing, the central relationship here, between two cityfolk sent to a small regional town for separate jobs, seems to centre around the personalities of awkwardness vs guardedness, and their connection feels like it's based on an inability to communicate. As such I kind of enjoyed the unassuming, unlikely connection that they make but I didn't ever really feel I understood their characters, and I didn't really get any depth to them. But then really the key character here really isn't a person but the small country town of Karakarook, the townspeople, how they interact and differ and how they all form a very tight community despite their differences. The subplot romance felt to me quite cynical and I also struggled to find closure in it as it didn't really grow into anything laudable, or for that matter, romantic. And in all honesty apart from it being part of the whole small town with no secrets and maybe a bit of the narrative of the ‘outsider’, it felt like a bit of an extraneous sideline that didn't need to be there. I feel like Grenville, despite her humanity, has a quite inefficient writing style, with a whole lot of description and elaboration that doesn't really serve an extrinsic purpose. I feel a lot like the sweetness exists purely in the plot itself and the way it's all told seems quite impersonal in the end.

32) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith

#SamFindsSomethingToArgueWithHisMotherAbout

I picked this up on a whim; or rather, on a whim I was looking for bestselling 'popcorn' type books, so I was actually looking through Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, etc. but I didn't really know where to start with them (Clancy's most iconic film adaptations weren't there), but this one seemed like a nice obvious choice. I know this is particularly popular among my Mother and her tea set so I'll need to be careful in how I phrase that this book was rubbish, since she's the only reader of my blog. No, I am joking, it's not rubbish. What it is though is very populist and digestible. Firstly there's a niceness and a wholesomeness to all of this. Having said that, it's not like Mma Ramotswe inhabits a universe where bad stuff doesn't happen; this book contains murder, rape, domestic abuse, so it acknowledges bad things happening but never dwells on them, which is a very digestible way of reading about things so you can feel like you’re in the real world but just a particular real world that’s easy to handle and inhabit. Generally, too, it's all stuff that happened in the past, with the outlook now bright and full of the wisdom that comes with experience so it almost makes rape, domestic abuse into an optimistic thing since after it’s all happened everybody becomes a stronger and wiser person. It's also digestible because it's essentially a collection of short detective stories, so you don't need to give it full attention to follow twists and turns; each mystery is solved promptly and satisfactorily in a half-hour prime time story length. And the one continuous storyline and the bigger, less comical and digestible crime that runs through the book (spoiler alert) ends up being wrapped up in a very nice, wholesome way where the good people thrive and the bad people get punished but also punished in a non-vengeful, wholesome kind of way. It is enjoyable though, so even though I look on it as clearly devourable by the masses and thus simplistic, it's undeniably entertaining, it's fun, and it's uplifting as well. So I don't begrudge this anything (except for maybe the very end, which seems like a strange and abrupt character turn and I don't really agree with where it goes; it feels like a cop to populism and it could have been as uplifting without that particular outcome) and I'm pleased t   o have read it, but I do like to be challenged a bit more in my reading so I won't be rushing to get more Alexander McCall Smith.

31) Minority Report – Philip K Dick

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This book – and this is a criticism of the editors/publishers and marketing team in particular, not the author - gives a quite explicit, unmistakeable impression that Minority Report is one long novel, despite it being a short story and this book being a collection thereof: there's no mention of any other stories anywhere on the cover, and the entire blurb is entirely and explicitly about the story of Minority Report. The first clue comes from the contents page, but even then the story titles could well be chapter titles. Anyway, it's a minor annoyance but it definitely felt like I had been duped a bit, when the entire story of Minority Report finished and suddenly I was in a different world. I also was a bit shaken by it, since I know the film so well and the story here launched so quickly into the heart of a slightly different story; I felt it had a lot of development to go through and the pace was so fast – since it only had 40 pages to run rather than the 200 that the book cover and blurb made me expect. Anyway, that out of the way, there's plenty of good stories here. The collection also contains We Will Remember it for You Wholesale, the basis for Total Recall (I didn’t read that far down the contents page or it would have clicked for me earlier that this wasn’t a novel), which is also very entertaining, and for a first time read I enjoyed War Game, a story about a team of toy testers who investigate alien constructions to ensure they're safe/suitable for earth children. Some of them have a better world than others, and I also feel like Dick's imagination and mise-en-scene is far better than his writing generally, and even in some cases his science (there are far more mentions of 'tape' in these stories than even now resembles reality at all). Stories like What the Dead Man Said had potential but I felt the story leapt ahead clumsily with gaps in the plot filled with really clunky exposition-via-internal monologue, while Oh to be a Blobel feels like a really awkward attempt at a sci-fi comedy. His characters and dialogue are all just tools, so the success ultimately just comes down to how engaging the machinations of the plot are. And while Minority Report - the film - made countless improvements on both the plot twists and the world/mechanics of the story itself, I also feel it's the most successful and philosophically intriguing of the worlds created here, although editorially the volume is well book-ended with the two well-known and engaging premises. I wouldn't say I can easily imagine film adaptations of many of the others (according to the Goodreads link, three have been adapted although I'm unsure what the third is).

Books of 2017 Part 1: 50-41

This year, despite a reduced train commute and a small creature constantly moving and yelling and throwing things around my house, I managed to get through 61 books. As I do every year, I'll be counting down each one through to #11, then taking an abrupt turn to count up my bottom 11 from 50-61 before launching into the top ten. I'm aiming to get one post up per day, which means you should get my top ten on the 5th of January. It's easier to keep to a schedule with my books since I tend to write them up as I go; therefore to get a post ready for publishing I just need to edit and extend my mobile phone shorthand from where I keep the notes.

Oh and the usual drill of course: links to Goodreads, and pointless hashtags that explain why I've chosen to read certain things. So let's get things started with...

50) Purity – Jonathan Franzen

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Kicking things off with the latest from the writers of one of my – and everybody’s – favourite novels. While I was reading this, I couldn't shake a lot of the criticisms that Franzen has brought on himself in the past couple of years with his hot mansplainy takes on what women really need to do to get ahead in the world, but in particular this March 2016 tweet from Megan Amram that reads (for those who can’t be bothered clicking the link), in its entirety, "Jonathan Friendzone". There's certainly an unconfortable awkward maleness to the way Franzen writes - in particular - his young female protagonists, and in this more than in his other work there's a weird reflexive magnetism towards sex as the objective of love and life itself. That said, I think this book's problem is similar to the problems with Freedom, in that its ambition far outstrips its execution. At its core, it's effectively a soap opera, full of coincidences and people trying to save other people and being outfoxed by further coincidences. The concept of "Purity" that Franzen explores is at best intriguing. I can't help but find an oblique Dr Strangelove reference in it, and the overarching thematic exploration here – as in Strangelove - is that the world will implode not through any great calamity or omnipotent force, but through the petty and insane machinations of one or two men. And the character who is "free" from all these machinations here, the title character Pip/Purity, exudes this purity in many ways: largely it's the purity of naiveté, of simply not knowing enough about the way the world works to be a part of its ugliness. However, there's also a more explicit purity portrayed, that being the freedom from the corrupt influence of money, something which those responsible for Pip invariably impose on her. As Franzen takes it further though, there's just this clumsy and muddled idea of nobody being really pure, and being unable to escape the inevitable scumminess of humanity. As always it's entertaining reading from Franzen, but it's very flawed and kind of troubling in its sanctimonious white knightedness, like he knows better than the rest of us how horrible we are.

49) The Good Earth – Pearl S Buck

#ClassicsIShouldRead

This feels a lot like the family saga style of storytelling that I quite like. In many ways too, it reads like a bildungsroman, only taking a young man as its starting point and following the tribulations of him and his family until his death. Or thereabouts - he's still alive at the end, too. It's written in a very matter-of-fact way, which made some aspects, like the assumed status of girls as slaves, and the general treatment of women and some specific female characters, quite uncomfortable. That was the case at least for me, though I’m aware you have to take it in context - that it's neither condoning nor condemning the treatment, just narrating it as it would have been. It also makes parts of it quite effective, like the figure of O-lan, our protagonist's wife for most of the book, who performs the Christ-like role of suffering and serving in stoic silence, and for the most part is really the most heroic and noble character in the story - kind of an Uncle Tom figure except through Buck’s matter-of-fact style, her suffering isn't fetishised the way Tom's was in Stowe's novel (my bottom read of last year). Apart from the ambivalent key character Wang Lung who's both an exemplary everyman and a troublesome morality mirror, I did enjoy the narrative. I was, though, a bit bothered by this repeated motif of Buck's where she would write "this is the way it would have gone on, had not..." which is meant to evoke this sense of fatalism, but when it keeps being employed it feels redundant: the concept of fatalism and people's interference could have been implied instead by the fairly obvious fact that when some things happen, they affect other things. It became a bit of a self-conscious tic that bothered me a little after a while. I didn’t mind this as much as its lowly position might imply, but I did find it a little unlikeable, its characters mostly unsympathetic, and it just didn’t wow me.

48) Them - Joyce Carol Oates

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This was a weird one, and it took me far longer than it should have to read. Part of the problem is that it's kind of a blurting, stop-start stammering kind of narrative that frequently takes sudden leaps ahead in time and then retrospectively fills us in on what’s happened in the meantime (synchronously with telling us the new present narrative). But I think the main challenge I had was just this emotional disconnect with the characters. Maybe if I'd read the Wonderland quartet (of which this is the third book) in sequence, I'd kind of grasp the themes better, but I had trouble a lot of time understanding he characters’ motivations for acting in a particular way even while I was engaged by the narrative overall. I just found the central protagonists, Jules and Maureen, a bit enigmatic, struggling through poverty, feeling misunderstood and disenfranchised by family and society (and each other) and trying to conform to social expectations while also attempting to find and forge an identity. I guess Oates' point is that in trying to discover themselves, they are always at the fickle whim of societal pressures and dangers within this cultural milieu of mid-century Detroit, but I just found their psychology a bit intractable because I feel like they could easily have made different choices and led better lives (based on the information I have at hand – i.e. Oates’ elusive narrative). The title is an interesting enigma as well; it gets hinted at throughout the book with this idea that Jules & Maureen are trying to distance themselves from 'them', the normal people who have made civilisation and the cultural-economic climate what it is, but there's also frequent allusions to 'them' as just any 'other' - most tellingly, their mother Loretta's frequent references to People of Colour - and the idea that someone else, some ‘other’ group, are all to blame for her own misfortune. It feels like a bit of a patchwork sketch of life in Detroit, and while parts were captivating I had trouble embracing the whole thing because it did seem so patchy. I feel like the other three books in this quartet are harder to obtain, but I'll see if they enrich this experience retrospectively, if I can get them, and be bothered.

47) A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James

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I can think of at least two things wrong with this title: it's not brief, and there are significantly more than seven killings in this book. But yeah, I’m aware the title takes its name from one of the plot points of the book, where one of the characters writes about the events and calls it ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’, and other characters question the same title in a similar way. I can't say I really enjoyed this book. It's a very haphazard, interminable epic that feels like Marlon James just got into a groove and never wanted it to end (like how Pynchon strikes me at his worst - sometimes there are just so many plot lines and characters that you don't really know how to or want to tie it all up). It's got an impressive scope though, and in particular an impressive narratorial voice - in that each chapter is written from a different character's perspective and the resultant heteroglossia is very well worked. I completely felt the voice of each narrator in turn, so that felt very genuine and let me forget that I was reading one man's vision. A lot of the more Jamaican slang and more thuggish characters' narration I found a bit impenetrable, and the chop and jump and the sheer number of narrators who are unreliable witnesses made it really inscrutable to really understand in the moment what was going on. I got it by the end, but for the most part it felt quite rudderless in that I didn't really know what the point of it is. I think the final chapter did bring it home to me, and in particular the subject of that chapter - a young Jamaican woman trying to escape her past and disappear through a sequence of new identities and locations - is the most engaging part of the book. She’s also the most incongruous character, in the sense that she is only peripherally connected to all the action and killings, whereas every other character is more directly linked. I feel like she's the real heart of the story and I found her sections far more engaging than nearly all the rest of it. Amidst all the drug dealing and gangland killing and Bob Marley legacy, it's a book about Jamaica: its light and its very dark side, how it both captivates in its beauty and culture but also traps you in its neon claws, and how the gang and drug culture within its underbelly becomes as inescapable as the country and culture itself. Aside from the afore-mentioned character, it's relentlessly brutal, esoteric narration, with largely unpleasant characters and a big, challenging epic vision of a gangland war and all its factions. I can respect James' writing and his vision, but the execution was far more of a slog than I'd hoped; I just wasn't gripped for much of it at all.

46) Sweet Tooth – Ian McEwan

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This is an intriguing Mcewan novel; a combination of an espionage romance (let's go and make the inevitable comparison to Hitchcock’s Notorious) and a literary intrigue, about a female spy who gets involved with the writer she is charged with recruiting to contribute unwittingly to the anti-communist cause (confused by that sentence? How apt, it’s a confusing premise). There's a funny kind of layering to the levels of unreality to the story that ultimately brings to light a question I asked very early on in reading this, about McEwan’s use of first person narrative: why would she be writing this? It's not usually a question that I necessarily bring up, but here it's an intriguing question to ask throughout. The other question I enjoyed asking throughout was how many of the "writing" parts were based on McEwan's own experience in getting edited, reviewed, slammed, etc? I couldn't help but detect a sense of satire in it, whether self-directed or otherwise, it certainly felt self-conscious. Being in McEwan's safe hands, it's easy to like this, but it kind of lacked the emotional heft or punch of many of his other works. It felt somewhat low-stakes and a lot of the drama was self-inflicted by characters, and therefore the falls and tribulations felt somewhat deserving. It seems odd but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of violent misanthropy in this book, it was almost romantic by McEwan's standards.

45) The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

#ClassicsIShouldRead

Speaking of romantically-toned books from misanthropic writers, this is a very romantic tale from Hemingway. It was a bit of a disappointment, really, because I knew nothing about the content of this book and I'd always hoped it would be this bleak, nature conquers everything sort of tale, like a really condensed and truncated-sentences version of Moby Dick, but it's really very sentimental. Ultimately it’s just a long drawn-out fishing tale that's of most interest to people who like fishing adventures. Well written and bitesize but it just seemed like a one-off adventure rather than anything more about nature's invulnerability which, content-wise, it totally could have been.

44) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz

#ClassicsIShouldRead

I found this book a bit frustrating. It's quite fragmented in its narrative, and ultimately a bit unclear what the ultimate point is. It starts out narrating the story of a nerdy Dominican misfit – the titular Oscar - and essentially the ultimate goal of his character seems to be to get laid (this is at least partially affected by the lens of our first-person narrator, a charming Dominican playboy who dates Oscar's beautiful sister Lola). It does, though, also go back and forth in time, telling the story of Oscar's mother and her star-crossed love, Oscar's grandfather and his ill fate, etc. The point of all this scope seems to be to instil the mythology of the family ‘fukú’, or curse, that ostensibly leads to Oscar's downfall and the inevitability (given the book's title) of him not living out a full life. It also seems to paint the picture of Oscar's very existence being so unlikely that one wonders how this complete iconoclast - intellectual, socially awkward, obsessed with sci-fi and fantasy, in a milieu full of toxic masculinity and machismo - came to be. But where reviewers seem to have found heart and soul in this book, I found nothing but cold fatalism which left me feeling cynical and detached. For one thing, Oscar is not a relatable character at all. He evokes pathos, perhaps, but not engagement. There's a lot of input - from our vantage point - of his suffering, but very little about his psychology, and I found that a big shortcoming since his whole raison d'etre seems to be to be apart from normal social interaction - hence unrelatable as a character. By contrast I found Lola, his sister, very engaging and likeable, and in all honesty I feel Díaz could have kept the story, the characters, even the title, intact, but drawn more of the story from Lola's point of view, and her worrying about the inept brother she loves. I feel I would have gotten so much warmth from it if this were Lola’s story about Oscar more than Oscar’s self-pitying memoir. As it is currently structured, it basically has the message: Oscar wants to lose his virginity, repeatedly fails, dies. Oh and Dominican figures of power are assholes. There are amusing and very entertaining parts to this book, but ultimately it left me cold and unenlightened, and I can see ways where it could have been much better.

43) The Aunt’s Story – Patrick White

#SamAttemptsInVainToLikePatrickWhite

My second attempt at liking White, after The Tree of Man got my runner-up worst book of 2016, and again I'm just not on board with him. The first part of this book is quite engaging, telling of Theodora (Theo) Goodman, the ugly, aloof sister to the beautiful and charming Fanny, and their upbringing. Theo finds herself generally kept apart from others, while nevertheless having people form isolated attachments to her almost like they see her as another part of themselves or possibly as her saviour. Then the second part takes Theo, after coming into her mother's inheritance, staying in a French hotel among a cast of variously unruly and unstable characters, and it's such a far throw from part one in terms of stakes and focus that the whole thing feels completely discombobulated. The final coda seems to take this discombobulation deliberately, as Theo's mind has fractured and she wanders aimlessly through further travails. I was just lost on what White was trying to achieve throughout the whole second part as it just seemed like a different book and different story, and Theo's agency became less and less. That said, I derived a bit of value by putting a Jungian lens on the story, seeing Theo as other Fanny's 'shadow' or darker self and, when she separates herself by travelling, finds herself lost in the darkness. Fanny's final cutting off of Theo in part 3 then becomes less about disowning her sister as it is about embracing and regathering her complete animus. The trouble with this reading is I feel it's a clever interpretation by me to ameliorate a disjointed narrative, and is more to my own credit than White's (go me). Still, it does bring an additional depth to the narrative and is useful for getting some value out of this disjointed narrative. I'd appreciate some specific White recommendations though if I’m not to give up on him entirely.

42) Sophie’s Choice – William Styron

#NationalBookAwardWinners

This is a weird and difficult read. Going in knowing/thinking I know the essentials of the plot - that it's about a mother having to choose between her two children in a concentration camp (oh yeah, spoilers but seriously, also Darth Vader is Luke’s father, I mean does anyone not know this yet?) – it begins in a completely disparate milieu, a first-person narrative about a writer and his dissatisfaction with his publishing job at McGraw-Hill. I actually checked ahead to make sure I hadn't accidentally started with the unrelated introduction from Styron. But in fact, the whole thing kicks off being about him, and in fact the whole book is about him: he meets the eponymous Sophie a couple of dozen pages in, and the story really doesn't become properly about her and her 'choice' until an unfeasibly long time. In fact the whole book reads like the novel "Sophie's Choice" plus a twice-longer novel about "how the novel Sophie's Choice came to be written". There’s more emphasis throughout the book on the narrator's libido than there is on Sophie and her experiences in Auschwitz, and the reasons why she is so reticent to talk about them. And therein kind of lies the issue with reading this long after the concept of Sophie’s choice has become such a cliché (yet knowing, as became evident, so little else about it): the crux of the story and its effectiveness lies in Sophie slowly, piece by piece, opening up about her experiences, revealing the lies that she earlier told to cover up the pain and horror of what she went through. But knowing it beforehand, the mystery is removed and therefore, all the endless preamble and diversions that make the story far less about her and more about ‘Stingo’ the writer seem like bloated filler. It's not the book's fault that I knew the main spoiler going in, but it emphasised how peripheral all of the first-person narrative is. Basically it could be just as effective and provocative a story if it really were just a 300-page novel about a Polish woman and her experience with her kids in Auschwitz, instead of a 600-page novel about an aspiring writer trying to have sex with a Polish woman who had an experience in Auschwitz with her kids and instead of having sex with her he ultimately uncovers the story about her and her kids in Auschwitz. The truth is, it's well written, and really effective when it has to be, but I felt like the endless and frequent passages about Stingo's yearning, as well as the turbulent relationship between Sophie and the volatile Nathan (who is revealed as schizophrenic very very late in the story too, at a really odd point to find a twist to a relevant but not central character), very much distracted from the central crisis of the book rather than building up to it. Really bizarre proposition for a novel; maybe it was groundbreaking but I found it ineffectual and self-indulgent.

41) My Name is Red – Orhan Pamuk

#ClassicsIShouldRead

This is an interesting book, largely from an intellectual perspective. It definitely belongs in the conversation with those great books about the value and power of art, and has as much to say about the interplay between religion and art as Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev (my #2 book of 2016), but obviously shares a lot more kinship with Eco’s The Name of the Rose (my #21 book of 2014), since both novels centre around a murder mystery. This is also largely a romance, as well as a bit of historical fiction, and I feel like Pamuk tries to do too much so none of the elements is  quite as engaging as it could have been. It's definitely a skilfully written book, but it's not quite as engaging as The Name of the Rose, which is funny because even that I felt over-intellectualised the story and mired it all in this academic artifice. The multi-narrator aspect of this, and Pamuk’s choice to narrate some parts from the point-of-view of illustrations, or figures in illustrations, is an interesting take on art and its part in history. I feel like there's plenty of interesting things to say here, but the overall effect on me was more bafflement than enlightenment.

2017 Music - Albums of the Year

So to finish off the year, here are the 25 albums that floated to the top in the goldpan of our 2017 music project, for me. Worth noting that Jez and I listened to more than 800 albums and EPs released this year, so this is a comprehensively whittled down list. But it's purely based on my own enjoyment, and I make no pretenses about this being a definitive list of 2017 - just a better one than all the other ones out there. If you haven't heard something on this list, give it a try - you might love it too. Or not: what am I, your own personal brain?

25) Neutral Paradise - Brendan Byrnes (Xenharmonic Electronica)

Kicking my albums round-up with this odd but remarkably well-produced collection of electronica, playing with chords and harmonies in ways that shouldn't work, but do. The weirdest of the tracks on here 'Kaleidoscopic' was also my favourite and my #11 song of the year. This album's only shortcoming was being a bit samey in spite of every bit feeling unexpected.

24) Wireless World - Warm Digits (Prog-Rock)

Two albums in and we're already in a niche of predominantly instrumental tracks, with the occasional bit of vocals thrown in. This is really interesting progressive rock with a heavy emphasis on synth sounds and a curious social commentary thrown into its lyrics and song titles. Mostly I just enjoyed the driving energy of the progressions.

23) Rudes Against - Skassapunka (Italian Ska Punk)

So I wrote about Russkaja and their faux-Russian ska punk in my songs write-up, but the superior European ska punk album of 2017 was this one. It's got a fun, slightly flamboyant Italian laddish spirit to it, with a good dose of punk aggression underneath the sax and brass section which is really just charismatic and enjoyable.

22) The Water - San Cisco (Australio Indie Pop)

I mentioned in my songs write-up that this album, despite winning album of the week when it came out, kind of fell off my radar due to the fact that there were also very good albums from San Fermin and Saint Etienne this year and the similar nomenclature all got muddled up together. On relistening, this one rose to the top as it just has a consistently good magnetic pop line running through it that helps me overcome the fact that it feels very produced and what I'd call that typical 'Indie' sound with reverbed vocals and layered synths. This is just enjoyable music.

21) Music for the Age of Miracles - The Clientele (Neo-Psychedelia)

Very oldskool sound to these guys, they're like a mix of late Beatles, early Pink Floyd, bit of Velvet Underground thrown in; basically a whole bunch of nostalgia-tinted artists that I love. But even while it channels their sounds this is unmistakeably new and interesting music, with a surprisingly sweet and uplifting spirit to it all.

20) Oh, Yuck - So Much Light (Neo-RnB)

I mentioned in writing up my favourite song from this album - Full Body Mirror, my #4 song of the year - that what So Much Light brings to his music, and the RnB genre overall, is this scintillating quirkiness to the instrumentation; it adds this amazing colour and personality to a lot of these tracks that could otherwise fall by the wayside along with so many other humdrum RnB artists do for me. He writes good songs and sings them well, but it's the idiosyncratic production around them that really makes this.

19) The Machine That Made Us - Flotation Toy Warning (Psychedelic Rock)

From the unwieldy song titles to the rock operatic delivery, this album's just a kooky, enjoyable ride to another realm. The music is varying levels of retro rock influences combined together, but there's a soulful and slightly plaintive lament at the heart of it that really resonates with me.

18) Murmuration Nation - Emily Saliers (Folk Rock)

This album could have been a hell of a lot higher, because it's really rather impeccable and faultless. Somehow though there's something just a bit too polished about Saliers' delivery that feels a bit too intrusive like she's really getting up in my grill. I'm nit-picking obviously because this is a fantastic collection of music; it's one that just stopped short of me really, fully embracing.

17) I Tell a Fly - Benjamin Clementine (Post-Music)

I've already written a bit about this album in my top twenty songs write-up, where the opening track Farewell Sonata may have actually gotten this exact same spot (Yes, it did). This whole album is an artistic masterpiece; it pushes every boundary you can imagine - including the boundary that says harpsichord should be sparingly used in modern music - and somehow comes out being both deeply stimulating and highly enjoyable. As I said in the songs write-up, it's poetry, it's art, it may not quite be music, but it's wonderful.

16) Solveig - Seven Spires (Symphonic Metal)

Again another artist I've written up a fair bit in my songs write-up; Seven Spires deliver a really bold line of symphonic metal, that pretty much uses synth strings and other non-metal instrumentation as a sidenote to some pretty raw death metal, but the key selling point is frontwoman Adrienne Cowan's protean skill, delivering death screams, aggressive punk-style yells, and the essential tuneful mezzo-soprano to make this a multi-faceted and riveting album of metal.

15) Unpeeled - Cage the Elephant (Acoustic Live Rock)

All year since I heard this album - and picked it as my album of the week - I've been going back and forth over whether it's really eligible as a 2017 album. All this is is live and acoustic (unpeeled) versions of previously-released Cage the Elephant material with a handful of new covers thrown in as well. But I've decided not only is it eligible but it's my #15 album of the year, based on the fact that, having gone back and listened to some earlier versions of these songs, that the acoustic versions actually improve on them (Mainly by stripping away the 'Indie' veneer of post-production) and also this was my first time discovering Cage the Elephant, so I feel like it was an essential part of my 2017 music experience. This is just simple, unpretentious rock with a great band dynamic and engaging tunes.

14) Death of the Artist - Elsiane (Art Pop)

This is a strange and dark journey through some stirring and beautiful musical landscapes. Elsieanne Caplette's really empyreal vocal style is the point of differentiation here, although the layered complexities of the synth and strings underneath just elevate her performances as well. It's quite a dark, brooding forest of sound that it's easy to get lost in.

13) Hopeless Romantic - Michelle Branch (Indie Pop)

From a dark, brooding forest of sound to more of a pleasant conversation with an old friend. Michelle Branch's warm-hearted pop songstress style is quite easy to embrace. It's sweet, playful, with an easy and unpretentious delivery of positive vibes. Ultimately I just connect a lot with Branch's personality that is imbued in these songs but it rises to the top because I just love a simple bit of pleasant pop music.

12) Chaos & Systems - Sundays & Cybele (Japanese Psych Rock)

Of course, the album that is the source of my song of the year deserves a spot on my top 25. Although this album reaches a pretty significant peak on the second track, those nine minutes are probably just the highest energy and most chaotic on the album. There's a cornucopia of different and classic psychedelic flavours throughout this, and while it's not all as scintillating as Butterfly's Dream, if it all were, we'd be having this write-up 11 songs later. It's all very fascinating and enjoyable though.

11) The Twin - Sound of Ceres (Dreampop)

It was an astoundingly good week of music for me following the 6th of October; the creator of my #1 album of 2016, Mr Yéyé, released his follow-up, and on the very same day, this sophomore effort from Sound of Ceres - creators of my #2 album of 2016 - also came out. Which was just fucking absurd. And the best part was, neither album disappointed. This, like its predecessor Nostalgia for Infinity, is an immensely intricate and rich collection of beautiful, dreamy and ethereal music. Nothing else sounds like, well, Ceres I guess, and it's only really how very cognate this is with last year's #2 that drops it slightly out of the top ten of the year.

10) This is the Sound - Cellar Darling (Folk Metal)

I think the guy from Metal Injection said it best on this Swiss outfit when he announced "they have a goddamn hurdy gurdy". Is a hurdy gurdy enough to make metal especially good? No, but when it  and plenty of other strange folk elements are intertwined so skilfully with some kickass metal, it becomes something pretty damn good. It's potentially an unusual proposition, but in its execution this is just a really killer metal album, and the folk elements just act as a bridge and an accompaniment to it all.

9) Hybride - Mr Yéyé (French Electrorock)

So this certainly shouldn't be a surprise, given how strongly I've been adumbrating its imminence. This album was a big deal for me; to begin with I contributed to its crowdfunding campaign, on the back of my love of his album Cabaret Noir last year, and so received a hard copy of it alone with a whole bunch of other fanboy paraphernalia. Expectations were high, but there was no fear of disappointment. This guy's particular attraction for me is in how much he just loves what he does, so there's no danger of him overdoing it, or taking his music in weird new directions and turning pretentious. He just delivers hard-hitting rock music, with surprisingly clean and positive lyricism. Is there anything wrong with this album that drops it down to #9 of the year? Genuinely not. It's just more about the level of fervour I can muster so soon. I had the revelation last year; this is just the confirmation.

8) Prophets of Rage - Prophets of Rage (Rap Metal)

A set of great metal at the front of this top ten. Prophets of Rage, an Audioslave-and-Rage Againt the Machine/Public Enemy/Cypress Hill supergroup put forward a gimmicky little EP in 2016 that was essentially just a mashup of old songs from the composite groups' back catalogue. It was a fun little intro to the idea, but it wasn't until this proper eponymous debut that they really forged their own identity and put their stamp on the music scene. And it's an emphatic stamp; the metre and structure of the rap is exactly the style that I like - plaintive but rhythmic, and the use of the hard-hitting strains of Tom Morello's guitar just make this a really great, loud and enjoyable album with a big, loud and appropriate fuck you to the machine.

7) The Far Field - Future Islands (Synthpop)

So in my all-metal-and-happypop top ten, it's taken a long time but we're finally into some pop. And anyone who read my songs write-ups (Hi, Mother!) should have known this album was coming. It's not really complex or intricate synthpop, but it's catchy and somehow full of such positive feeling that it's all I'm left with every time I listen. A lot of it comes down to Samuel T Herring's unusual vocal delivery, which could act as the unassailable hurdle for some, but for me just lifts this above the ordinary into something special. I'm not kidding when I say it's just pure joy from start to finish.

6) After Laughter - Paramore (Synthpop)

Yep, all metal and happypop continues. There's probably been a lot written about this album from all sorts of sources because it actually came as a bit of a bolt from the blue for those who were familiar with Paramore from their early days. And this didn't really come as a bolt from the blue for me, but it was just a lightning strike of fantastic synthpop. From the opening track Hard Times it's top shelf happy pop that never slows down. But beyond just being bubblegum and treacle, it's also thoughtful and cleverly written music that is worth respecting as much as it is worth embracing.

5) Machine Messiah - Sepultura (Brazilian Groove Metal)

While the fact of my all-metal-and-happypop run continuing may be a surprise, I feel that this album's position may be a surprise for many - including Jez, and any Sepultura fans from back in their heyday. Fact is, they've seemingly become a bit of a punchline since the founding Cavalera brothers left, and the residual Frankenstein band and their output seems a bit of an afterthought. But the fact is I never really connected with Sepultura's music, and when I listened to the new album from the splinter Cavalera brothers later this year, it came home that what I never connected with was actually the Cavalera brothers. This album, on the other hand, is an absolute masterpiece of raw aggression; some great Latin grooves set the mood and provide texture to the piece, but it's otherwise just an amazingly poised and well-composed album. Each song builds complexities and layers of musical meaning on the song before it, and the whole thing becomes an immersive and wonderful experience in raw power.

4) Sweet Dreamer - Will Joseph Cook (I don't know, will he?) (Pop)

Will the all-metal-and-happypop run never stop? Will Joseph ever cook? (that's just in case you've missed the joke up to this point) This album had a bit of a mixed run in our music project - for some reason I put it in my 'extra credit' section at the start, and set it up for failure. Then I listened to it, love it, but somehow managed to convince myself that there were just a bunch of really good songs on this, and a bunch of filler, and relegated it to runner-up album of the week (To my #14 album of the year, Elsiane's Death of the Artist). But when I revisited it for this list, I confirmed my initial suspicions that I was full of shit, and so the final destination for Will Joseph Cook is right at the top end of the year, where it belongs. This is a really remarkable debut album from this young bloke; an unwavering sequence of entertaining, intriguing and exuberant pop, and contrary to my initial mistaken impression, there isn't a bad song on here. There are just great songs, and a bunch of top-100-of-the-year songs.

3) The Temple of I & I - Thievery Corporation (Triphop Reggae Fusion)

"No!" I hear you shriek in disbelief. This can't be true, can it? What an unbelievable shock. My undisputed favourite group, a group my wife and I listened to on our honeymoon road trip, a group we've seen live twice and talk about as our son's first gig (Bec was three months pregnant during their last tour), a group I compulsively refresh the booking site so I can buy tickets to every upcoming tour the minute they go on sale, they put out a new album this year - and I really really liked it? Yep, it's hard to believe but here we are. What Thievery's been doing lately - isolating a genre and exploring its themes and fusing in their beats and fusion elements across an album - is at times (as in their previous bossa-focused effort Saudade) a tad risky, since if the genre doesn't interest then the album becomes less engaging. In the case of The Temple of I & I, I'm on board from the minute you say reggae fusion. Welcoming back a bunch of their favourite and frequent collaborators, including Notch (who features on one of my favourite Thievery songs, Amerimacka) and Mr Lif (whose album Don't Look Down I loved last year), and introducing into the mix my new favourite Raquel Jones, it's a good hour of enrapturing fusion music, with great reggae spirit and attitude on top of Eric & Rob's trademark blend of mellow and kicking beats. It was actually a treat to listen to my favourite group in the context of the music project, because it really hammered home just how important Thievery Corporation is in the life of my music; they stand so far above the other great music I'm discovering for the first time. Obviously, except for...

2) Aetherlight - Mt Wolf (Dream Rock)

Poor Mt Wolf, always the bridesmaid. 800 albums/EPs and likely well over 5000 songs, and from their first proper full-length album, they've only managed to land at runner-up song and runner-up album of the year. Obviously, facetiousness aside let's talk about this album. Obviously Hex was a big highlight track from it in its completely beguiling ethereal beauty, but that beauty is all across this album. What I love about the way they compose their music is that it's unmistakeably rock-focused even while it's so ambient and dream-like, and so at times like the climax of Hex when it goes big and loud and guitar-driven, it's all earned by what came before it. The album moves in moods from mellow ambience to passionate enrapture, all underlined by Bassi Fox's stunning vocal work that makes me feel every moment.

1) A Deeper Understanding - The War on Drugs (Indie Rock)

Yes, this shouldn't be at all a surprise to anyone who read my songs write-ups (Hi, Mother!), and it was an easy, towering decision when it came down to the pointy end of the year, because this album is just so fucking good. In some ways it's a bit of a throwback sound, in that there are definite tinges of bygone eras of music, and if I were being a stupid jerk I'd say it's just a throwback to a time when bands made real music (or rather a time long ago enough for us to have selective memory of only the best parts). One thing that really has come home to me as I've relistened to this album (and I've done a lot of relistening) is that, in the year that we lost the great Tom Petty, these guys really should be considered the rightful heir to his throne. This is not simply because of frontman Adam Granduciel's obvious vocal similitude to Petty, but because the War on Drugs, like Petty & his related Heartbreakers, do a particular line in deceptively simple, elegant rock music. 'Elegant' is really the best word for this album; there are no wasted moments and no wasted notes; every chord, every orchestrated piece of instrumentation, it's all there for a reason, and the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. From the perky and free-flowing Holding On and Knopfler-esque Nothing To Find (my favourite two tracks) to the sprawling 11-minute Thinking of a Place, their introspective and deeply rich lyricism is imbued in every moment. Like I said too, it's deceptively simple; it's good old guitars, drums and keyboard, but the arrangement of all its elements is nothing short of masterful.

And finally, if you go through all of these 25 and find nothing that interests you, or that you liked upon hearing yourself, here are my outliers. Maybe one of these, that wasn't quite good enough for this list, might be good enough for yours:

Life Will See You Now - Jens Lekman (Indie Pop)

The Source - Ayreon (Prog Metal)

Manual Override - Saskwatch (Australio Indie Pop)

Villains - Queens of the Stone Age (Rock)

Run the Jewels 3 - Run the Jewels (Hip-Hop)

Kosmopoliturbo - Russkaja (Faux-Russian Ska Punk)

Evocation II - Pantheon - Eluveitie (Folk Metal)

Freedays - Tall Tall Trees (Indie Folk)

The Great Electronic Swindle - The Bloody Beetroots (Italian Electronica)

Sleep Well Beast - The National (Indie Rock)

Songs of 2017: Top Twenty

20. ‘Dive’ by Saint Etienne (Nu-Disco)

Kicking off my top 20 with some frenetic, spirited nu-disco. I don’t think I’m generally a huge fan of nu-disco, but for some reason this, and some other totally non-spoiler examples this year, really just burrowed in and couldn’t get out. This is pure escapist fun, well-produced and tightly-controlled in its high energy power.

19. ‘Forever and Then Some’ by Lillie Mae (Bluegrass Rock)

What I think this year really lacked was some really compelling folk. There were plenty of good examples, but time and time again I found the gap being filled with some surprisingly good country music, and this is one of the more wonderful examples. Banjoey, southern twangy, it’s everything I hate on paper, and yet in execution this is just beautiful heartland music with a hell of a lot of love and spirit.

18. ‘Fault Line’ by Michelle Branch (Indie Pop)

I don’t know if I can or need to say that much about this song or Michelle Branch generally; she was a vaguely-familiar name but her album True Romantic was a genuine revelation to me about a third of the way through the year, and this was the highlight song that stayed at the top of my estimation. It’s simply-produced singer-songwriter stuff, really compelling in spite of, or maybe because of, its straightforward pop construction.

17. ‘Farewell Sonata’ by Benjamin Clementine (Post-Music)

So post-music sounds like a bit of a joke genre classification, but if you do yourself the favour of listening to Benjamin Clementine’s absurdly good, and goodly absurd, sophomore effort I Tell A Fly, this opening number will explain everything you need to know. It just pushes audaciously beyond musical boundaries into a weird and wonderful space encapsulating performance art, poetry, satire and post-modernism and somehow combining it all into beautiful music as well. I don’t really get it but I love it.

16. ‘For Thursday’ by Will Joseph Cook (I don’t know, will he?) (Pop)

Is the joke funnier this time around? I know it is, because it’s even funnier despite it being the hundredth time I’ve made it myself. This is just another example of really enjoyable, spirited pop music from this remarkable debut album. It’s an earworm, it’s a bit of fun, but all of this belies the fact that it’s also a really well-written and brilliantly-produced song.

15. ‘Black Rain’ by Creeper (Horror Punk)

In what’s now becoming an annual tradition of me having some bright, fun punk music near the top of my list, this one surprised me a bit by how high it was. Yet it’s also one of my most-played and revisited songs of the year so it shouldn’t have. Silly, theatrical and bombastic punk music, it casts me back to the glorious heyday of bands like the Offspring in the 90s, when this kind of iconoclastic rock music was at the same time guttural/edgy and shamelessly fun.

14. ‘The Serpent and the Sparrow’ by Baby Copperhead (Experimental Folk)

Bringing the mood considerably back down to earth, this delightful bit of pastiche folk was an unsurprising entry into this top twenty. Combining earthy, traditional percussion with swelling strings and an intellectual vocal line, it’s quirky and enigmatic music at its very best.

13. ‘No Ti Amo’ by Lucky Soul (Nu-Disco)

No, no spoilers at all, number 20. But by pure coincidence and for some reason, here’s the second nu-disco song in my top twenty for this year. I described this song as “the 7-minute disco track I never knew I needed” and I would extend that to say that it could be the 7-minute disco track you never knew you needed, as well. It’s really a tightly-produced but indulgent party song; classic disco stuff in all its camp, puffy glory. I don’t quite know why I love this song so much and why I feel it earns its extended length, but here it is.

12. ‘Waking Up Slow’ by Gabrielle Aplin (Pop)

This is perhaps an odd choice to have so high, but there’s a couple of reasons it’s up here. Beyond the fact that it’s just a really good pop song that got stuck in my head a lot, it’s also a song that I’ve inexplicably been enjoying a lot with Bec this year. After it won my song of the week I put it on in the car with the caveat that “you’ll probably hate this” and actually she really liked it. I think it’s just got an oldskool (i.e. 90s) style, lacking audacity, bells and whistles, when songstresses let their voices shine over catchy but unadorned backing tracks, and it just feels unpretentiously lively and enjoyable.

11. ‘Kaleidoscopic’ by Brendan Byrnes (Xenharmonic Electronica)

When Jez picked Byrnes’ album Neutral Paradise and called it ‘Xenharmonic Electronica’ I was prepared to dismiss it as a massive pile of pretentious shit. But then when I picked it as my runner-up album of the week, and this is my runner-up song at the same time, it was a surprise to him that I liked it so much, especially as this is the most xenharmonic and challenging track on the album. But honestly, if there’s one thing that I really respond to, it’s controlled chaos in music (more of this later), and somehow for all its weirdness, its discordance, just notes that sound duff in isolation, they’re all carefully selected here and it’s a compelling, if mildly unsettling, experience. Well I don’t find it unsettling but I can believe it if other people would.

10. ‘Ran’ by Future Islands (Synthpop)

Wow, good thing I didn’t telegraph that there would be more Future Islands coming, or I may have spoiled the fact that there was more Future Islands coming. I can’t give an academically stringent reasoning why this is my favourite song from the terrific album The Far Side, why it won my song of that week award (in a very crowded week for great music) or why this is the sole Future Islands representative in my top ten, but I just find this song pure and simple joy from start to finish.

9. ‘Hail to the Chief’ by Prophets of Rage (Rap Metal)

From pure and simple joy to a great bit of controlled aggression. This track from Prophets of Rage, the Cypress Hill/Public Enemy/Rage Against the Machine supergroup that the world was crying out for without knowing it, is a great bit of rock music, starting with the power riff from Tom Morello and running through the anti-establishment rap vocals from Chuck D and B-Real. Every time it comes on it makes me want to turn up the volume and give it a bit of a headbang like I’m saying “Yes” to every beat.

8. ‘Holding On’ by The War on Drugs (Indie Rock)

I did say there would be more The War on Drugs in my top twenty, or did I? Yes, I did, and here it is. This is another really joyous bit of rock music, quite a throwback in its simple, traditional instrumentation, building chords towards the chorus and unpretentious lyricism. It’s catchy and thoughtful at the same time.

7. ‘Take Me Dancing’ by Will Joseph Cook (I don’t know, will he?) (Pop)

Oh yeah, there’s virtually no surprises in this top twenty are there, because I’ve mentioned pretty much every represented artist before. So I discovered, long after I’d sorted my songs and cemented this firmly in my #7 spot, that it’s technically a 2016 release as it was a lead single from Mr Cook’s debut album, but as I first heard it as part of the 2017 album release, I’m counting it as eligible. It also just needs to be taken in the context of the album, which was really a remarkable debut effort with a relentless happy pop spirit, and this is both the catchiest and most interesting song on there, really wonderfully melodious.

6. ‘Nothing to Find’ by The War on Drugs (Indie Rock)

So it’s probably becoming pretty clear that I quite enjoyed The War on Drugs’ album this year. So I don’t think it’s a spoiler if I sort of use as an excuse for writing these songs up more fully the fact that I’ll talk about the album in more detail on my top 25 albums countdown, and more specifically why I love their sound so much. But this, like Holding On, is six minutes of pure musical pleasure, beautifully composed and with an evocative sense of joy that yeah, just makes me happy.

5. ‘Back to the Source’ by Elsiane (Baroque Pop)

If there’s one thing that I do respond to time and time again, it’s swelling with strings at the right time, and this dark, but stirring bit of music manages that with gusto. When I first heard this song, I described it as a “mass murderer of a song” (in the sense that it’s beyond being a ‘killer track’) and I haven’t really reevaluated that original opinion; it grips me every time it comes on. And it gripped me so much the first time through that it beat out all of Will Joseph Cook’s killer tracks for song of the week. It’s a haunting, beautiful, almost other-worldy bit of music.

4. ‘Full Body Mirror’ by So Much Light (Neo-RnB)

Where is the RnB? Would be the question asked by any actual published music journalists as they read through my list (although my mother is not a published music journalist, so they wouldn’t be reading through my list), but it’s simply a genre I don’t respond well to. Objectively it can be good, but I find it difficult to distinguish the proponents of it because it’s all so samey and often over-produced. Enter So Much Light, who broke through all my prejudices with his quirky and idiosyncratic use of synth instrumentation, that just elevates his great voice (as a sidenote: vocal quality is never the shortcoming of my relationship with RnB) to be a compelling character in his fascinatingly strange music. This was one of a number of songs that I enjoyed off his album Oh, Yuck but I’ve come back time and time again to this one.

3. ‘Pool’ by Paramore (Synthpop)

Yep, there’s definitely room for some more Paramore on the list. Based on what little I know of the (predominantly very positive) reception of this album, I seem to be alone in singling out this particular song as my favourite, but if I’m correct about that then I feel other people need to reevaluate it. Admittedly one of the main reasons I love it is because of the chime sounds that give it a slightly quirky, almost xenharmonic flavour, but it’s also just a wonderfully catchy pop song with a great lyrical quality to it as well. Although I loved most of the album, this song’s stood out for me since the first time I heard it and it had to sit near the top of my year.

2. ‘Hex’ by Mt Wolf (Dream Rock)

It seems that every year there’s one song that destroys me emotionally. Last year it was my song of the year, Aurora’s Runaway, and this year it’s this one, which only lands at number two. As I said in writing up Elsiane, there’s nothing that gets me going quite like stirring strings at just the right moment, and in the case of this song there really isn’t a wrong moment. From the moment Bassi Fox’s empyreal falsetto kicked in the first time I heard it, I was in another world. But the song doesn’t just stir, it’s got an amazing build from its quiet, unassuming beginnings to a riveting climax – much like last year’s number one song. It was a back-and-forth between my runner-up and song of the year for a while and this one ended up just missing the money.

1. ‘Butterfly’s Dream’ by Sundays & Cybele (Japanese Psych Rock)

And the reason that Hex, and emotive power, missed out was that it just seemed to have been the year when I needed mindless fun to get my mind off, you know, the state of the world and whatever. So where last year the carefree enjoyable tracks fell down the ranks, this year I couldn’t go past this nine minutes of beautifully controlled chaos (there we are again). I genuinely have no idea what this song is about, with the lyrics chanted in harmonic Japanese, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it transcends cultural or linguistic barriers, because it’s unmistakeably Japanese in its craziness and that’s all part of its charm. I love the guitar wails, the frenetic drumbeats, I love the fact that it’s clearly got its faults with some beats being slightly off, because it’s just a wild, insane musical ride that I never want to get off. It’s fair to say I’ve kept this in mind as song of the year from the first time I heard it, and it would have taken something as deeply complex and layered as this to seriously contend with it.