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Looking back on 2015 it was quite a varied year in terms of reading, although I would liked to have read much more, if only time would allow it. However there were plenty of highlights during the year. Late in 2014 I met one of my musical heroes in the form of Steve Kilbey from the Australian band The Church. In January I read his excellent autobiography, Something Quite Peculiar (2014) and then met him again with the rest of the band in July when they toured the west coast (they were brilliant by the way...). When literature and music meet I’m a very happy man indeed.

My book club reads this year yielded both pain and pleasure, with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) taking the crown for the best book I’ve read this year. The Secret History was compelling, absorbing, manipulative and most of all just brilliantly written. Other book club related highlights include Ian McEwan’s succinct and stylish The Children Act (2014), Richard Flannagan’s Man Booker Prize winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) and Joan London’s The Golden Age (2014), which managed to both charm and move me in equal measure. Book club pain came in the form of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), which was not mediocre by any means, just long winded and intensely and neurotically self-conscious. It was also a fascinating and challenging read, so in the end I’m grateful to have read it and I will certainly remember it for a long time to come.

If The Secret History was the best book of the year (in fact one of the best I’ve ever read...), then the biggest disappointment was Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia (1977). Perhaps Chatwin had great adventures in Patagonia, but he managed to make it totally boring on paper. Luckily there were plenty of other highlights from my own (non book club) reading to make up for the tedium of Chatwin. Miranda July weirded me out in a good way with her debut novel, The First Bad Man (2015) and Michel Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter (1976) was simply a great piece of experimental cult fiction. Other highlights were Axiomatic (1995) by Greg Egan and Seven Eves (2015) by Neal Stephenson, both of which left me wanting to read much more of their work.

As for next year I aim to finish the thousand plus pages of Peter Watson’s Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (2006). I’m reading it a bit at a time, mostly late at night, so hopefully I’ll get through it! What I really have my eye on though is my first love - science fiction. After reading Egan, Stephenson and then recently Huxley, it’s time to catch up with contemporary science fiction and some of the classics that I’ve never got around to reading. Maybe I’ll even read Philip K. Dick’s crackpot The Exegesis of Philip K Dick (2011) this year - now there’s some holiday reading....

In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin (1977)

I read In Patagonia because it features in 501 Must Read Books (2007) as an example of great travel writing. I found a copy sitting on top of a pile of donated books to the library; it was not accepted into the collection due to its poor condition and in fact it degraded badly as I handled it, the brittle cover breaking off and pages falling out whilst I was trying to read it on a crowded work-bound train. I was primed to enjoy In Patagonia, but unfortunately it was not to be and often I found the people on the train and the view racing by more entertaining.

In Patagonia is not your typical travel writing; its structure is fragmented and a significant portion of the text concentrates on past events in Patagonia, rather than Chatwin’s own ‘adventures’. For example Chatwin traces the movements of Butch Cassidy and his gang, who fled to Patagonia in the early 1900‘s to avoid the authorities. The book is filled with the lives and histories of significant people who spent time in the region and ordinary immigrants who hoped to to make their riches with the wool trade. Chatwin’s writing is elegant but quite formal and I felt like there was something missing as the book progressed, perhaps a sense of adventure or danger, instead there are more potted histories and land owners complaining about the government. Chatwin does succeed in giving a strong impression of Patagonia’s landscape, which seems mysterious and breathtaking; a land of half mythical prehistoric creatures and mountainous terrain.

I mostly enjoyed the first half, however In Patagonia’s limited charm began to wear thin and the mini history lessons and formal style became almost intolerable. It’s not often I consider giving up on a book, but I came very close with what is meant to be a classic of travel writing. In amongst the historical anecdotes the closest Chatwin came to adventure was walking a mostly disused trail through a mountainous region. He ends up thinking he is lost as darkness approaches, only to hear cars nearby. Relieved he promptly camps for the night and is safe and sound the next morning - exciting stuff! If travel writing is meant to make you long to wander the world’s lost byways, then In Patagonia fails miserably. Far better is Ryszard Kapuscinski’s brilliant The Shadow of the Sun (1998), detailing his travels through Africa. Kapuscinski’s writing conveys tension and verve that Chatwin doesn’t come close to emulating. This particular copy of In Patagonia days are numbered and it will end up in the recycling bin; a nice metaphor perhaps?