June 2026 Reads

June 2026 Reads

Movements

We have June's post arriving late after a hot, tiring month scampered past like a panting hound. Hot - damned hot - and an awful lot of day job marking end-of-year assessment scripts took up an infuriating amount more time than I might have liked. Wimbledon and the World Cup are also welcome distractions - oh! and we're moving house, so most of the book collection currently looks like this:

So yeah, despite all that - and seriously, 'tis a churl who might grumble about fine weather, a steady job doing something worthwhile, wall-to-wall sport, and a life largely untroubled in the grand scheme of things - I made time to dig into a few choice volumes as well, although mainly before the busyness of packing etc all kicked off back end of the month. 

Thusly, without much further late-June round-up ado...

The List

A Time To Keep Silence - Patrick Leigh Fermor

Notes to John - Joan Didion

How's Your Dad? - Mick Channon Junior

Puckoon - Spike Milligan 

 The Books

 A Time To Keep Silence - Patrick Leigh Fermor

 I was prompted to get a copy of this by reading someone mentioning it somewhere in May, I think. Although I'd read it before, it was a long time back - nearly 30 years since - so I couldn't recall much of it, although what I could remember was that it had been a work that struck a quiet chord. 

Whatever called me to bring it back into the mix, I'm grateful. Fermor writes directly and doesn't stint on self-awareness, and in discussing his sojourns in different monasteries in Europe (on what we might now term "spiritual retreats"), has a canny recognition that at the very idea of a secular citizen decamping to a monastery for quiet time readers may likely be engaged in some sort of facial expression involving an arched brow, or a pursed lip, perhaps even a grimace. 

He writes about monastic life in a way that recognises also that an outsider's experience might not be able to avoid missing something essential about the drive to pursue a monastic life. This is kind of his point; it represents an attempt to explore that drive, and to see the value in seclusion and reflection. In a contemporary milieu of digital detoxes, etc, of course it remains pertinent. Its engagingly-constructed descriptions of the history and continuing practices of the various orders he visits, the Trappist regime in particular, are fascinating. It's a short book, but well worth your time. 

 

Notes to John - Joan Didion

 Slouching Towards Bethlehem is the only other thing I've read by Didion, and that too was a long while since. I found this in a charity shop and it looked intriguing: posthumous discovery of a personal journal, addressed to her husband, tracking nearly a decade of analysis appointments, specifically related to their adopted daughter and her ongoing health issues, as well as Didion's own. 

The notes were discovered typed up and in a file near her desk, which provoked a recurring sense of being invited to peek through someone's private diary. While frequently "questioning, courageous, and clear" (ye blurbe) in tone, there were multiple moments where I felt less like an admirer of someone's lucid prose style and more an intruder on some private family discussion that should not have been brought to the light. 

That said, there were also frequent moments I recognised and valued immensely for Didion's insight, which is of course probably why the publishers felt the need. While edifying, though, not an easy read.  

How's Your Dad? - Mick Channon Junior

While seemingly an abrupt shift in style from the metropolitan aloofness of Joan Didion, much swearier and English sporting bloke-ish, this also had a lot of well-articulated family dynamic struggles, and packed an emotional kick as well. 

I picked it up from the library,  where there was a pile of them, available for a donation in the charity box - a North Yorkshire tourism aside: the city of Ripon ("Stay awhile amid its ancient charms") is a sometimes-overlooked gem of happenings. It's packed with pubs, has a regular market, an impressive cathedral, and a well-appointed library. It also counts a racecourse among the ancient charms, which may account for the job lot of volumes bearing a Racing Post imprimatur... - and I hadn't anticipated a great deal from it. However, being a son of a particular age with a dad of a particular age, the main idea looked interesting, and about half a chapter in, recognising a kindred "fucked-up in the 90s" spirit, I warmed to it immediately. 

Channon Senior was a celebrated footballer, who took up training racehorses. Channon Junior attempted to play footie professionally but was not at the same level, went into journalism but struggled with that, and then took up with the horses as well, one gets the impression principally as a means of keeping an eye on an increasingly-cantankerous dad. 

There are tales of friendship, family events, a framing device of the flat season, and it darts back and forth across the turf before cantering home for a satisfactory finish. Highly appropriately, I finished it on Father's Day. Then I rang my dad. 

Puckoon - Spike Milligan 

 Back to some Spike Milligan to end the month. Puckoon is short novel from the early 1960s, and it's deceptively lightweight. Moments of it seem extended sketches or riffs, as you might expect from a writer of radio comedy, but it's got some terrific set-pieces, and the sort of recurring intrusive narrator that I quite enjoy when it's done well (a few parts had me thinking of B.S. Johnson, mordant asides done dry). 

The main plot line is a lazy bureaucratic oversight that leads the border commission in Ireland to draw a line straight through the village of Puckoon: separating church from graveyard, leaving a small corner of the pub in the lower-tax rate north, that sort of reductio ad absurdism. As social commentary, it works perhaps especially well because of the cartoonery and moments recalling Goon Show radio audio gags [FX: gigantic explosion]. Sometimes, what we call reality is more preposterous.

The main character upbraiding the writer for having better-written legs is also worth the cover price alone. 

Next month

We take on the tenancy at the new place at the end of July, so I'm hoping to be unpacked by some point in early August? Hurrah for summer hols. Of the limited numbers of books still to hand, there'll definitely be Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale, First Love by Samuel Beckett... if I get through them, knowing my methods, I'll either be in the library or buying a stack of second-hand volumes to place lovingly on top of a pile of moving boxes. Not at all infuriating.