July 2026 Reads

July 2026 Reads

Movements

(Given that I'm writing this in October of 2026 will I hope give the reader some idea of the state of Being Occupied that has endured since July 2026... the draft below was mostly done in July, but then Things Kept Happening, and here we are. Presented in the name of timeline repair.)

The List

Suggestions for Thought - Florence Nightingale (Ed...)

The End of Everything - M. John Harrison

Four Novellas - Samuel Beckett 

Paradise Lost (intro & bk1) - John Milton, Alastair Fowler

 The Books

 The End of Everything - M. John Harrison 

At time of writing (July and now October), MJH was on tour giving this book the hard sell, a kind of Rolling Thunder revue for literary publicity. His blog seemed a succession of snapshots of him looking equal parts slightly nonplussed and extremely pleased.

And rightly so - maximising a moment of momentum, following on the tidal surge of The Sunken Lands Begin To Rise Again (TSL), which caught lots of attentions and which I loved, and then his anti-memoir Wish I Was Here (still on my wish list), and a long career preceding as a sci-fi/weird fiction stylist that has seen him take on a position of venerated elder. 

All of which is great. As a new fan I have the evangelical zeal of the convert to sustain me, of course, but TSL really knocked me sideways as an idea, and as a piece of writing, and I am glad he's getting a moment of recognition. 

Looking back to Sunken Lands, I had been surprised to read reviews that critiqued an apparent lack of clarity in the ideas. I haven't a clue where I found these, and I haven't bookmarked them owing to them being incorrect. What made the book great was that it didn't hold the reader's hand so much as leave it in a bucket, with other limbs washed up on the shore. 

If you read and didn't like TSL then you'll probably have the same issue with TEOE, which sifts similar sands. In places it seems to be offering suggestions of an allegory of Brexit, but only as notes in a much more complicated brew that refuses to be obvious. There is a strangeness to it that speaks of the bewilderment of cultural shifts. For me, it is particularly strong on the mysteries of aging and generational change, along with personal redundancies, and a lifelong quest for artistic meaning and an expression of self. Get this book.

 

First Love and Other Novellas - Samuel Beckett

Also dealing with the mysteries of old age - senility, redundancy, helplessness, narrators unreliable and unrelatable - are these four stories from Becket. Novella seems to overstate their heft a bit, but like Malone Dies (see February 2026 Reads), the dark reveries of the narrators have the capacity to leave a reader deep in thoughts crepuscular of their own for some time subsequent. As well as giggling at phrases that seem to arrive out of nowhere in the middle of a line, a warm undercurrent through a cold tide, with an old fellow standing slightly further out up to their neck in the waves looking furtively towards the shore.

In some ways there is a similarity in theme to the stories here (old fellows in ruins) that lessens their impact. They might be read better stumbled over in a magazine or amid some other collection than all in a oner. However, Beckett's style is remarkable. Hopefully will find some on a forthcoming trip to France. 

Paradise Lost - John Milton, Ed. Alastair Fowler

Well,  at £2 or something in the charity shop, I was never not going to pick this up. 

Having studied the text a couple of times when at Uni. doing Eng. Lit. it was a bit like encountering an old pal who is miraculously and delightfully unchanged. This is the sort of edition that has considerably more in the way of footnotes on a page than the text (see the image below), which is just great. One finds out such a lot about not just the text but the presentation of the text, and I love to lavish hours on a well-tuned intro. 

 Couple that with Milton's enormous poetic vision, and that was me over at the till getting the cash out. I only had time to read Book 1 this July, but will make a point of getting through the rest of it again at some point this year. 

Let the Holidays Commence

That was it for July, boxed books for a house move and attendant logistics limiting my time... hopefully August will bring a bit more opportunity for leafing.