THE YEAR’S NEW BOOKS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 82, 31 December 1934, Page 6

THE YEAR’S NEW BOOKS

Of a record total of 15,628 books publislicd in Great Britain in 1934, fiction showed the greatest increase. Books on travel, naval and military history, business and technology increased, but on sociology, literature, geography, music and religion decreased. 1 Ins is somewhat surprising, for it was' always said diiring the years oi the depression that the times, along with much evil, had done one good thing. They had made us think. The man in the street was supposed to be interested in economics, politics and the expanding world around him as never before. Church leaders affirmed that despite outward indifference there was- a decided quest after real religion. Quack panaceas for the»world’s discontents had at least made men teat. Economics with a capital E. The Oxford Group movement wabringing the up-and-outs back to vital Christianity. This may be still the trend, but for 1934 at any rate the stream of new books doe> not conform. Possibly the man in the street has thrown his anchoi back a Jittle. He may be reading economics and politics and ethicmore than ever, but not from new books. He may be going to>the sources in Plato, Flegel, Adam Smith and other great minds not given to the world every year. Fie may be reading the New 1 estament in preference to A. J. Russell and Shakespeare before Bernard Shaw The year’s new publications are not necessarily an index to the year’s reading; yet they are a reflex of paradoxical times. For who wd> ‘deny that” in an enlightened twentieth century liberal democracy- the position would be exactly reversed, with sociology, literature, geograpliv. music and religion taking precedence over naval and military history, business and technology, and even fiction