My Books of 2011
So last year I pledged a New Year’s resolution, or rather, a challenge- first, I promised I would buy no full-priced books (books are an obsession of mine, and can be an unhealthily expensive habit), and also to keep a record of the books I read through the year. Apparently it’s weird, but plenty of people on the internet do it, so I’m fine! I never thought to record my thoughts on books during the year, and now it’s the end, so I can only give a few words on my impressions.
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver: a good, if disturbing, book that will make you consider the choice to have children.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: dark, but recommended.
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend: an entertaining, light read which I remember little of, but it is set during the Falklands, which is interesting.
The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indriðason: one of my favourite crime authors and a fascinating look into Icelandic culture.
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler: a reread because it is just that good. Get your hands on it.
Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka: the cheery story of Eastern European immigrants on the run. What could be better?
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet: the memoir of a man who can recite pi to thousands of digits, creates his own languages and whose severe autism keeps him from social situations. So interesting I read it twice.
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano: I tried to solve my thing against Italy by reading some award-winning Italian fiction, and it was quite interesting, I’ll give it that.
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie: I love Christie, for all her issues, but I have an inexplicable dislike of Arthur Hastings. It was okay.
Gravenhunger by Harriet Goodwin: a local author, and although I am not the target audience it was a fun read.
In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent: freak that I am, I already knew a lot of the information in this book from Wikipedia, but it was worth it solely for that which I didn’t. A brilliant topic.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville: my first Miéville, who I’d heard only good things about, and I was not disappointed, albeit PSS is much longer than I might usually read. A worthy introduction to the world of new weird.
Watch Your Mouth by Daniel Handler: oh look it’s Handler again. I make no secret of loving him, and this book has a golem and incest and read it.
Foreign Brides by Elena Lappin: an entertaining collection of short stories from the perspective of a writer who is apparently from everywhere- Russia, Czechia, the US, the UK, Israel…
A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh: I wanted to spice up my crime reading a bit, and Marsh has been compared favourably to Agatha Chri
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: a book I found rather difficult to read, despite its being around 60 pages long. It was, however, an insight into ‘insanity’.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: this actually took me a couple of goes to get into, even with all the hype, but it paid off and it can be said to be a modern classic.
Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie: in fact, the Poirot immediately after Peril at End House, and I preferred it. Slightly. I couldn’t tell you why.
The City and the City by China Miéville: thus Miéville succeeds in scoring himself a spot among my favourite authors. This is a very original, thought-provoking book, and maybe you really don’t need to know any more than that.
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas: you could say it’s dark. By other standards (read: mine) it’s not particularly, but it’s a good book and has just received a great BBC adaptation.
Luna by Julie Ann Peters: an ‘issue’ book, but nonetheless an important one. Recommended.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo: I read an ARC and I still couldn’t find any faults with this novel… Excellent and charming.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: well. It was alright. It wasn’t spiritually inspiring, and it’s rather heavily wish-fulfilment fantasy, but there we go.
Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs: a first foray into the mainstream thriller, albeit with a forensic twist. I’m willing to give Reichs another try.
At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie: I tend to prefer Christie’s ‘closed’ mysteries, and some of her plots are timeless rather than heavily linked to the time of writing. This is not one of them.
The Giver by Lois Lowry: a classic, and worth the read. It’s a little hard to explain briefly, but it is good! I love dystopian settings.
Broken Glass by Arthur Miller: a play so awkward to count but an excellent play nonetheless, bringing together two seemingly unrelated plot threads into an explosive ending. That sounds sensationalist and silly but it is a good play.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: I got Middlesex first but for some reason decided to read this beforehand, and Eugenides is definitely in my good books now. Quite morbid, but morbid is good.
The Return by Håkan Nesser: another of my favourite crime series- Swedish (!) but set in a fictional country based roughly on the Netherlands. This is book 3 that has been released in English. Check it out.
The Rapture by Liz Jensen: an interesting thriller than I expected to be more airport novel than it turned out to be, about a girl in a Christian sect in a juvenile mental institute who can seemingly predict disasters, and her relationship with her (disabled) therapist. It comes recommended.
Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie: I think I knew the solution to this one beforehand, but I was trying to read all of Christie’s oeuvre at the time, something I’ve since mostly given up on. It was reasonably interesting, plotwise.
Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism by Georgia Byng: one of my very favourite books from when I was younger, and it hasn’t lost its magic for me. An excellent children’s book that deserves more praise, in my opinion.
The Man Who Went Up In Smoke by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: it’s set in Budapest so I read it in Budapest, and I loved picking up on all the little references. Of course it’s still enjoyable if you don’t know the city, just as much even, but this is the classic Scandinavian crime series that started the trend. Go!
British Politics for Dummies by Julian Knight: it’s a little bit shameful that this is almost the only non-fiction I read all year but I felt I needed a basic introduction to go over what I knew. It’s a good book, and regardless of how the Dummies books might be intended to be used, I read it all in a couple of days. Useful.
The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martínez: I’m not much of a mathematician but this book ticked a lot of boxes: Argentinian, so from a country I have yet to read much literature from, an intelligent murder mystery… It has a clever ending, too; worth a read.
Fording the Stream of Consciousness by Dubravka Ugrešić: a hilarious book about a literary conference in Zagreb, and I could sell it like a blurb but it wouldn’t do it justice. I read this in Croatia for a sense of local flavour but would recommend it for anyone to read anywhere.
Blindness by José Saramago: oh so this book. It has a very interesting premise- that suddenly blindness becomes a contagious disease, and the blind are herded into asylums for the protection of those outside- but it is incredibly dense and for its 300 pages you would not expect it to take so long to read. Saramago does not like paragraphs. It has plenty of literary merit, he won the Nobel Prize, but it is a difficult read (and also because of the suffering described within!).
The White Lioness by Henning Mankell: a Wallander thriller set in South Africa around the time of Mandela’s release, and Mankell is pretty knowledgeable about his topic. Not half bad.
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton: a classic of sorts, a short novel (or a novella…) packed with meaning that seems to become more interesting with study.
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: I like this book. It is a very teenage book but for a 1940s kid Holden doesn’t half seem modern. My encounter afterwards with Irish nuns asking me directions in the city led me to a happy ‘oh!’ moment.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller: perhaps this one merits a reread, or even better, to see it in performance, because it is highly confusing. It has a point and has been an important play but there were moments I had to just put the book down and scratch my head…
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz: now this is an excellent book. It taught me some words in Spanish, it’s set in a country (the Dominican Republic) that I previously knew little about, it’s covered in footnotes, it could have had no plot whatsoever and I still would have enjoyed reading it.
Wicked by Gregory Maguire: I mainly wanted to read this out of interest in the musical, but I had heard that the novel was darker and bloodier. It took me some time to get into, and my heart wasn’t really in it. I’m happy to give Maguire another chance.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: a classic, and the first successful Nigerian novel published in English… At times I couldn’t put it down and at others I couldn’t wait for it to end, but I’m glad I read it.
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart: Eastern European satire! At times it reminded me of The City and the City, but only on a superficial level I suppose. It’s funny, though, and recommended.
Room by Emma Donoghue: this is a very powerful book. I was on edge reading it and it is literally a ‘couldn’t put it down’ novel. It has a simple premise- Jack lives with his mother in Room, outside which he has never seen. His realisation that there is a whole world outside makes for a masterpiece with echoes of The Lovely Bones.
Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks: I wanted a simple introduction to feminism in book form (I’ve already learnt plenty from the internet) and it was handy as a gift. I don’t think it’s the most concise little thing, but it has a place, you know.
The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams: you could say a disappointing end to the year. I heard good things about this book and the fact it is about a lepidopterist (like Nabokov!) interested me, but nothing much happened and the plot twist was quite predictable. I’d be interested to hear the views of people who liked it.
At the start of the year, I was aiming for 50 books and about 20000 pages; I wasn’t sure on the maths, it just seemed like a nice number. I achieved 48, and 14526 pages, which is pleasing, although I could have bumped it up with a couple more books. For 2012, then, I want to set my sights high and go for 60 books, so 5 a month, which is achievable.
Anyway, a happy (belated, yes) New Year, and happy reading!
(Crossposted to Wordpress and ffrench)