A Year in Books - my challenge (updated 19th Jan)
Part of my New Year’s resolutions is to go back to reading (proper) published novels again. I may read a ridiculous amount - having an average reading speed of about 100 pages in an hour will do that to a person - but recently I’ve done very little non-fandom reading. Last year, I think I only finished about 8-10 novels/books - three were The Hunger Games, and two were the first half of the Parade’s End tetralogy, and one was Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman - which considering the speed at which I read is a depressingly low number of books. I’m also fed up of people asking me what I’ve read lately and not being able to really respond because Sherlock fan fiction doesn’t cut it in the real world.
So, I’ve set myself the target of finishing a minimum of 2 novels a month for 2013. I have a bookshelf of unread books, many of which have been on my ‘must read’ list for literally years - American Gods; Wicked; Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; The Secret History; A Suitable Boy; the list goes on. I now have a Kindle with another set of unread books downloaded onto it, many of which have been on my ‘really should read’ list for years - The Lost World; Les Misérables; The Man in the Iron Mask; War and Peace; The Complete Works of Dickens, and again, many more. I also have an Amazon wish list and a list of books people have been telling me I really should read - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Road; Steven King’s Dark Tower series; Spares. I even have a list of fantasy books that the internet assures me as a lover of fantasy I really, really should read. So in short, I have a lot of books.
All in all, it’s going to take me years to read, right? I best get started then.
So, a minimum of 2 novels a month for twelve months. That’s more than do-able. In fact, I should be able to do considerably more. Although that might depend on how long, dense and hard the novel is to read. War and Peace - yeah, that’s not likely to be read in a fortnight, is it?
It occurred to me yesterday that it would be good to keep track of what I’ve read and even what I thought about the books. Partly because keeping track of them will make me feel more accomplished when I look back, and partly because I’ll be able to remember them better when people ask me if I’ve read anything good lately. Then it occurred to me today that I could do so online and that other people might be interested as well. So this is it, this will be my reading journal for the year. As I finish each book I’ll add it to the bottom of this post, along with the date I finished, the details of the book and a brief note of what I thought of it. By the end of the year I’ll have a comprehensive list to look back over, which could be fun.
If anyone has any suggestions as to what you think is a ‘must read’, then let me know. I’m always open to suggestions and or discussion. I have reasonably wide tastes - and a degree in English Literature - but the books have to be good. I’m not going to spend my time reading something mediocre, not when there is so much brilliant stuff out there to enjoy. I don’t read many modern novels anymore because I generally find them predictable and boring. Chick-lit; been there, done that, burnt the t-shirt. Best sellers; just because lots of people buy them doesn’t necessarily make them any good. People, in general, are stupid. I’m looking at you Fifty Shades. Crime/Thrillers; they’ve got to offer something different or new. On the other hand, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, classics and stuff with real imagination or feeling, I love. If it’s well written, has good characterisation, a decent plot and/or makes you think, then hey, I’ll give it a go. I’m always up for discovering new authors, new characters, new worlds. That’s why I read in the first place.
For those of you who are worried that the reading will distract me from writing, well, yeah, there is always the possibility, but also know this, Man and Beast exists as it does only because I had recently finished Perfume while on holiday that summer.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Reading is good.
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A Year in Books
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We Read To Know We Are Not Alone - C. S. Lewis
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Finished: 19th January 2013
Title: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Author: Jonas Jonasson
1st Published: 2009 (English Translation: 2012)
Genre: Modern Fiction (European, Comedy, Crime, Adventure)
Length: 400 pages
Summary:
“Chief Inspector Aronsson still couldn’t fathom what was actually going on. But one thing seemed more and more clear, however incredible: centurion Allan Karlsson and his entourage seemed to be pretty accomplished at killing people and then spiriting away their corpses.
Deciding that the last place he wants to be is at his own one-hundredth birthday party, Allan Karlsson climbs out of his bedroom window at the old people’s home and makes his getaway. And so beings his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police.
My Verdict:
I downloaded this novel because the title and front cover caught my eye and Amazon insisted on recommending it to me practically every time I went onto their Kindle pages. The reviews were good, the premise looked interesting, and at 20p I figured what was the worst that could happen.
This book is a hilarious black comedy, like nothing else I’ve ever read, in style, language or structure. Shifting between the present - one-hundred year old Allan and his daring escape - and the past - pretty much the entire 20th century and a great deal of the world - it reads like a European Forrest Gump, except without all the needless overblown sentimentality. It’s delightfully European, with some dark humour and a deadpan sort of delivery. Actually, it’s rather hard to describe. Very easy to read though, an unusual writing style, but very enjoyable.
Score:
9/10
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Finished: 17th January 2013
Title: Fool Moon (Book Two of the Dresden Files)
Author: Jim Butcher
1st Published: 2001
Genre: (Urban) Fantasy
Length: 352 pages
Summary:
“It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job.”
Harry Dresden, Wizard, is back. Business, though, has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. But just when it looks like he can’t afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise.
A brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guesses - and the first two don't count...
My Verdict:
This wasn’t the book I had been planning on reading next, but after the intense claustrophobic, emotional rollercoaster that was The Secret History, I needed something lighter, a little fluffier, that would hold my attention but not break my brain. I figured, considering what I have on my shelves or on my kindle, that this would fulfil my criteria, and it did, ish.
I have to say that I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as I did the first in the series. Some of that is definitely me. I’m reading too much, too fast, my brain is overloading, but at the same time I can’t stop because I have an ever expanding list of books to read - over 100 so far and rising. I need to slow down and pace myself, enjoy each book as a whole - like that’s going to happen.
Anyway, in another mind set I probably would have enjoyed this more, but there you go. Also, werewolves. I have a love/hate relationship with werewolves, especially at the moment. I’ve been spending so much time crafting my own mythology that stepping into someone else’s is somewhat strange.
Away from me and onto the book itself, the structure of the story wasn’t that different from the last one, which goes against it somewhat. Some of the characters irritated me at times. I wasn’t as gripped by it as I was the first book. That said, I did enjoy it, although I thought the second half was stronger than the first. I’m going to wait before reading the next in the series. Don’t want to read them all too fast after all. They deserve better than that. From what I hear, though, this is one of the weakest books in the series, so I’ll keep that in mind.
Score:
7/10
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Finished: 9th January 2013
Title: The Secret History
Author: Donna Tartt
1st Published: 1992
Genre: Literary Fiction / Psychological Thriller
Length: 629 pages
Summary:
“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does.”
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.
My Verdict:
This book has been on my bookshelf for a few years now, picked up from a charity shop because I remembered the title from the BBC’s Big Read. At 629 pages with a black cover it always looked quite a dense imposing book and I probably wouldn’t have got around to reading it for a while yet had it not been for Flawedamythyst ordering me to read it first, next, immediately!
I’d heard it described as less of a “whodunit” and more of a “whydunit”. That’s certainly very accurate and for me far more interesting - why is always more complicated and intriguing than who.
Where to start? Well, I may have immersed myself a little too quickly, a little too deeply in this book, because I certainly got caught up with the characters. It sucks you into a claustrophobic world and then makes you live every single minute of it. There were parts when I could smell the cigarette smoke, taste the alcohol, feel the oncoming hangover. All of the emotions, the fear, the elitism of being part of a small exclusive club, of being better and set apart from everyone else, the alienation and isolation that brings, the artificial world it creates, and then the consequences of what happens when you push things to the extremes. One part Euripides' Bacchae and Greek Tragedy, one part Crime and Punishment, with a dash of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a dose of the coming of age novel, set in a small exclusive college, cut off almost from the real world. Add in my memories of struggling through Greek Classics during my first year at university (required course) and half a dozen references to Sherlock Holmes and there’s more than enough for me. I loved it. I will definitely be re-reading it someday. Just not quite yet.
I think I might need something a little lighter before my brain explodes.
Score:
9.5/10
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Finished: 5th January 2013
Title: Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
1st Published: 2001
Genre: Modern Fiction (Adventure, Magical Realism, Philosophical Literature, Postmodernism)
Length: 464 pages
Summary:
“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”
The story of Piscine (Pi) Patel, which chronologically starts in a zoo in India, travels an ocean with a Bengal tiger, and finishes with introspection in Canada, even if the book doesn’t. A story that is far, far more than its parts.
My Verdict:
There are some stories that stay with you long after the words have left your mind. They conjure up images that flash through your mind at inexplicable moments, evoke emotions that after reading leave you feeling wrung dry, and raise questions you had never before considered. Life of Pi, I suspect, for me at least, is going to be one.
Superficially, it is a story about a boy, a tiger and a boat, bobbing up and down on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, but like the ocean that stretches beneath it, the horizon that stretches around it and the heavens that stretch up over it, the boy, the tiger and the boat is merely the beginning. Philosophy, theology, zoology, fantasy and spirituality combine to create a unique and memorable story.
I saw the film at Leicester Square in 3D just after Christmas and was blown away by the images, but left the cinema in contemplation because of the story. Now I’ve read the book, the themes and the questions have been deepened and sharpened in my mind, and having become weary of predictable modern novels that I usually end up being given for Christmas, I’ve found one that is utterly worthy of the praise and awards that has been bestowed on it.
That said, I can also see why some people don’t like it, but for once, that’s not the book’s fault.
Score:
10/10
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Finished: 2nd January 2013
Title: Storm Front (Book One of the Dresden Files)
Author: Jim Butcher
1st Published: 2000
Genre: (Urban) Fantasy
Length: 332 pages
Summary:
“Harry Dresden. Wizard.”
Magic is real. Supernatural creatures are real. The consequences of breaking the laws of magic are very real. And in the middle of it all is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden: Private Investigator and Wizard
My Verdict:
I’d heard this series thrown around quite a bit in the last year - mainly by @ardyforshort - and heard it described as being a bit like a modern day Sherlock Holmes, except he’s a wizard. Yeah, like I’m going to resist that for long.
In summary: brilliant! Utterly loved it. Haven’t enjoyed a crime/thriller this much since Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime books. Great description and use of language. Intriguing world. Unique look at and use of magic. Realistic - which for real world based fantasy makes it even better. A real page turner. It works both in terms of a hardboiled detective thriller and as one that involves magic.
Fourteen books in the series so far. It’s going to take effort not to simply download the next one and get stuck in. I’m going to resist though, they deserve to be savoured and I have lots of other books to read, but, rest assured, I will be back. Oh yes, I will be back. Dark Wizards couldn’t keep me away from this series.
Score:
8.5/10 - only because I live in the hope that the stories in the rest of the series might (im)possibly get better. (Yeah, I’m a harsh marker; deal with it).
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As I said, feel free to make suggestions, but here are a few things that might help before you do:
- I’m an English Literature graduate - I know my Austen from my Eliot. I like and appreciate classics, but I haven’t read as many of them as I perhaps should have. I shall be reading more. If it helps, I love Jane Eyre, I loathe Wuthering Heights, and I still haven’t made it too far into A Tale of Two Cities, but loved Bleak House. Yeah, go figure.
- I did two years of American Literature while at Uni, so yes, I’ve read The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Catcher in the Rye, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Moby Dick, amongst others. I am British, so I read more British than American usually, just as I watch far more British TV than US TV.
- I do like books from other cultures, but again I haven’t read as many as I might like. Of the ‘modern’ novels I have read and enjoyed recently does include Small Island, which I read pre-Benedict/BBC series (incidentally, the BBC production was brilliant and very faithful to the book, and almost painfully realistic to experiences members of my own family went through).
- I love fantasy, although again I’ve not read as much as I would like. If it’s popular, mainstream fantasy then I’ve probably read it; Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter, Discworld, Hunger Games, Sabriel (Abhorsen) trilogy, Magician trilogy, Gormenghast Trilogy (didn’t get it) and more recently, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. I have a lot of fantasy on my wish list and am looking forward to reading more, when I get to them. I am never going to read His Dark Materials, so don’t even suggest them.
- I love Jasper Fforde’s books, but I’m waiting for the latest Thursday Next book to go to paperback and I haven’t read (yet - for several reasons) Shades of Grey.
- I’ve read both Pillars of the Earth and the follow up, World Without End, by Ken Follett. I’ve read Edward Rutherfurd’s London, but haven’t yet managed any of the others yet. I love historicals, but, you’ve guessed it, haven’t read as many as I would like.
- Fifty Shades of Grey is a complete load of bollocks.
- In 2003, the BBC did the BBC Big Read where people voted for their favourite novels of all time. I have read about 67 of the top 100, including 22 of the top 25. The most obvious ones that I haven’t read include His Dark Materials, Russian authors, various Dickens, Gone with the Wind and anything by Jeffrey Archer.
- I don’t believe I’ve ever finished a novel by a Russian author, although I do mean to, someday.
- Life, however, is too short to waste on reading Jeffrey Archer.