The 2007 Book Report
This is the list of books I finished reading in 2007. The magic number is 70. That means I’ve read 1.3 books a week. Not bad, although I wanted the number to be higher. I excluded the rereads and the magazines and the journals (The NYer, Believer, Granta, etc.), although the time I spend reading NYer, for instance, is equivalent to one Agatha Christie book. If I include them, the list would be well over 100.
Fueled by my love for the deadpan existentialist Scandinavian police procedural writers, the mystery/detective fiction dominated 2007. New discoveries include Vernor Vinge, an SF novelist and Torgny Lindgren, a Swedish writer who writes bleak novels (in Sweetness, the characters are trapped in a remote village covered in snow and two of the three of them are waiting two die. What is bleaker than that?).
This year, I’m thinking of reading more SF and fantasy. Other 2008 resolutions: I resolve to read more contemporary fiction. I resolve to read the Lit theory books gathering dust under my bed. And lastly, I resolve to maintain clean bookshelves and stop the ugly habit of leaving my empty coffee cups on my desk, near the books. Wish me luck.
I’ll refrain from giving reviews of the books or rating them, for that matter for the simple reason that there's 70 of them. (Hey, I got to work!) However, I’ll list the top 5 books/authors worth noting about:
1. Wilkie Collins
19th. Century writer of “sensationals” and a best friend of Dickens. The Law and the Lady (#2) is the first novel where the sleuth is a woman. The plot and the writing are not at par with The Moonstone, Collin’s earlier effort and considered his masterpiece. It’s rambling, confusing, heavy handed and the characters, except for the reluctant sleuth Valeria Brinton-Woodville, are not well formed. But for fans of the mystery/detective fiction, The Law and the Lady’s an instructing and interesting read. Hey, you have to know your roots!
2. The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester
This SF novel was written in 1953, but never feels dated (well, except for the rape scene.) (The original name of TSMY was Tiger, Tiger!, culled from a poem by William Blake. Blake’s one of my favorites, so props to Bester for that. ) The story’s about Gulliver Foyle, an ordinary, ambition-less man who extracts revenge against the people who left him for dead in deep space. Foyle’s the granddaddy of all those one-man machines on a quest that litter the SF landscape, like Case of Neuromancer, considered the first novel of the cyberpunk tradition. The novel has a great opening scene - the origin of the word “Jaunt” - and has one of the most satisfying and logical endings I’ve ever read.
3. Dashiell Hammett
An alcoholic, TB-ridden, unrepentant communist considered to be one of the pillars of the American hardboiled tradition. A Hammett book is a master class on how ordinary, street language could be so crisp and visceral. In one of his stories, he described one character as somebody who was “howled out” of his job. Wished I thought of that.
4. Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge
Vinge was a computer scientist and a university professor who now writes SF full-time. In Rainbow’s End, Robert Gu, a notoriously mean former poet laureate found himself free from Alzheimer’s after a high tech operation in a technologically-mediated world. The novel’s a great meditation on aging, technology, the future of libraries, the Internet, and family.
5. Philip Pullman
Pullman writes fantastical children’s books that are read and loved by adults. Like me. His Dark Materials is anti-organized religion, but it’s never mean. I read the three Pullman books in one weekend and the effect after I was finished the series was physical. My eyes were red-rimmed from the sad future of Lyra and Will that left me heartsick for days.
1. The Human Stain - Philip Roth
2. The Law and the Lady - Wilkie Collins
3. Sidetracked - Henning Mankell
4. Firewall - Henning Mankell
5. Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
6. One Step Behind - Henning Mankell
7. The Ballad of the Sad Café - Carson McCullers
8. Politics, Observations and Arguments - Hendrik Hertzberg
9. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
10. The Birds and Other Stories - Daphne Du Maurier
11. Collected Stories - Carol Shields
12. The Curriculum Vitae of Anna Ortiz - Almudena Solana
13. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
14. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
15. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
16. A Very Long Engagement - Sebastien Japrisot
17. The Company of Strangers - Robert Wilson
18. Calling Out for You - Karin Fossum
19. When the Devil Holds the Candle - Karin Fossum
20. Minority Report and Other Stories - Philip K. Dick
21. Espedair Street - Iain Banks
22. A Drink Before the War - Dennis Lehane
23. Gone Baby Gone - Dennis Lehane
24. The Children of Men - PD James
25. The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
26. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
27. The Collectors - Paul Griner
28. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
29. An Unkindness of Ravens - Ruth Rendell
30. The Shape of Water - Andrea Camilleri
31. The Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie
32. The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie
33. Atonement - Iain McEwan
34. The Russian House - John Le Carre
35. The Best American Science Writing 2001
36. The Amazing Spiderman: The New Avengers
37. Spiderman: The Other, Evolve or Die
38. Our Lady of the Forest - David Gutterson
39. Emma - Jane Austen
40. Neuromancer - William Gibson
41. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Banks
42. The Crocodile Bird - Ruth Rendell
43. Me and Mrs. Darcy - Alexandra Potter
44. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog At Nighttime - Mark Haddon
46. About A Boy - Nick Hornby
47. Shibumi - Trevanian
48. The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks
49. An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears
50. Solitary Blue - Cynthia Voight
51. Rainbow’s End - Vernor Vinge
52. The Continental Op - Dashiell Hammett
53. Ill-Wind - Rachel Caine
54. Heat Stroke - Rachel Caine
55. The Life of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
56. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
57. How Animals Mate - Daniel Mueller
58. The Way People Run - Christopher Tilghman
59. Tainted Blood - Arnaldur Indridason
60. Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
61. Murder and a Muse - Gillian Farrell
62. Graves in the Academe - Susan Kerry
63. Lucky Girls - Nell Freudenberger
64. Return of the Dancing Master - Henning Mankell
65. Sweetness - Torgny Lindgren
66. The Girl in Landscape - Jonathan Lethem
67. I’ll Go to Bed at Noon - Gerard Woodward
68. The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro
69. The Class Trip - Emmanuel Carrere
70. Villette - Charlotte Bronte