Yesterday’s post was rather long so I decided not to add these links to it - others’ reading lists for 2009:
Have you made a list too?
Update: Penny’s, Angel’s, Jessamyn’s.
Archive for the 'reading' Category
Number of books read in 2009: 103
New reads: 100
Number of books read in 2008: 99
Number of books read in 2007: 85
Number of books read in 2006: 64
Number of books read in 2005: 56
Average read per month: 8.58
Average read per week: 1.98
Number read in worst month: 5 (April)
Number read in best month: 12 (March and July)
Female authors: 48
Male authors: 34
Fiction: 87
non-fiction: 16 (marked *; 2008: 12, 2007: 10, 2006: 4, 2005: 2)
Scifi/fantasy: 24
Mystery/crime: 20
Literature/fiction: 35
Graphic novels: 2
Horror: 2
YA: 2
Poetry: 0 (A few individual poems read but no complete collections/works)
Languages
Malay: 1
Chinese: 0
January
Union Street by Pat Barker
The golem’s eye by Jonathan Stroud
Ptolemy’s gate by Jonathan Stroud
Spoken here: Travels among threatened languages by Mark Abley*
The fire engine that disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Epileptic (part one) by David B.*
February
The little friend by Donna Tartt
Don’t sleep, there are snakes: Life and language in the Amazonian jungle by Daniel Everett*
Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell*
Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Anne Marie Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff
March
Special topics in calamity physics by Marisha Pessl
The chalk circle man by Fred Vargas
The valley of horses by Jean M Auel
The mammoth hunters by Jean M Auel
The plains of passage by Jean M Auel
The shelters of stone by Jean M Auel
The abominable man by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown
Six moon dance by Sherri Tepper
Handling the undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The good women of China by Xinran*
Inner eclipse by Richard Paul Russo
April
Resilience by Anne Deveson*
The left hand of darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Edith’s diary by Patricia Highsmith
The man on the boulevard by Georges Simenon
Coonardoo by Katherine Susannah Prichard
May
Living with a man who is dying by Jocelyn Evans*
The 19th wife by David Ebershoff
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
A jar of dreams by Yoshiko Uchida
The memory game by Nicci French
Break no bones by Kathy Reichs
June
The way of a boy by Ernest Hillen*
Hanna’s daughters by Marianne Fredriksson
The zookeeper’s wife by Diane Akerman*
The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills
The piano teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee
The city and the city by China Mieville
Food, sex & money by Liz Byrski
Sweet Bamboo: A memoir of a Chinese American family by Louise Leung Larson*
The vampire tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
July
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
Sacred hunger by Barry Unsworth
Fall on your knees by Ann-Marie McDonald
The kingdom by the sea by Robert Westall
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Simon and the oaks by Marianne Fredriksson
MotherKind by Jayne Anne Phillips
Death of a red heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
The locked room by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Cop killer by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
The terrorists by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Original sin by P.D. James
August
How I live now by Meg Rosoff
Nervous conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Letter to my daughter by Maya Angelou*
The reluctant fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Darkness visible by William Styron*
The charioteer by Mary Renault
September
Shame by Karin Alvtegen
Dead until dark by Charlaine Harris
Living dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Dead to the world by Charlaine Harris
Dead as a doornail by Charlaine Harris
Definitely dead by Charlaine Harris
All together dead by Charlaine Harris
The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman*
From dead to worse by Charlaine Harris
Beautiful boy by David Sheff*
October
Gang of four by Liz Byrski
World made by hand by James Howard Kunstler
Girl with the pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier
Year of wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The time traveller’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Dead and gone by Charlaine Harris
The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Oath breaker by Michelle Paver
Truth by Peter Temple
The girl who played with fire by Stieg Larsson
Orang jauh by A. Samad Ismail
November
The girl who kicked a hornets’ nest by Stieg Larsson
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
The ballad of the sad cafe by Carson McCullers
Tell me I’m here by Anne Deveson*
American journeys by Don Watson*
Oracle bones by Peter Hessler*
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
December
We are all made of glue by Marina Lewycka
Ten thousand miles without a cloud by Sun Shuyun*
The road by Cormac McCarthy
A judgement in stone by Ruth Rendell
The feud by Thomas Berger
The safe house by Nicci French
U is for undertow by Sue Grafton
Sleepwalking by Julie Myerson
Burnt shadows by Kamila Shamsie
The merry-go-round in the sea by Randolph Stow
This is the first time the number of books I’ve read has exceeded the Magic Number, 100. Lots of enjoyable reads this year. Looking back over the list I think I can safely say that much of my reading this year has fallen into the category of Sheer Escapism. Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mystery series definitely fits this category, as do many of the crime titles. I have needed the distraction this year, I think.
Most surprising:
Sacred hunger by Barry Unsworth
My copy of this book is a secondhand, huge, hardback edition that has sat intimidatingly on my shelf for some years. I just picked it up one day in June, and found I couldn’t stop reading. A very well-written story of the slave trade and how it degraded (degrades) all involved.
Burnt shadows by Kamila Shamsie
Bought this on impulse (thanks, Book Depository, for making it so easy to buy!) after glancing at a positive review online. When it arrived I looked at it again and on reading the blurb, thought: “How is this novel going to work?”
1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka takes in the view of the terraced slopes from her veranda. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love withthe man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost.
Searching for new beginnings, she travels to Delhi to find Konrad’s relatives, and falls in love with their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from who she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of two families as they are transported from Pakistan to New York in the novel’s astonishing climax.
It does work, though. I basically read it in one sitting. I will have to re-read it more slowly. I love the way the author depicts cultural differences.
I can’t really say there are any books I didn’t enjoy. There were a few books I started and didn’t finish, and I had no qualms about setting them aside.
I’m pleased that I’ve read a few more non-fiction titles this year - they seem to have been either travelogues or biographical works. I suspect that this year I will be reading a number of titles on management, leadership and libraries (currently reading three titles!). I’m not going to set any particular reading goals this year. It’s going to be a busy one and I’ll just see how I go.
According to The Guardian, “these are the 50 books that defined” the Noughties. I decided to transcribe the list because I felt like it. Titles in crimson I have read.
2000
White teeth by Zadie Smith
No logo by Naomi Klein
Not sure why I have never got to this one. It’s sitting there on the shelf with its distinctive cover.
The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers
Started but didn’t finish this. The dissolute lifestyle the author lead with his young brother Toph stressed me out. I kept expecting Toph to die of salmonella poisoning or a skateboarding accident, or something.
The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman
How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, by Nigella Lawson
Do people actually read cookbooks? I mean, I might use a cookbook but I don’t sit and read it from cover to cover. In any case I don’t have this one.
Experience by Martin Amis
2001
The corrections by Jonathan Franzen
I seem to remember that I liked this but surprisingly don’t recall much of it now.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Austerlitz by WG Sebald
A life’s work: On becoming a mother by Rachel Cusk
2002
Nickel and dimed: undercover in low-wage USA by Barbara Ehrenreich
London orbital: A year walking around the M25 by Iain Sinclair
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
I really enjoyed the first half or so of this book but by the last quarter found the twists and turns of the plot too unbelievable.
Persepolis: The story of a childhood and the story of a return by Marjane Satrapi
2003
The Da Vinci code by Dan Brown
I don’t get the Dan Brown phenomenon. If I were to write a novel it wouldn’t be a best seller, and my writing skills are probably on par with Mr Brown’s. (That is to say, Not Very Good. Just so you don’t think I am trying to claim any literary skills.)
Landing light by Dan Paterson
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
Eats, shoots & leaves by Lynne Truss
2004
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States
Small Island by Andrea Levy
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Being Jordan by Katie Price
Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey
2005
Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Postwar by Tony Judt
Saturday by Ian McEwan
2006
The God delusion by Richard Dawkins
I think we have a copy but I haven’t really wanted to read this. I am an atheist who is generally quite uninterested in arguments or discussions about religion.
The road by Cormac McCarthy
Recently read and enjoyed this. I can visualise the movie.
The looming tower by Lawrence Wright
The weather makers by Tim Flannery
The revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
2007
Harry Potter and the deathly hallows by JK Rowling
I don’t think I own a copy of this one. When I did eventually read it I found it over-long and didn’t particularly enjoy it. I think I am one of those contrary people, for whom anything that receives a lot of hype in the media, almost immediately becomes unworthy of much of my attention. (e.g. I am the only person I know who still hasn’t seen Titanic, and is unlikely to.)
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
2008
Change We Can Believe In, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama
Why are these three books listed as one title?
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
Home by Marilynne Robinson
This is in my To Read pile.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
2009
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
11 out of 50 titles read.
This post, brought to you by someone who is on holidays and thus has time to indulge in list-making. Having a dual-screen set up also helped. I would have been far too impatient to keep flicking from tab to tab to transcribe the titles from the original article and post this, otherwise.
