Last year I read 54 books. I thought this was quite a lot until I came across this person. One a week though isn't bad. I read in bed, in the bath, on long journeys, at weekends and on holiday. I always have a book on the go and feel quite jittery if I finish one and don't know what I'm reading next, I guess the way a smoker feels if they're down to the last cigarette in the pack and there are no shops open anywhere. I have been reading like this since I was nine.
My top books of last year, in no particular order, are:
The Night Watch by Sarah Walters
Gilead by Marilyne Robinson
Memoir by John McGahern
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Either Side of Winter by Benjamin Markovits
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Runaway by Alice Munroe
The Observations by Jane Harris
District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
The Sea by John Banville
Everyman by Philip Roth
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
I'm too lazy to add links for them all but they're over there in the sidebar.
I think I read mainly English women novelists so I find it slightly surprising that 5 of the authors are American and 6 of them are men. I'm also surprised that Zadie Smith made it on as I hated White Teeth. I am claiming that 4 ot the writers are Irish, Banville, Heaney (my sixth cousin, three times removed, according to my mother's cousin's son in Belfast who researched the family tree), McGahern and Harris. I'm not sure if Harris is identified as an Irish author but seeing as she is the only other person to get the word snash into print apart from myself, I think she must be.
If I had to choose one it would be District and Circle, the only poetry book on the list, and if I had to choose one poem it would be this:
The Blackbird of Glanmore
On the grass when I arrive,
Filling the stillness with life,
But ready to scare off
At the very first wrong move,
In the ivy when I leave,
It's you, blackbird, I love.
I park, pause, take heed.
Breathe. Just breathe and sit
And lines I once translated
Come back: 'I want away
To the house of death, to my father
Under the low clay roof.'
And I think of one gone to him,
A little stillness dancer -
Haunter-son, lost brother -
Cavorting through the yard,
So glad to see me home,
My homesick first term over.
And think of a neighbour's words
Long after the accident;
'Yon bird on the shed roof,
Up on the ridge for weeks -
I said nothing at the time
But I never liked yon bird'
The automatic lock
Clunks shut, the blackbird's panic
Is shortlived, for a second
I've a bird's eye view of myself,
A shadow on raked gravel
In front of my house of life.
Hedge-hop, I am absolute
For you, your ready talkback,
Your each stand-offish comeback,
Your picky, nervy goldbeak -
On the grass when I arrive,
In the ivy when I leave.
Lovely
Posted by: incognito | January 03, 2007 at 08:36 PM
PS, like the new link but there is nothing in it yet - surely some mistake?
Posted by: incognito | January 03, 2007 at 08:36 PM
...it's only the 3rd of January!!
Posted by: Ganching | January 03, 2007 at 09:39 PM
oooooh, how delightful - i love book lists. just finished reading brooklyn follies and must say i thoroughly enjoyed it. i read a couple of alice munroes this year and found them addictive. azuredec got me on beauty for xmas and cant wait to tuck into it (i liked white teeth). will definitely have to check out the other books on your list.
Posted by: rara avis | January 04, 2007 at 12:44 AM
Alice Munro's very much au courant; the author to be reading right now.
I started reading Memoir last year, but I was crying with envy by the second page. Just wonderful writing I couldn't ever imagine bettering. Didn't help that I was drunk, mind you.
I have a signed copy of On Beauty that I picked up in a bookshop in Cookstown in November, along with a signed copy of Nick Laird's latest. Apparently they'd just been in town because his mother is captain of the golf club and she'd won some award there. I read his book but not hers: I loved White Teeth, quite liked The Autograph Man, but have an entire book case of unread books at home that have pushed the new one to the back. I manage to read a similar number of books as you do, but they're mostly nonfiction: Right now it's a book about Marian apparitions in the U.S.!
Sorry, I'm rambling!
Posted by: John | January 04, 2007 at 11:01 AM
John you can't beat a good Marian apparition. I didn't hate, hate White Teeth I just thought it was terribly over-hyped. I read Nick Laird's novel but I thought it was really not good at all. He may be a better poet than a novelist. He did write a very good article in LRB some time ago. Also it must be hard being Mr Zadie Smith.
rara avis glad the list is of use. I am reading something by Tim Winton that was recommended by What's New Pussycat. Do you want to recommend something?
Posted by: Ganching | January 04, 2007 at 05:27 PM
Seeing as how you're all exchanging titles let me recommend Marina Warner's Alone of All Her Sex as the best book I've read on the blessed virgin. Now that I think of it ganching, I seem to remember you laughing at me for reading it. Mind you, that was before you got religion.
Posted by: jg | January 04, 2007 at 05:36 PM
Recommendations, eh?
The ever-awesome Mr Pynchon's new novel (Against the Day) is rather good. As is the latest Auster one. (Brooklyn Follies seems so long ago, but I guess as I got it on hardback the day it came out, I could be considered a fanboy. And if you are in the mood, try the New York Trilogy again.)
What else? Oh, all the Modesty Blaise novels, they rule too. The other notable book I read last year would be Persian Fire, by Tom Holland. But that might not agree with Guardianista-ness.
Do you do children's books? We read a few good ones of those, too. None of which including Harry bloody Potter.
If I wasn't sitting looking at *this* bookcase, but rather the one out *there*, I could look over last year's purchases. And unlike Mr Wulf, I will leave out the tech ones.
Although I am not sure our tastes intersect that much.
Posted by: Mr Bolan | January 04, 2007 at 08:06 PM
What do you think of Never Let Me Go, which I see on your side-list? Read it earlier this year and rather liked it.
For all you literary types, may I recommend for your consideration The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde? Jolly good fun.
Posted by: Sandra | January 05, 2007 at 01:37 AM
The Eyre Affair is great, the next two rubbish, but the fourth I seem to recall is back to being ace.
Posted by: Mr Bolan | January 05, 2007 at 08:38 AM
I read Alone of All Her Sex years ago, but Marina Warner managed to bore the pants off me (not literally).
Alot of literary literature, like Auster and Pynchon, just get on my tits, I'm afraid. There's very little fiction that I actually enjoy (says he with A level English literature!)
Posted by: John | January 05, 2007 at 10:41 AM
Ooh, bragging are we? We'll I've got an A-Level in German. Jawohl.
Posted by: Sandra | January 05, 2007 at 01:20 PM
And also an aberrant apostrophe, for which I shall hang my head and retreat to the Outer Darkness.
Posted by: Sandra | January 05, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Heh heh heh. Beat me to it, Sandra!
Is Outer Darkness what the locals call Toronto?
Posted by: John | January 05, 2007 at 02:24 PM
Hey, I have an O level in English Lit. Although I have dated liberal arts students, will that count?
I know Auster and Pynchon are accused of being writer's writers, but hey, I enjoy the philosophy of it all. And the theology. And the madness.
Posted by: Mr Bolan | January 05, 2007 at 02:35 PM
What a literary lot you are (apart from those of you with an unhealthy interest in the BVM). I liked Never Let Me Ago unlike a certain person who complained to me that "no humans would ever behave like that!" Well quite!
Posted by: Ganching | January 05, 2007 at 03:31 PM