It may be the beginning of this blog but it's also the end of the year, so it's time to take a leaf out of every newspaper ever's book and create a list of things that happened in 2011 - by which I mean a list of books I read.
This isn't an exhaustive list because I'm not one for remembering things very well. Hey ho, 2012's inevitable list will be better.
The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
This was tough going. It's pretty hard to care about characters so vacuous and dull. The best thing is that they all get old and poor and die. That's not a spoiler because it's basically in the title.
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald (still reading)
Probably should have read this before I gave The Beautiful and Damned a go, it's far better but the middle book is a bit of a yawn-fest. I now see who they modelled Don Draper on though (Dick Diver - even got the alliteration going on) and enjoyed learning about two fingers of gin being a different measure to what I though it was. Also 'Dicole' - the first instance of Brangelina style name-merging? Surely it is.
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (still reading)
I started this in May despite (don't judge me) not yet having finished Infinite Jest. It's just as excellently dense, but you can kind of tell that DFW didn't finish it. Obviously masses and masses of care and attention and dedicated work and hours of trawling through manuscripts have gone into it, but I can't help feeling DFW would be a bit annoyed at us all reading his unfinished work.
Things the Grandchildren Should Know - that chap from Eels (re-read)
He's still the unluckiest man alive.
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (re-read)
I re-read these seven books at least once a year. Really wish they'd edited the last few more, but these are still wonderful, gripping stories - and now with added nostalgia.
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Despite it obviously being some kind of homage to Howard's End, the borrowed narratives drove me mad and I never really warmed to the characters. I read this on the Kindle too, which doesn't leave me feeling particularly warm and fuzzy toward it.
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Another Kindle read, and weirdly similar to On Beauty in a lot of ways. Good read, didn't stay with me though. Actually, now I think about it that's not true - I have a very vivid picture of the cabin in the woods in my mind. The rest is a bit of a blank.
Howard's End - E. M. Forster
Loved this in all its frustrating familied glory. Stupid meddling aunt, silly selfish men, recklessly naive girls and excellent mysterious older woman, all beautifully drawn. I love it when a book feels contemporary even though it was written in another time (1910) and this does. Particularly good to read in a year where class lines were so boldly drawn, although I can't see the poor chap and his fat ex-hooker wife looting the local Footlocker no matter how bad things got.
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (re-read)
Weirdly similar to Howard's End.
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
The Moomins Lady did other stuff! Who knew.
The Collected Short Stories - Amy Hempel (ADORED)
Hands down my favourite book of the year. How utterly heartbreakingly perfect Hempel's stories are. In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried is incredible. There isn't enough hyperbole in the world to explain how much I admire this woman's talent for revealing a story. I have plenty more to say about it but I'll save that for its own dedicated post. Hempel lectures at Harvard - as Liz Lemon would say, I want to go to there.
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (loved)
I can't even begin to fathom how to write a book as amazingly as this. Weaving together all those view points and parts and being able to pull off stream of consciousness narration so masterfully for so many characters and still come out with a book that makes sense. It blows my mind a bit. And writing a character like Benjy - not just writing, but writing as him, was very impressive. I loved how as the book went on, things you'd read in the first chapters would click into place. Must re-read this book in 2012.
Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Something I didn't tell you about The Sound and the Fury: I completely bought the incest story and missed the fact that it was a lie (er, spoiler alert). Not sure why, but I just didn't want to believe that Caddy was a regular slut. Not that being an incestuous sister is in any way better but at least it's different. Anyway, my point is this: perhaps I'm not the most attentive reader, which is why I thoroughly missed the whole castration thing in The Sun Also Rises. Thought the reason why Jake and Brett couldn't be together would become clear as the book progressed. Ah well.
My friend Lysann lent me this book, saying that she hated it so much she didn't want it back. I loved it - he's a very immersive writer and I felt like I'd been to Spain, I'd seen the bull fights, I'd perved on Romero. But it does move very slowly and, like a lot of American fiction from the same era, the characters aren't particularly likeable. So I can see why someone who likes tense European spy thrillers might not like it so much as I did.
Quarantine - Jim Crace
A book that read like a real writer had got his hands on a GCSE creative writing submission. But not in a good way. Also couldn't help but picture Jim Croce as I read it, but that's by the by.
Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk
Didn't care for this story much either, although there are flashes of utter brilliance in her prose. There's a wonderful passage where she likens school kids in the park to crows, for example. Not a major piece of observation but beautifully written. Mundane pieces of everyday life get a real going over, lending importance to the workaday. La-dee-da.
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
I'm not sure if this is what Palahniuk had in mind when he wrote Survivor, but it left me wanting to try out all the various Creedish cleaning tips from throughout the book. I admire Chuck Palahniuk's writing very much but Survivor left me a bit cold, to be honest. Put me in mind of school shootings stories, like that Jodi Picoult novel about the mother of the boy that shoots everyone, and Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland, which read like it was written for dummies.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Very readable (unlike Ishiguro's Kafka-inspired novel The Unconsoled, which I also read a bit of this year but was too easily defeated by). Sadly I read this just after the film came out, so the characters were already stained with Keira and Carey. Haven't seen the film yet though. I like the idea of a literary sci-fi story. It also reminded me of the cyborg chapters from Cloud Atlas - all a bit GCSE grade writing.
The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis
Can't remember much of this, but it constantly put me in mind of Matt Dillon. (A good thing. Well, a good thing for my mind's eye, anyway.)
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
Just a few years behind the curve on this one - excellent stuff...
Lights Out in Wonderland - DBC Pierre
...which is why I was so excited to read this straight after. Disappointing! Although, obviously, I don't just want old DBC to churn out more of the same, Lights Out felt like a bit of a sprawling mess. The storyline was a bit juvenile too, although I liked the concept of consequence-less last days before killing yourself. There was a whole section that was a bit "What the what? Where did that come from?"
Seriously though, what? And where? And, crucially, why?
Hour Game - David Baldacci
A lot of people really like Baldacci. Sadly, I am not one of them. Terrible stuff - not Dan Brown terrible, but not far off. Sentences that read like a five-year-old wrote them, telling not showing, paper-thin story, obvious villains (just look for the two characters that seem flawless until the final third of the book - um, spoiler. Sorry) and hilariously awful dialogue. Non merci.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender
Someone sent this to me for free so I thought I'd read it. The concept is a weird one - a kid can taste the emotions of the cook in all her foods - and it didn't ever really come together. It's another almost literary sci fi book (like Never Let Me Go), but certain elements just started and then abruptly stopped which wasn't very satisfying. And a really major plot point was just plonked in and took the book in a really odd direction. Structurally, it felt messy. Much like this section of this blog post. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about Lemon Cake, including its well observed picture of troubled family life. It just didn't really carry off the less realistic elements of its story.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carre
Shamefully, I did read this after I'd seen the film. Thankfully they're both excellent, although I'd have liked to have read the book without knowing what was going to happen. Calling Smiley Smiley was a masterstroke. Like Hemingway, Le Carre makes it feel like you're there in the Circus or you're on location in Prague and you're somehow involved, even if you're actually on a delayed, over-crowded South Eastern train into London Victoria.
The Promise of Happiness - Justin Cartwright
Can barely remember this one. I think it's about a girl that's been in prison for art forgery in New York and her home coming to her family in Cornwall? Something like that anyway.
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
Not the world's best-written book but quite gripping. Basically Brian Jacques' Redwall series for grown-ups. Includes such gems as this:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
I usually trust the narrator too much but in The Remains of the Day it seemed pretty obvious that this puffed up little butler was bending the truth quite a bit. It's so hard to keep reading a book when you don't really like any of the characters, but I managed to stick this one out and, weirdly, would quite like to see the film. Ishiguro nailed the tone brilliantly too.
This isn't an exhaustive list because I'm not one for remembering things very well. Hey ho, 2012's inevitable list will be better.
The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
This was tough going. It's pretty hard to care about characters so vacuous and dull. The best thing is that they all get old and poor and die. That's not a spoiler because it's basically in the title.
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald (still reading)
Probably should have read this before I gave The Beautiful and Damned a go, it's far better but the middle book is a bit of a yawn-fest. I now see who they modelled Don Draper on though (Dick Diver - even got the alliteration going on) and enjoyed learning about two fingers of gin being a different measure to what I though it was. Also 'Dicole' - the first instance of Brangelina style name-merging? Surely it is.
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (still reading)
I started this in May despite (don't judge me) not yet having finished Infinite Jest. It's just as excellently dense, but you can kind of tell that DFW didn't finish it. Obviously masses and masses of care and attention and dedicated work and hours of trawling through manuscripts have gone into it, but I can't help feeling DFW would be a bit annoyed at us all reading his unfinished work.
Things the Grandchildren Should Know - that chap from Eels (re-read)
He's still the unluckiest man alive.
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (re-read)
I re-read these seven books at least once a year. Really wish they'd edited the last few more, but these are still wonderful, gripping stories - and now with added nostalgia.
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Despite it obviously being some kind of homage to Howard's End, the borrowed narratives drove me mad and I never really warmed to the characters. I read this on the Kindle too, which doesn't leave me feeling particularly warm and fuzzy toward it.
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Another Kindle read, and weirdly similar to On Beauty in a lot of ways. Good read, didn't stay with me though. Actually, now I think about it that's not true - I have a very vivid picture of the cabin in the woods in my mind. The rest is a bit of a blank.
Howard's End - E. M. Forster
Loved this in all its frustrating familied glory. Stupid meddling aunt, silly selfish men, recklessly naive girls and excellent mysterious older woman, all beautifully drawn. I love it when a book feels contemporary even though it was written in another time (1910) and this does. Particularly good to read in a year where class lines were so boldly drawn, although I can't see the poor chap and his fat ex-hooker wife looting the local Footlocker no matter how bad things got.
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (re-read)
Weirdly similar to Howard's End.
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
The Moomins Lady did other stuff! Who knew.
The Collected Short Stories - Amy Hempel (ADORED)
Hands down my favourite book of the year. How utterly heartbreakingly perfect Hempel's stories are. In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried is incredible. There isn't enough hyperbole in the world to explain how much I admire this woman's talent for revealing a story. I have plenty more to say about it but I'll save that for its own dedicated post. Hempel lectures at Harvard - as Liz Lemon would say, I want to go to there.
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (loved)
I can't even begin to fathom how to write a book as amazingly as this. Weaving together all those view points and parts and being able to pull off stream of consciousness narration so masterfully for so many characters and still come out with a book that makes sense. It blows my mind a bit. And writing a character like Benjy - not just writing, but writing as him, was very impressive. I loved how as the book went on, things you'd read in the first chapters would click into place. Must re-read this book in 2012.
Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Something I didn't tell you about The Sound and the Fury: I completely bought the incest story and missed the fact that it was a lie (er, spoiler alert). Not sure why, but I just didn't want to believe that Caddy was a regular slut. Not that being an incestuous sister is in any way better but at least it's different. Anyway, my point is this: perhaps I'm not the most attentive reader, which is why I thoroughly missed the whole castration thing in The Sun Also Rises. Thought the reason why Jake and Brett couldn't be together would become clear as the book progressed. Ah well.
My friend Lysann lent me this book, saying that she hated it so much she didn't want it back. I loved it - he's a very immersive writer and I felt like I'd been to Spain, I'd seen the bull fights, I'd perved on Romero. But it does move very slowly and, like a lot of American fiction from the same era, the characters aren't particularly likeable. So I can see why someone who likes tense European spy thrillers might not like it so much as I did.
Quarantine - Jim Crace
A book that read like a real writer had got his hands on a GCSE creative writing submission. But not in a good way. Also couldn't help but picture Jim Croce as I read it, but that's by the by.
Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk
Didn't care for this story much either, although there are flashes of utter brilliance in her prose. There's a wonderful passage where she likens school kids in the park to crows, for example. Not a major piece of observation but beautifully written. Mundane pieces of everyday life get a real going over, lending importance to the workaday. La-dee-da.
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
I'm not sure if this is what Palahniuk had in mind when he wrote Survivor, but it left me wanting to try out all the various Creedish cleaning tips from throughout the book. I admire Chuck Palahniuk's writing very much but Survivor left me a bit cold, to be honest. Put me in mind of school shootings stories, like that Jodi Picoult novel about the mother of the boy that shoots everyone, and Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland, which read like it was written for dummies.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Very readable (unlike Ishiguro's Kafka-inspired novel The Unconsoled, which I also read a bit of this year but was too easily defeated by). Sadly I read this just after the film came out, so the characters were already stained with Keira and Carey. Haven't seen the film yet though. I like the idea of a literary sci-fi story. It also reminded me of the cyborg chapters from Cloud Atlas - all a bit GCSE grade writing.
The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis
Can't remember much of this, but it constantly put me in mind of Matt Dillon. (A good thing. Well, a good thing for my mind's eye, anyway.)
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
Just a few years behind the curve on this one - excellent stuff...
Lights Out in Wonderland - DBC Pierre
...which is why I was so excited to read this straight after. Disappointing! Although, obviously, I don't just want old DBC to churn out more of the same, Lights Out felt like a bit of a sprawling mess. The storyline was a bit juvenile too, although I liked the concept of consequence-less last days before killing yourself. There was a whole section that was a bit "What the what? Where did that come from?"
Seriously though, what? And where? And, crucially, why?
Hour Game - David Baldacci
A lot of people really like Baldacci. Sadly, I am not one of them. Terrible stuff - not Dan Brown terrible, but not far off. Sentences that read like a five-year-old wrote them, telling not showing, paper-thin story, obvious villains (just look for the two characters that seem flawless until the final third of the book - um, spoiler. Sorry) and hilariously awful dialogue. Non merci.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender
Someone sent this to me for free so I thought I'd read it. The concept is a weird one - a kid can taste the emotions of the cook in all her foods - and it didn't ever really come together. It's another almost literary sci fi book (like Never Let Me Go), but certain elements just started and then abruptly stopped which wasn't very satisfying. And a really major plot point was just plonked in and took the book in a really odd direction. Structurally, it felt messy. Much like this section of this blog post. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about Lemon Cake, including its well observed picture of troubled family life. It just didn't really carry off the less realistic elements of its story.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carre
Shamefully, I did read this after I'd seen the film. Thankfully they're both excellent, although I'd have liked to have read the book without knowing what was going to happen. Calling Smiley Smiley was a masterstroke. Like Hemingway, Le Carre makes it feel like you're there in the Circus or you're on location in Prague and you're somehow involved, even if you're actually on a delayed, over-crowded South Eastern train into London Victoria.
The Promise of Happiness - Justin Cartwright
Can barely remember this one. I think it's about a girl that's been in prison for art forgery in New York and her home coming to her family in Cornwall? Something like that anyway.
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
Not the world's best-written book but quite gripping. Basically Brian Jacques' Redwall series for grown-ups. Includes such gems as this:
I usually trust the narrator too much but in The Remains of the Day it seemed pretty obvious that this puffed up little butler was bending the truth quite a bit. It's so hard to keep reading a book when you don't really like any of the characters, but I managed to stick this one out and, weirdly, would quite like to see the film. Ishiguro nailed the tone brilliantly too.
