Books I read in 2005

1. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
2. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
3. How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
4. Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson
5. Language Play by David Crystal
6. Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
7. The Safety of Objects by A.M Homes
8. The Complete Yes Minister by Anthony Jay/Jonathan Lynn
9. The Best of McSweeneys 1 by Dave Eggers (ed)
10. The Man who Hated Football by Will Buckley
11. 1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray
12. The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
13. Official and Confidential by Anthony Summers
14. Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
15. The Bitch in the House edited by Cathi Hannauer
16. Quick Service by P.G. Wodehouse
17. The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
18. The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
19. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
20. Do You Remember the First Time by Jenny Colgan
21. Melancholy Baby by Robert B. Parker
22. Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse
23. Strangers by Taichi Yamada
24. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
25. Changing Planes by Ursula LeGuin
26. A Certain Chemistry by Mil Millington
27. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Laura Schlessinger
28. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
29. The Promise of Happiness by Justin Cartright
30. Authenticity by David Boyle
31. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
32. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
33. Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
34. Venus as a Boy by Luke Sutherland
35. Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey
36. Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware
37. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
38. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
39. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
40. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
41. The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli
42. The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
43. Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce
44. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
45. Love in Idleness by Charlotte Mendelson
46. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
47. P.O.S.H. and Other Language Myths by Michael Quinion
48. The Understudy by David Nicholls
49. Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
50. A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker
51. One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck
52. Small ISland by Andrea Levy
53. Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome
54. Jennings Goes to School by Anthony Buckeridge
55. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen by Dyan Sheldon
56. How To Dunk a Doughnut by Len Fisher
57. Love Me by Garrison Keillor
58. The Picts and the Martyrs by Arthur Ransome
59. The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe
60. The Vampyre by Tom Holland
61. Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear
62. The fantastical Adventures of the Invisible Boy by lloyd Alexander
63. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
64. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
65. The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester
66. where Have All the Boys Gone by Jenny Colgan
67. Back Story by Robert B Parker
68. ?has vanished from record?
69. And then he Ate My Boy Entrancers by Louise Rennison
70. Biche by Stephanie Theobald
71. On beauty by Zadie Smith
72. The Penelopeiad

And book 68 was The Madolescents by Chrissie Glazebrook.

I think my favourites this year were A Box of Matches and Motherless Brooklyn. Small Island and On Beauty were great too. Worst book of the year: either Stupid White Men or The Man Who Hated Football.

Phillipa Gregory - Virgin Earth
Devid Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Jason Goodwin - Lords of the Horizons
Elizabth Redfern - The Music of the Spheres
Patrick O'Brian - The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey*
Gideon Defoe - The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists*
Magnus Mills - The Scheme for Full Employment
Deborah Moggach - The Ex-wives
Mary Renault - Funeral Games
Alasdair Gray - Lanark: A life in Four Books
Deborah Moggach - Tulip Fever
John Lanchester - Mr. Phillips
Douglas Coupland - Eleanor Rigby
Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage
Robert Sullivan - Rats
CV Wedgwood - The Trial of Charles II
Louis Sachar - Holes
Alexandra Fuller - Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight
Nicey and Wifey - Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down*
Alexandra Fuller - Scribbling the Cat
Simon Garfield - Mauve
John Lanchester - The Debt to PLeasure
Donald Thomas - Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf
Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means
Phillipa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl
Jon mcGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Stephen Bown - Scurvy*
Ken Bruen - The Magdalen Martyrs
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
Phillipa Gregory - The Queen's Fool
PG Wodehouse - Psmith Journalist
Michael Booth - Just as Well I'm Leaving
Nadine Gordimer - The Pickup*
Beryl Bainbridge - Sweet William
Gavin Weightman - The Frozen Water Trade
JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
John Lanchester - Fragrant Harbour
Phillippa Gregory - The Wise Woman
Daphne Du Maurier - Hungry Hill
Roisin Ingle - Pieces of me*
James Morrow - This is the Way the World Ends
Alistair McLeod - No Great Mischief
Giles Minton - Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Augusten Burroughs - Running with Scissors*
Jonathan Lethem - Gun With Occasional Music*
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time-Traveller's Wife
Philppa Gregory - Earthly Joys
Jon Ronson - The Men Who Stare At Goats
Stephen Fry - Making History
Max Brooks - The Zombie Survival Guide*
Jean Sasson - Princess
Andrew Martin - The Necropolis Railway
Stephen King - The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Favourite fiction book of the year is a toss-up between Lanark and The Time-Traveller's Wife, while favouite non-fiction is probably Nathaniel's Nutmeg, which I really did enjoy.

Sarah Waters – Fingersmith
Lara Vapnyar - There Are Jews In My House
Natsuo Kirino - Out
Madeleine L’Engle - A Wrinkle In Time
Nella Bielski - The Year Is ‘42
Irina Denezhkina - Give Me (Songs For Lovers)
Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
P.G. Wodehouse - The Code of the Woosters
Ian McEwan - Enduring Love
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Viktor Erofeyev - Life With An Idiot
Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
Leonard Cohen - The Favourite Game
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
Miljenko Jergovic - Sarajevo Marlboro
David B. - Epileptic
Colleen Curran - Whores on the Hill
Jostein Gaarder - The Orange Girl
Jonathan Coe - The Closed Circle
Shirley Jackson - The Sundial
Michel Houellebecq - Platform
Alasdair Gray – Lanark
Dubravka Ugresic - The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Jon Krakauer - Under the Banner of Heaven
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (audio)
Raymond Carver - Where I’m Calling From
Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
Clare Dudman - 98 Reasons for Being
E.M. Forster - Howards End
Tony Parsons - Stories We Could Tell
Tove Jansson - Finn Family Moomintroll
Flann O’Brien - The Third Policeman
Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Bret Easton Ellis - Lunar Park
Orhan Pamuk - Snow
Neil Gaiman – Neverwhere
Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking
Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

I can actually really see the influence of book blogs and forums in my reading choices over the year. I’m such a follower. Still, some fantastic recommendations.

I’m also shocked that the first 6 books from the year were by women. I used to almost never read women; this year I seem to have done pretty well in that department. I even rounded out the year with two of them.

The ones I started but didn’t finish (most after having read half or more)
Paul Theroux - Happy Isles of Oceania
Jay Rubin - Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words
Donna Tartt - The Little Friend
Tom Bissell - Chasing the Sea
Yuri Rytkheu - A Dream In Polar Fog
Rachel May - The Translator In The Text

I have a notoriously bad record with finishing non-fiction...

Top 5:
1. Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking
2. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
3. Orhan Pamuk - Snow
4. Miljenko Jergovic - Sarajevo Marlboro
5. Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

1. Jester's Down - Donche, Jr., Daniel E. - Burning Books, 2002
2. Frank's World - A Novel - Mangels, George - St. Martin's Press, 1997
3. The Bird Is Gone - A Manifesto - Jones, Stephen Graham - Fiction Collective Two, 2003
4. The Insult - Thomson, Rupert - Vintage Books, 1997
5. Reasons To Live - Stories By - Hempel, Amy - HarperCollins, 1995
6. Chronicles - Volume One - Dylan, Bob - Simon & Schuster, 2004
7. On Writing - A Memoir Of The Craft - King, Stephen - Scribner, 2000
8. The Pugilist At Rest - Stories - Jones, Thom - Back Bay Books, 1994
9. Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close - Foer, Jonathan Safran - Houghton Mifflin, 2005
10. Los Angeles - A Novel - Smith, Peter Moore - Little, Brown And Company, 2005
11. Haunted - A Novel Of Stories - Palahniuk, Chuck - Doubleday, 2005
12. Dermaphoria - Clevenger, Craig - MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2005
13. Homeboy - Morgan, Seth - Random House, 1990
14. Lunar Park - Ellis, Bret Easton - Knopf, 2005
15. BLACKBOX - A Novel In 840 Chapters - Walker, Nick - Perennial, 2003
16. The People Of Paper - Plascencia, Salvador - McSweeney's Books, 2005
17. The Last Gangster - From Cop To Wiseguy To FBI Informant: Big Ron Previte And The Fall Of The American Mob - Anastasia, George - Avon Books, 2005
18. The Book Of Revelation - Thomson, Rupert - Vintage Books, 2001
19. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Shriver, Lionel - Counterpoint, 2003
20. All Yesterdays' Parties - The Velvet Underground In Print: 1966-1971 - Heylin, Clinton - Da Capo Press, 2005
21. Flicker - Roszak, Theodore - Chicago Review Press, 2005
22. Off Season - The Unexpurgated Edition - Ketchum, Jack - Overlook Connection Press, 2004
23. You Poor Monster - Or, This Should Answer Your Questions, My Son - Kun, Michael - MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2005
24. God Jr. - Cooper, Dennis - Black Cat, 2005
25. Night Train - Amis, Martin - Vintage Books, 1999
26. Man Out Of Time - Hogan, Michael - Delta, 2003

01) A cooks tour - Anthony Bourdain
02) Cod - Mark Kurlansky
03) if nobody speaks of remarkable things - jon mcgregor
04) South of the border, west of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
05) The Wind-up bird chronicle - Haruki Murakami
06) Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami
07) Beowulf - Seamus Heaney
08) If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino
09) Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
10) Last Orders - Graham Swift
11) Collected Prose - Woody Allen
12) Atonement - Ian McEwen
13) A lot of hard yakka - Simon Hughes
14) Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
15) The Dain Curse - Dashiell Hammett
16) Disgrace - JM Coetzee
17) The Waste Land and other poems - TS Eliot
18) The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
19) The Restaurant at the end of the Universe - Douglas Adams
20) The glass key - Dashiell Hammett
21) Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
22) Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world - Haruki Murakami
23) Cosmos - Witold Gombrowicz
24) Amsterdam - Ian McEwen
25) My idea of Fun - Will Self
26) Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
27) Yes we have no - Nik Cohn
28) Love, etc - Julian Barnes
29) Dorian - Will Self
30) The line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
31) Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyre
32) Knots and Crosses - Ian Rankin
33) Country of the blind - Christopher Brookmyre
34) The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
35) Overtaken - Alexei Sayle
36) Not the end of the world - Christopher Brookmyre
37) THe book of Illusions - Paul Auster
38) The Supermale - Alfred Jarry
39) Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd
40) Maximum Bob - Elmore Leonard
41) Lucky You - Carl Hiaasen
42) Life a user's manual - Georges Perec
43) The Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss
44) The Journalist - Harry Mathews
45) Dry Bones - Richard Beard
46) Tlooth - Harry Mathews
47) The Truth - Terry Pratchett
48) Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
49) Carry on Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
50) Going Postal - Terry Pratchett

I enjoyed most of them immensely, probably the McGregor and the two Harry Mathews novels left the most of an impression on me, on reflection.

Best were One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Conquest of the Incas and the Journey to the Alcarria which is as elegant as Alan Devonshire in his prime. Worst was Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. A book I used to love as a kid. Now, mid thirties; it's just about a seagull.

I am sort of amazed to think that my 2005 total might actually be less than five. Do plays count?

How about this: The Read Something Every Day Challenge. Now THAT I like. Issues of The New Yorker, Flannery O'Connor short stories, and Didion essays included.

Ooops, they mean I didn't finish them or I put them away for another time (ie They were blowing my tiny little mind).

I admit, I have read books naked at times, just not all the way to the end.

Actually, I might at as well consider what they were.

1. The Line of Beauty

2. 1974

3. The Enemy Within

4. Persuasion

5. Dangling Man

6. The Whole Equation

7. The Dwarves of Death

8. The Closed Circle

9. Yellow Dog

10. Experience

11. Time's Arrow

12. Night Train

13. The Information

14. Cold Water

15. The English Novel: an Introduction

16. The Last Tycoon

17. The Midnight Court

18. Ghostwritten

19. Hawksmoor

20. In Anger

21. Literature, Politics & Culture in Postwar Britain

... more than I thought; and probably there were a few more. I reread a good few also.

** I think I read 94 in 1997. I am truly sorry.

I take it you're in prison, Tokyo Nursery School?

Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem, And She Climbed Across the Table
Jonathan Lethem, Amnesia Moon
Jonathan Lethem, Men & Cartoons
Jonathan Lethem, Girl in Landscape
M. John Harrison, Light
Samuel Delaney, Nova
Samuel Delaney, The Motion of Light in Water
Samuel Delaney, Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway
Arthur Phillips, Prague
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Fred Wesley, Hit Me, Fred!
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

Yeah, right, I reckon you're down for a three stretch and your 'library' is run by 'Fingers McLeish', the firey Scottish safecracker.

i did read many parts of books, though.

or quit with the poetry written in foreign languages!

Those are precisely the three periodicals that I subscribe to. And I know that if I read them all cover to cover, I'd never have time to so much as crack open a book.

xpost- NY Review of Books is great! Not dry at all - and it allows me to persist in the illusion that I'm somewhat keeping up with the avalanche of books published each month.

(I have a two-person reading-different-things book club with a lady at word who's doing the book-a-week thing too, though I have vetoed the idea that we join the richard and judy book club instead)

Well, my husband would certainly agree with you. I lack committment and resent NYRB for reminding me of this. However the other day I DID finish an article. A relatively short piece, for them. It was a glowing review of a book I'd gotten for my mother for Christmas, so that was good. I felt all validated n' stuff.

1. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stevenson.***
2. War of the Flowers - Tad Williams.*
3. How to be Good - Nick Hornby.
5. Shadow & Claw - Gene Wolfe.*
6. Brightness Reef - David Bryn.**
7. Dirt Music - Tim Winton.*
8. The Diamond Age - Neal Stevenson.*
9. Mystery Ride - Robert Boswell.***
10. A Song of Stone - Iain Banks.*
11. Glory Season - David Bryn.*
12. Absolute Friends - John le Carre.***
13. Armadillo - William Boyd.*
14. The Honourable Schoolboy - John le Carre.**
15. The Secret history - Donna Tartt.**
16. Quite a good thriller about the advertising industry I can't remember the name of.*
17. Fresh Air Fiend - Paul Theroux.
18. The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie.***
19. I Married a Communist - Phillip Roth.*
20. Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson.
21. The Blue Afternoon - WIlliam Boyd.**
22. The Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss.
23. The Algebraist - Iain M. Banks**
24. The Closed Circle - Jonathan Coe***
25. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanah Clarke**
26. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling.*
27. The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon.***
28. River of Gods - Ian Macdonald. ***
29. Bad Wisdom - Bill Drummond & Mark Manning.
30. A Perfect Spy - John le Carre.**
31. House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe.**

ALan Bennett - Writing Home
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
PD James - Death in Holy Orders (didn't finish, was OK, but it got to the point where I didn't care 'whodunnit', so gave up)
Kathy Reichs - Monday Mourning
Tracy Hogg - The Secrets of The Baby Whisperer
Andrea Levy - Small Island
Alan Bennett - Three Stories
Val McDermid - The Mermaids Singing
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman - Long Way Round
Jools Oliver - Minus Nine To One
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveller's Wife
Andrew Taylor - The American Boy
Chuck Palahniuk - Diary
Stephen King - The Gunslinger (didn't finish, as I REALLY hated it!)
Stephen King - On Writing
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind (found in the street!)
Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo (unfinished)
Dennis Lehane - Mystic River (unfinished)
Alexander McCall Smith - The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency (unfinished)
PJ Tracy - Want To Play? (unfinished)
Philip Roth - The Plot Against America (unfinished - all due to feeling a smidge ill with pregnancy)
David Nicholls - Starter For Ten.

Yes, being pregnant interferes with your reading habits, it's official...

Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind
Alexander McCall Smith - The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Dan Brown - Yes That One (felt dirty afterwards)
Natalia Ginzburg - The Things We Used To Say
Sarah Waters - Tipping the Velvet
Kazuo Ishiguro - Remains of the Day
Bruce Chatwin - Utz
James Baldwin - Another Country (not finished)
Clarice Lispector - The Hour of the Star
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
George Orwell - 1984
V. S. Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas
Philip K. Dick
-Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
-Martian Time Slip
-Ubik
-The Man In the High Castle
-Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
-A Scanner Darkly (The best novel in the world. Ever.)
-Time Out of Joint
-Collected short stories (5 books)
Kim Wilkins - The Autumn Castle
Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Jeff Van Der Meer - City of Saints and Madmen
Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair (dreadful)
Sheri S. Tepper - The Family Tree (not her best)
Tricia Sullivan - Maul (much better than the cover suggested)
Gardner Dozois (ed.) - The Year's Best Science Fiction, 2004
Ellen Datlow et al. (ed.) - The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, 2004
Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
Frank Herbert - Whipping Star
Kay Kenyon - The Braided World

Studying creative writing and having no job makes me the luckiest little bookworm there ever was.

Guiseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa - The Leopard
Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot
Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks

The Leopard is an incredible book.