2012 - My bookish year

From memory*, here, interspersed with a few thoughts, is a fairly comprehensive list of what I’ve grazed my way through during 2012. (RR = Re-read).

Dave Eggers – Zeitoun

I’m afraid to say that I found this somewhat under-whelming.  I had hoped for so much more.  The In Cold Blood of our times it is not.

Norman Mailer – An American Dream

A sweaty wank-off of a book.  I detested it and, so, was tickled to read the following in an LRB review of the DFW biography:  “It’s possible to see Wallace’s career as the inversion of that of another great American novelist who wrote journalism that was pervaded by his personality: Norman Mailer. Monstrousness was the thing Mailer was always trying to enact and the thing Wallace was always trying to deflect or recover from. Wallace was consumed by guilt even on the page; Mailer never seemed to feel a pang. Wallace couldn’t stand Mailer’s books: ‘Unutterably repulsive. I guess part of his whole charm is his knack for arousing strong reactions. Hitler had the same gift.’”

Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty (RR), The Stranger’s Child

The Line of Beauty comes close than anything else I’ve read in years to capturing that wallowing about in honey feel of Brideshead Revisited and, of course, there are strong similarities in the plots of the two.  Sorry to say, though, that while I looked forward to The Strangers Child and was fully prepared to embrace the conceit of the book I just didn’t get along with it.  I will probably give it another go but, for now, it stands in the let-down camp.

George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia (RR)

Colm Toibin – Homage to Barcelona

Robert Hughes – Barcelona

Ildefonso Falcones – Cathedral of the Sea

The first three read in advance of a long overdue trip to Barcelona, which I made in October.  The latter, which is a historical novel set in medieval Barcelona was a mistake – I had forgotten how much I don’t get on with great tomes of portentous historical fiction and I erred in lugging this brute about with me as I trudged around the Gaudi sites.  It will be going to the charity shop.

Kate Summerscale – The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

There is a great book in this Victorian murder mystery.  Unfortunately, for all of its critical and popular acclaim, this, in my opinion, isn’t it.  

Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer, I Married a Communist, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Plot Against America

If this is Newark then it must be Philip Roth.  For years and years I had an unaccountable block on Roth, never picking up any of his books.  I don’t know why.  Well, I admit it now that I was mistaken and I’m so glad to have belatedly corrected that situation.  I did have a “What…” moment that sent me reading back over a couple of chapters when I hit the Ann Frank bit in The Ghost Writer and the deus-ex-machina  of the plane-crash in The Plot Against America had me grinding my teeth but PR’s definitely on the agenda for further examination in 2013.

Ben Fountain – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime walk

Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding

The best fiction reads of the year.  I hear that Billy Lynn is going to be filmed.  In the right hands that could be something to look forward to.

Will Wiles – Care of Wooden Floors

A little macabre humour never goes astray.  

Clive James – A Point of View

Because I’m something of a completist and I’ve got nearly all of his earlier (better) books.  I wonder if he will get around to writing about his wife kicking him out for playing-away.

David Edgerton – Britain’s War Machine

An interesting, though possibly over-justified, corrective to the popular consensus that Britain was unprepared for war in 1939.

Luc Sante – Low Life

Joseph Mitchell – Up in the Old Hotel
The first read in advance of my trip to NYC back in April.  It was so-so.  If I hadn’t seen the film I might feel tempted to get hold of Gangs of New York.    Mitchell, though, was excellent.  The best non-fiction I read all year.

Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Another belated discovery.  I thoroughly enjoyed both of these.  The counter-factual in TYPU was intriguing and as for TAAoKaC – Comic Books, The Golem, New York, Nazis at the South Pole – what’s not to like?

Kazu Ishiguru – When We were Orphans, The Remains of the Day (RR)

I re-read the very good Remains of the Day just to convince myself that Ishiguru was a good writer after reading the very bad When We Were Orphans.  It is so bad that I almost convinced myself that I was being obtuse.  But, no.  It is a very bad book.  Charity shop.

David Halberstam – The Best and the Brightest

Karl Marlantes – Matterhorn
If there are any liberal interventionists still out there then they ought to be forced to read The Best and the Brightest along with A Bright Shining Lie.  I am tempted to get hold of the Johnson biography by way of comparing and contrasting.  Matterhorn was recommended to me by a pal.  Having grown out of the gun-porn of Sven Hassel some considerable time ago, I approach war novels with some trepidation.  I needn’t have done in this case.  A fine novel.

A.D. Miller – Snowdrops

So-so Thriller set in post-soviet Russia.  Charity shop.

George MacDonald Fraser – Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, Light out at Signpost

You can’t beat a bit of Flashie.  Well-researched enormously incorrect romps through the Victorian world.   The latter is his autobiographical recollections of his Hollywood career interspersed with meditations on why the world is going to hell.

Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King

I have blogged about this.  I don’t understand why it is supposed to be good but then I don’t understand why Willa Cather is supposed to be good either.

Henry James – The Spoils of Poynton, What Masie Knew

If you’re in the mood for HJ these are both pretty good and digestible too.

Yavgeny Zamyatin – We (RR)

I get what he’s doing and I understand why it is an important book and I appreciate how influential it is.  Maybe it’s the translation but I still don’t actually like it.

Shelby Foote - The Civil War Volume 1

Like many others it was the Ken Burns documentary that brought me to Shelby Foote.  Narrative history at its very best and two more to go.  Definitely another one for 2013.

Roger Lewis – What am I Still Doing Here

I think I read this curmudgeonly affair with a hangover.  Good stuff.  I highly recommend his biography of Anthony Burgess. 

David Peace – The Damned United

Must be read in the voice of the sainted Brian Clough.

Siri Hustvedt – What I Loved

A bit over-played, I thought.  There is 75 % of a very good book here. 

David Foster Wallace – Consider the Lobster

I think you either like DFW or you don’t.  I do, though Infinite Jest has made me seriously consider an e-reader.

Rachel Lichtenstein, Ian Sinclair – Rodinsky’s Room

If you’re interested in patterns of migration and the old Jewish East End.

Roland Camberton – Scamp

Stands well alongside early Kingsley Amis.  Funny tale of the fagged out late-40s London literary world.

Pauline Kael – I Lost it At the Movies

Another disappointment, I’m afraid.  It took me years to get around to reading Kael.  Underwhelming.

Robert K Wittman – Priceless

Robert and Dayna Baer – The Company We Keep

Charity shop.  Not particularly well written non fiction about the FBI and the CIA respectively.  Interesting in parts.

Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger

Gothic chillers are not my usual fare.  This wasn’t half bad.  The Turn of the Screw for our times.

Anthony Powell – Books do Furnish a Room (RR), A Writer’s Notebook

The notebook is definitely for fan-boys only.  As for BDFAR, it’s a few years since I last re-read the whole of A Dance to the Music of Time from start to finish but I had a touch of flu a while ago and, although I didn’t actually go sick from work, I was going early to bed every night and needed a ‘comfort book’ – an old friend to keep me company.

Jack Kerouac – On the Road (RR)

You either like it or you hate it.  I still like it.  This re-read was on account of going to see the film, which was much better than I had expected.  That said, a faithful adaption does not necessarily make for a good film, in the general sense.  I’m not sure what someone would make of the film if they hadn’t already read the book.  I mooched along to the British Library on the same day as I saw the film and halfway through my re-reading of the book so that I could take a look at the exhibition of the On the Road scroll.

Umberto Eco – The Prague Cemetery

It will take some strong persuasion to get me to read another Umberto Eco novel.

 

Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen, Zadie Smith et al – Stop What You’re Doing and Read this

Anne Fadiman – Ex-Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Signs of bibliomania Pt 16: reading books about reading books.

Kevin Powers – Yellow Birds

This has been raved about.  I am not convinced but I will re-read it to make sure.

Hillary Mantel – Wolf Hall

It is very good.  I resisted for a long while.  Partly on account of my problems with historical novels in general, partly on account of getting thoroughly sick of Hillary Mantel appearing in the Guardian in one guise or another week after week after week. 

*I’m not (yet) so anal as to diligently keep an on-going list of what I’ve read