Books Of The Year

Its been another great reading year for me: so far I've got through 54 books in a lot of different genres and categories and by luck (or good choices) very few of them have been terrible. The ones below are those which I gave an 'A' grade to in the little book journal that I've been keeping since 1994. As usual I'm going to do a separate list for crime fiction novels later in December and I think that this year I'm also going to do a separate list for science fiction because I read a surprising number of great sci-fi novels. If I had to say one bad thing about the year's reading it would be a lack of a decent history book; all the big history books that came out this year were disappointing (to me, anyway) and felt like a retread of earlier books and ideas. Anyway here are the books that got 'A' grades in my journal in the chronological order in which I finished them: 

Arguably - Christopher Hitchens He's still wrong about the invasion of Iraq and his bizarre hero worship of the less than saintly Thomas Jefferson but he's right about so many other topics and his writing style is masterful. Hitch we miss you. 

Post Office - Charles Bukowski For those of us who have worked in a post office this book will give you chills of recognition and maybe a laugh or two.

Platform - Michel Houellebecq The funniest book I read all year. Its about sex tourism in Thailand from a French misanthrope novelist who lives next door to Shannon airport because its so wet, dark and miserable there. 

The Collected Essays Of George Orwell 1400 pages of amazing stuff. A must read for the serious bibliophile.

The Art Of Fielding - Chad Harbach Best debut novel I read all year. A wonderful book about baseball, friendship, love and loss. 

Lassie Come Home - Eric Knight I read this to my daughter Sophie and I have to say that the book just knocked my socks off. This is an intelligent, gripping wonderful children's novel with terrific adventure and character development. And unlike that awful Black Beauty with its talking horses, Knight actually gets into the mind of Lassie in a very convincing manner. 

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel I give up on this novel for 3 years but when I finally started it again I read the whole thing in three frenzied days. A masterpiece. 

Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel Mantel's Thomas Cromwell is one of the greatest characters in modern fiction. Smart, cunning, irreverent, compassionate, deft, ruthless. . .you run out of superlatives describing this sixteenth century badass. 

The Red Queen - Matt Ridley Sexual selection and evolution explained in a witty and erudite book.

HHhH - Laurent Binet The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague by the Czech underground as told in a very French dry, clever and postmodern manner. 

High Fidelty - Nick Hornby Took me a LONG time to come round to Nick Hornby but this book is a deserved modern classic that dares to suggest that - gasp - men have feelings too. If you're thinking of getting someone Telegraph Avenue as a Christmas present, don't do it, get them this instead.

Cooking With Fernat Branca - James Hamilton Paterson Did I say that Platform was the funniest book I read all year? Ok, thats only because I forgot about this. This is at least as funny as Platform and the "UFO" scene had me in tears...

Why Does the World Exist - Jim Holt A nice exploration of cosmogony and existentialism in a clear style without any footnotes. Nothing particularly new here but its good to see a popular book talking about these themes.

The Fortress Of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem I've had a while to think about this book now and my opinion hasn't changed. The best novel I read all year and a strong contender for the best American novel of the century so far.  

Books of the Year

As per requests and to help insomniacs everywhere here is the fascinating list of the books I read last year in rough chronological order: (I've *ed the books I particularly enjoyed and + ed the books that I read before i.e. a reread). Being a lazy so and so I'm not going to give the authors except where its absolutely necessary and some of the titles aren't exactly correct (I forgot what the Steve Martin book is called).

1. The Kindness of Women 2. The Big Nowhere 3. Crime Always Pays* - Declan Burke 4. Steve Martin on Comedy 5. The Birth of Tragedy 6. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 7. Out of Africa 8. Kenneth Tynan Diaries 9. Matter - Iain Banks 10. The Old Devils * 11. Best American Essays 12. The Sheltering Sky +* 13. The Corrections* 15. Austerlitz 16. Meeting Mrs. Nabokov 17. Flaubert's Parrot 18. 1974* 19. 1977* 20. 1980* 21. Tokyo Year Zero 22. The Damned United 23. Arthur & George 24. Enemies of Promise 25. A History of the World in 10 and a half Chapters 26. Fingersmith* 27. A Users Guide to the Millennium* 28. The Book of Dead Philosophers 29. The Human Factor 30. Tolkien's Gown 31. The Swimmer as Hero* 32. What's it all About? - Julian Baggini 33. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Zafon 34. Dirty Sweet - John McFetridge* 35. Borderlands* - Brian McGilloway 36. Slouching Towards Bethlehem* 37. The White Album 38. After Henry 39. White Tiger *40. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star* 41. In Search of Conrad 42. Hotel du Lac 43. Ali and Nino* 44. The Guards - Ken Bruen+* 45. Master and Commander +* 46 The Long Goodbye +* 47 The Victorians - AN Wilson* 48 The Secret History*

I know there are a couple I've forgotten about (I vaguely recall reading something about a housewife from Australia who has an erotic adventure in North Africa and I read another one by Gavin Young about travelling across America) but this is pretty close. A big suprise was The Sheltering Sky. I'd read it years ago about the time of the disastrous movie version and hated it, but I decided to give it another chance when I found a four buck pbk. It's a truly wonderful novel by a prose genius - definitely worth a read.