Books of the Year

Books Read 2011

Books of the Year

I discovered one thing when trying to work up this post - I like lists but not making them. Books are hard to compare, they all have different ambitions and suit different moods. They are not the same in memory as they are while being read.
And this year I've been lucky. I've read a lot of good, even great books. I could easily have come up with a top fifty (from eighty five) and all of the books would have earned their place.
But there is only one way to make a list and that's to stop thinking and do it. And so I did. Apologies to all the books that should be in this list but aren't. It doesn't mean I don't love you!
Here's an irreducible top ten (there's fifteen) and if I think for longer the list will grow. They are in no particular order.

1. Adjunct: an Undigest - Peter Manson
2. Ironweed - William Kennedy
3. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
4. Master Georgie - Beryl Bainbridge
5. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
6. Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
7. The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell
8. My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
9. Blood's a Rover - James Ellroy
10. Gilead & Home  - Marilyn Robinson
11. The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
12. The Radetzky March - Joseph Roth
13. The Safety Net - Heinrich Boll
14. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

These are all bubbling under

The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
Upside Down - Eduardo Galeano
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
All Souls - Javier Marias
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
Old School - Tobias Wolff
The Eye - Vladimir Nabokov
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

Books I read from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this year.
I read 38 books from the list this year taking me to 399 books read. I'll be trying to read another 30 in 2012. At that rate I'll make 1000 in 20 years.
How many more there will be in the various editions by then is anyones guess but probably another twenty years worth. Whether I'll even last another twenty years is anyone's guess. As Arundhati Roy put it in The God of Small Things I'll be "a viable diable age" by then and I'm not the healthiest person on the planet.
So if I want to finish I'll have to up the 30 a year at some stage. Maybe I will. There are other lists including the one in my head.

1. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
2. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
3. The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
4. Fury - Salman Rushdie
5. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
6. The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
7. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
8. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
9. Never Let Me Go - Kasuo Ishiguro
10. The Plague - Albert Camus (Feb BOTM)
11. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (reread)
12. The Gathering - Anne Enright
13. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote (March BOTM)
14. Home - Marilynne Robinson
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (May BOTM)
16. The Radetzky March - Joseph Roth
17. The Master - Colm Toibin
18. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (reread)
19. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
20. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
21. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July BOTM)
22. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides (June BOTM)
23. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
24. The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell
25. The Double - Jose Saramago
26. Another World - Pat Barker
27. Neuromancer - Wiliam Gibson
28. All Souls - Javier Marias
29. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
30. The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield
31. Tarr - Wyndham Lewis
32. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Marina Lewyca
33. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
34. Adjunct: an Undigest - Peter Manson
35. The Safety Net - Heinrich Boll
36. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
37. The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
38. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy