Books Read 2007

I did a meme the other day about books read this year - well here's the whole list!
A wonderful new year to you all, see you in 2008...

1. The Harp in the South – Ruth Park
2. Cymbeline – William Shakespeare
3. Pericles – William Shakespeare
4. The Bookshop at 10 Curzon St.: Letters Between Nancy Mitford & Heywood Hill 1952-73 – ed. John Saumaricz Smith
5. Troilus and Cressida – William Shakespeare
6. The Bible
7. The Philosophy of the Short Story – Brander Matthews
8. Keynotes – George Egerton
9. The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver
10. Watching the English – Kate Fox
11. The Love Child – Edith Oliver
12. Troilus and Criseyde – Geoffrey Chaucer
13. Miss Hargreaves – Frank Baker
14. The Rover – Aphra Behn
15. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Pearl-poet
16. Cleanness – Pearl-poet
17. Patience – Pearl-poet
18. The Professor’s House – Willa Carther
19. Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries – Jackie Clune
20. The Woman in the Moone – John Lyly
21. One Pair of Hands – Monica Dickens
22. Pistache – Sebastian Faulks
23. Pearl – Pearl-poet
24. Before I Go Hence – Frank Baker
25. An Invisible Friendship – Joyce Grenfell & Katharine Moore
26. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell
27. No Signposts in the Sea – Vita Sackville-West
28. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
29. A Winter Book – Tove Jansson
30. One Pair of Feet – Monica Dickens
31. A Well Full of Leaves – Elizabeth Myers
32. Human Voices – Penelope Fitzgerald
33. Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life – Claire Tomalin
34. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J. K. Rowling
35. Sarrasine – Honoré de Balzac
36. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
37. The London Scene – Virginia Woolf
38. Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
39. Three Men in A Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
40. Hunting the Highbrow – Leonard Woolf
41. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J. K. Rowling
42. Sylva – Vercors
43. Mrs. Miniver – Jan Struther
44. A Room With A View – E. M. Forster
45. Work For Four Hands – Margaret Pelling
46. Doreen – Barbara Noble
47. The Matisse Stories – A. S. Byatt
48. Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf – ed. Sybil Oldfield
49. Speaking of Love – Angela Young
50. The Jane Austen Book Club – Karen Joy Fowler
51. Reading Groups – Jenny Hartley
52. The Travels of Lady “Bulldog” Burton – Sandi Toksvig
53. The Loudest Sound and Nothing – Claire Wigfall
54. The Third Miss Symons – F. M. Mayer
55. The A46 – Sara Parsons
56. The Brontës – Alfred Sangster
57. The Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penney
58. Deceived With Kindness – Angelica Garnett
59. The Go-Between – L. P. Hartley
60. The Greengage Summer – Rumer Godden
61. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
62. My Turn To Make The Tea – Monica Dickens
63. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
64. Crow Lake – Mary Lawson
65. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns
66. Christine Kringle – Lynn Brittney
67. Pigs and Pearls – Margaret Hogge
68. A Lifetime Burning – Linda Gillard
69. Fair Play – Tove Jansson
70. Fair Play – Tove Jansson (again!)
71. Parties – Tom Lappin
72. The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence
73. The Closed Door and other stories – Dorothy Whipple
74. A Family Life 1939-45 – Katharine Moore
75. Tom’s Midnight Garden – Philippa Pearce
76. Nightingale – Peter Dorward
77. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
78. A Proper Family Christmas – Jane Gordon-Cumming
79. Scar Tissue – Ruth Mary Hills
80. No Star So Lovely – Alice Howlett
81. The Most Glorious Strip of Bunting – John McGill
82. All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-West
83. A Month in the Country – J. L. Carr
84. The Wonderful Years – Reiner Kunze
85. Findings – Kathleen Jamie
86. One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson
87. Shakespeare – Bill Bryson

oh, and...

One more thing, as an addendum to today's other post...

Just thought you ought to know - I'm having a little difficulty using one letter on my keypad. Often I press it and it doesn't seem to respond. Just wanted to let you know, in case words don't many any sense, or I seem to have turned into a phenomenonally poor speller. Want to know which letter it is? Well, I haven't used it yet in today's post...

And I wonder why it has worn out so much? Perhaps it's owing to my use of these words:

ook
lirary
odleian
ook
log
ook
y
ecause
proaly
ook
est
rilliant
ook
pulisher
paperack
hardack
ook
and so to ed...

Not forgetting ook. So now you know... please don't lame me, it's not my fault.

A Little End-of-Year Meme

I think I'll probably end the year with a list of everything I read in 2007, but before that, here's a little 'meme' to give you a few hints and teasers... I shan't tag any other blogs, but if anyone else wants to have a go, it's good fun - leave a link in the comments!

In the parlance of newspapers, all this was true at the time of going to press! Who knows how much I'll have read by the end of the year... three good days left!

-How many books read in 2007?
87 (so far!)

-Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
63 Fiction/14 Non-Fiction, mostly letters or literary biography

-Male/Female authors?
27 male, 57 female, 3 where there were mixed or anonymous contributors

-Favourite book read?
Top ten listed here...

-Least favourite?
Don't think that's very fair to say... nothing this year which I've really loathed. And I tend to only blog criticism about the ones which are either a)by authors now dead or b)dead rich! Either way, they won't much care if I don't like their work.

-Oldest book read?
That would be the Bible - though the oldest book I read in English (well, I read the Bible in English, but obviously it's a translation) was Pearl. Or whichever of the Pearl/Cleanness/Patience/Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript was first written. Or MS Cotton X Zero or something... whatever we're supposed to call it.

-Newest?
That would be Claire Wigfall's very excellent The Loudest Sound and Nothing which I read before it was published!

-Longest book title?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J. K. Rowling, actually. If I include subtitles, then it's The Bookshop at 10 Curzon St.: Letters Between Nancy Mitford & Heywood Hill 1952-73 – ed. John Saumaricz Smith.

-Shortest title?
Sylva by Vercors.

-How many re-reads?
I was surprised to discover that I re-read six books this year, given that I thought I rarely re-read anything. Miss Hargreaves, a couple of Harry Potters, Reading Groups by Jenny Hartley, Fair Play by Tove Jansson (re-read almost immediately) and Aphra Behn's The Rover.

-Most books read by one author this year?
The 'Pearl-poet', or 'Gawain'poet' if you prefer, comes in top with four. Next up, step forward Monica Dickens, William Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling on three each.

-Any in translation?
Yep, 6. The Bible, A Winter Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson, Sarrasine by Balzac, Sylva by Vercors, The Wonderful Years by Reiner Kunze.

-And how many of this year's books were from the library?
Erm, (shamefacedly) none... That's not quite true, actually - three came from University libraries. But I haven't used a public library in some years... which will probably be the topic of another post sometime...

Hallelujah!

"For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and for ever" [Isaiah 9:6-7]

Amen! A very wonderful Christmas to you all.

And They Call Me Mellow Yellow...

Thanks for all your sympathy and encouragement with The Challenge! I know, in the grand scheme of things, that a month without buying books isn't a biggie... but it might well be the first for a few years, and strain my self-discipline. This isn't about buying books to read immediately - otherwise Peter's suggestion about using the local library would, of course, meet with my cheerful approval - but more a magpie instinct which could do with calming...

And another book sneaked/snuck into my hands before the ban starts. Well, actually, this book wasn't an impulse buy. I saw it in one of Crewkerne's bookshops a few months ago, and decided I couldn't *really* afford it... but the fact that I'm still thinking about it all this while later suggested that it wouldn't be an unrewarding purchase.



The Yellow Book: A Selection comes, unsurprisingly, from The Yellow Book - I wrote about this quite a bit in my Special Topic thesis on Victorian Short Stories. It was around in the 1890s and published fin-de-siecle stories, poetry and art in a beautiful yellow, good quality format. The 1949 anthology followed these pointers, and this book is a delight to both behold and hold. What's more, the contents are great - although set up with the amusing purposes of a)avoiding advertising in periodicals and b)avoiding Oscar Wilde altogether, The Yellow Book witnessed some of that very early Modernism, alongside some very late Victorianism. Writers include Henry James, Arthur Symons, George Gissing, Kenneth Grahame, Yeats, Edmund Gosse, George Moore, Max Beerbohm, Richard Garnett. I know rather less about the art of the period (or, indeed, any period) but recognised Walter Sickert's name and, of course, Aubrey Beardsley.

Lots of copies from abebooks.co.uk cheaper than I paid (The Bodley Head edition) and definitely a work of art as well as literature - a great coffee table book too, it must be admitted. Especially if your walls are yellow.

Mission Impossible

What have I done?

It all started out so innocently. I was having lunch a week or so ago with my library cronies, Lucy and Clare, and the topic of my book-buying came up. These gals aren't foreigners to the world of book buying, believe me, but for some reason they thought I took the art to excess. And somehow, in the course of this conversation, I managed to agree to a bet that I wouldn't be able to abstain from book-buying throughout January. Once again, in bold, I will not buy any books in January. Goodness.

A couple exceptions. I can buy gifts; I can receive gifts. I just can't buy books for myself. For a whole month. Eek.

Yes, I do have something of a backlog to get through. But popping into a charity shop and buying a couple of 20p books - this is like oxygen to me. So will I manage a whole month? Will I forget and order something from Amazon? I'll let you know, and perhaps post a photograph of the monies I receive from/give to Lucy...

These are a couple I bought today, making the most of my last days as a book buyer. Tara talked about Chatterton Square by E. H. Young a while ago, and couldn't this Jonathan Cape publication. He also published Elizabeth Cambridge's Hostages to Fortune originally, and since then I've been drawn to that entrancing typeface used on covers... never seen a dustjacket, though. Also had to buy the sequel to Three Men in a Boat, especially with that nice cover...

Oh, and I went carol singing with Paddy Ashdown for the second time this evening... that might mean nothing to non-UK/Irish readers.

All Passion Spent

I don't know if any of you joined in on Cornflower's first ever Book Group read, All Passion Spent, but here's the link if you wanted to follow the animated conversation. Lots of strong opinions and lots of people contributing - can't quite match the fun and furore of a real live book group, but comes a close second.

You may remember that I got All Passion Spent as my Secret Santa present - and I Woolfed it down. Yes, I know Woolf didn't write the novel , but there wasn't a great deal of punning potential in 'Sackville-West'... unless some sort of badinage on 'string-vest'...

I was a little surprised that not everyone loved the novel, but I must assure you that it is brilliant. I had 22 contenders for my top ten books (well, I read a great deal more than that, but there were 22 on my shortlist) and All Passion Spent came in about twelfth. It's the tale of Lady Slane, a widow who decides to buck her troublesome family (which does include, however, the rather lovely dreamer Ethel) and live alone for the first time in her life. She quietly moves to a house she first saw thirty years previously, refuses to see her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (though, again, in a quiet and calm way) and reminisces about her childhood, courtship, and marriage. In many ways the old-woman-seeking-dependence plot is like The Stone Angel, which I wrote about here, but where Hagar was undeniably selfish and bitter, Lady Slane is dignified, sensible and kind throughout.

A background of great, slightly eccentric, characters such as Mr. Bucktrout and FitzGeorge complete this witty, calming, beautiful novel. Above all, the writing is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful - each sentence is constructed with care and humanity. Would make excellent Boxing Day reading.