A year ago...

[davywavy]

This time last year, as a bit of an intellectual exercise, I posted a list of everything I could remember reading in 2009. I'd been worrying that I spent too much time blowing away pixellated villains in artifical worlds and not enough time with my nose buried in a book, and the evidence suggested that I was right. Back in 2001, the last time I ran an exercise like that, I'd churned my way through over 100 books. Last year, I managed about 50.

"I must do better", I said to myself.

So my New Year Resolution for 2010 was a minimum of one book a week and here's the list for last year. I managed it, but by crikey I didn't half read some tosh doing it:



Agatha Christie
Come, tell me how you live

Fritz Leiber
Swords and Deviltry
Swords against Death

Peter Earle
The Pirate Wars

Richard Wiseman
Quirkology

Daniel Wilson
Where’s my jetpack?

Tove Jannsen
Moominpapa at Sea

Lars Tvede
Supertrends

Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped

Clifford D Simak
Why call them back from heaven

Richard Hammond
On the Edge

Pittacus Lore
I am Number Four

Ben MacIntyre
The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty

Terry Nation
Rebeccas World: Journey to the forbidden planet

Joe Navarro
What everybody is saying

Richard Wiseman
:59 Seconds

Alexandre Dumas
The Black Tulip

Merlin Coverley
Occult London

Warren Buffett
On Business

Peter Hoffman
The Left Hand of God

Boris Akunin
Pelagia and the Black Monk
The Coronation
Pelagia and the Red Rooster

John Henry
Knowledge is Power

China Mieville
The City and The City

Elias Lonnrot
The Kalevala

Peter Kelly
The True History of the Kelly Gang

Tracy Chavalier
Remarkable Creatures.

Adam Neville
Apartment 16

Bill Bryson
Neither Here nor There.
The Lost Continent
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Susannah Clarke
The ladies of grace adieu.

Jake Adelmann
Tokyo Vice

Harry Harrison
Starworld
Deathworld
Planet of the damned
Planet of no return

Peter Ackroyd
The Death of King Arthur

Karl Baedecker
London 1923

Terry Pratchett
Unseen Academicals
Strata

RJ Frith
The Nemesis List

HP Lovecraft
At the mountains of madness and other stories (Omnibus edition)
The Curse of Yig and other stories (With Zealia Bishop)

Arturo Perez-Reverte
The King’s Gold
The Man in the Yellow Doublet

Morgan Downey
Oil 101

Livy
The early history of Rome (Books 1-5)

Plutarch
The makers of Rome

Neil Steinberg
Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the death of the hat.

William Ryan
The Holy Theif

Scott Lynch
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Red Seas under red skies

Murusashi Shibiku
The diary of Lady Murasashi

Kathleen Taylor
Brainwashing: The science of thought control.

Daisy Ashford
The Young Visiters

Anita Loos
Gentlemen prefer Blondes
But gentlemen marry brunettes



So, my new Year Resolution this year is to read more stuff that isn't tosh. I'm open to suggestions for stuff which will make my brain bigger and generally be dead interleckchewal, like. Any suggestions?

Comments

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming you've read Dune, and the decent sequils?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Read Dune, Dune Messiah and Dune Kids. I also read Chapter House Dune, which was quite a serious error as it turned out.

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

Reading Chapterhouse without reading heretics would, I imagine, be some what tricky. Plus that damn cliff hanger at the end is really rather annoying. Frank Herbert was so selfish!

How about 'The Book Thief'.

[(Anonymous)]

Magus of Stonewylde

H

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let me go
Haruki Murakami - Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World
China Mieville - Kraken

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

What Does a Martian Look Like - Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart

It has a rubbish title, and is ostensibly about what aliens might possibly be like, but is actually full of all sorts of far more interesting stuff. It's kind of like Science of the Discworld (which they also co-wrote), but bouncing off reality rather than fiction.


The Moral Animal - Robert Wright

Interesting walk through the history and contemporary (or circa 1999) thought on evolutionary psychology, with the curious and entertaining use of Charles Darwin as a case study. It was faintly reminiscent of Hatless Jack, only substituting ev-psych for hats, and Darwin for JFK.


My Tank Is Fight - Zack Parsons

A collection of some of the more exotic war machines that were designed during WWII, but never put into production. It includes historical backdrop, tech specs, development histories and fictional accounts of how they might have been used if they hadn't been shelved for one reason or another.


How Not To Write a Novel - Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman

This one won't make you especially cleverer, but it's a very entertaining and reasonably quick read, and I think you might appreciate it in the light of all the trash you've been reading.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I've just finished "Angela's Ashes". Usually I'd assume that "Pulitzer Prize" means "worthy and boring", but this wasn't boring.

Thomas Hardy's "Tales from Wessex" was the one before that - picked it up because it was about 10p and one of the classics I thought I really ought to read before declaring boring. Again, it turned out not to be boring.

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

For an excercise in 'what is actually going on?' mental gymnastics, try 'Slow Chocolate Autopsy' by Iain Sinclair. For a way to schmooze around galleries and sound like you know what you are talking about, ingest EH Gombrich's 'The Story of Art'

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Tsk! Suggesting I haven't read my Gombrich indeed :p

[colliedlight.livejournal.com]

I've almost given up on books for documentaries to be honest. But this seems like a good project!

You could start with the Harvard Classics/Yale curriculum

How were these?

Alexandre Dumas
The Black Tulip

Terry Pratchett
Unseen Academicals
Strata

Neil Steinberg
Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the death of the hat.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Balck Tulip.

Dumas' last book, and a bit of lightweight fluff from him to pay a large bill, I believe. Entertaining enough, but if you're looking for a swashbuckling romp I suggest the Arturo Perex-Reverte Captain Alatriste books instead.

Unseen Academicals

You know how terry has alzheimers? Alas, you can tell. His worst book ever by a long chalk, and tremendously upsetting to read as he's plainly losing it as the book goes on.

Strata

Comprehensively takes the piss out of Larry Niven's Ringworld, and also provided the initial inspiration for the Discworld.

Hatless Jack

An interesting bit of social history. Well researched, passes the time, but thinks it's cleverer than it is.

[(Anonymous)]

Start with The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, and anything you read after that will be a Booker Prize winner in comparison.

[susanofstohelit.livejournal.com]

I track my books and reading on goodreads.com - it's interesting to see. I read about 185 books for the first time last year (I don't include rereads on the site). A lot of them were trash, but not all. In recent years I particularly enjoyed:

Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Econned by Yves Smith
all the Liad books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (they signed with Baen about two years ago and their entire back catalog is available electronically for cheap via Baen Webscriptions, one of my favorite websites)
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
Anything by Paolo Bacigalupi
Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde
Methland by Nick Reding
Checklist Manifesto, Complications, and Better by Atul Gawande
The City and The City by China Mieville
This is not Florida by Jay Weiner was excellent, but probably only interesting if you're familiar with Minnesota politics.

biggest disappointment this year was that David Weber jumped the shark. He needs an editor who can say no. I'd hoped that he might get better, but all three books this year were barely readable. I own 24 of his books and couldn't must enough interest in the werewolf one to read it while I had a library copy.

Terry Pratchett's illness was showing in his work a little, mostly in word choice. That made me sad.

[(Anonymous)]

Terry Pratchett's illness was showing in his work a lot, but nobody can bear to admit it. He's too well loved. It's had good reviews because Sir Pterry is carried on a tide of (deserved) national goodwill, but I was frankly shocked by the deterioration you can see in "Unseen Academicals".

What he really, really needs now is a collaborator, possible Neil Gaiman, to keep the plot on course, while they write "The Neighbour of the Beast" asap.

H

[fonnparr.livejournal.com]

I have not finished it yet, but 'I shall wear Midnight' seems to be better so far.