Readings to be cheerful, part 1

[davywavy]

Something I try to do is keep a list of the stuff I read every year; it's kinda sad of me, I know, but at least it gives me something to look back on. Sometimes I look at lists from previous years with a midly quizzical expression and think to myself "I read that? Really? When?", so it's a useful aide memoire at least.
The other purpose it serves is to remind me that I don't read enough books, and that's precisely what this year's list has done:

Poul Anderson - Tau Zero
Michael Crichton - The lost World
China Mieville - Kraken
Mark Kermode - It's only a movie
Yamamoto Tsunetomo - The Hagakure
Xenophon - The Persian expedition
Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow
Harry Houdini - Deception
Nancy Mitford - Wigs on the green
George McDonald Fraser - Flashman and the tiger
Jrr Tolkien - The Hobbit
Josephine Tey - The daughter of time
Josephine Tey - Miss Pym disposes
Martin Gardner - Fid Adam and Eve have navels?
Scott lynch - The lies of Locke Lamora
John Romer - The history of Egypt from the first farmers to the first pyramid
EA WAllce Budge & John Romer - The Egyptian book of the dead
Boris Akunin - The he-lover of death
Boris Akunin - The death of Achilles
Guillermo del Toro - The strain
Nick Hurst - Sugong, the life of a shaolin master
Michel Faber - The crimson petal and the white
Terry Pratchett - Snuff
Terry Pratchett - Going Postal
Algis Budrys - Rogue Moon
Pg Wodehouse - My man Jeeves
Giles Milton - White gold
Susan Wittig Albert - The tale of Briar Bank
Susan Wittig Albert - The tale of Apple Beck Orchard
Jack Vance- Lyonesse
Michael Moorcock - The stealer of souls
Stephen Smith - Underground London
Jack vance - The Gray Prince
Steven Johnson - Emergence
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Neil Macgregor - A history of the world in 100 objects
Gaie Sebold - Babylon steel
CJ Sansom - Sovereign
Amelie Nothomb - The book of proper names.
Greg Bear - Strength of stones.
Arthur C Clarke - The city and the stars
Alberto Soliotti - A guide to the valley of the kings.
Jaromir Malek - Discovering tutenkhamun
Penelope Lively - Jacaranda, Oleader
David Gemmell - Wolf in Shadow

Anyway, there's a few things to take away from that list; first, that Cormac McCarthy is unreadable and I wouldn't wish him on anybody so Lord knows why he's got such a great repoutation, second, that I retain a love of slush fantasy and sci-fi, third, and I've been reading a lot about Egypt recently (for reasons that I hope to become clear later this year), and fourth that I'm just not reading enough.

When I put together a list back in 2001, it had over 100 books on it. This year I didn't even manage one a week. Yeah, some of them were quite long, but that's no excuse. The joy of slaughtering pixellated ne'er-do-wells by the score on my computer has more than halved the amount of reading I do, and that's just not good enough.

So there's my new year resolution: read more. And, to help me in that, I'm asking for recommendations of things to read. What would you suggest, oh readers?

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm slowly losing my interest in Pratchett - Unseen Academicals was terrible, and I felt awful reading it and thinking that because I couldn't help wondering if the loss of quality was as a result of his illness. Snuff was a bit better, but not much. He's not the writer he was, and I'd rather re-read the oldies than risk upsetting myself with the new ones, to an extent.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

That's a thought, I must put "Snuff" on my re-read list. I was disappointed in it when I first read it, but it was the first time I'd read Pratchett on Kindle rather than in hard-copy, and I was seriously ill at the time. Either of those might have give me an unfair impression of it.

I thought "Dodger" was good - it might be worth your while risking it. It seems possible to me that the problem with both "Snuff" and "Unseen" is simply that he's running out of things to say in the Discworld, and the move to Victorian London woke him up.

Going back a bit, the Tiffany Aching series is utterly brilliant, and if haven't read it, you should. This was a year ago:
http://janewilliams20.livejournal.com/218903.html