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

[(Anonymous)]

So it's alright as long as they've been dead for long enough?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It would seem so, wouldn't it? I wouldn't go and see Bodyworlds, but I do go and look at Mummies.

I make no claims as to consistency.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

Bodyworlds is a complicated one. On the one hand, I think Von Haagens has rather jumped the shark with his "our insides as entertainment", on the other, I can't debate his technical virtuosity nor the illustrious anatomical heritage he boasts. I also think that un-taboo-ing things like death and your innards is rather a good thing - keeping things hidden away leads to them becoming monsters and inexplicable monsters don't belong to an age of reason.

Bodyworlds also has the advantage that explicit consent has been obtained from the erstwhile possessors of the artefacts in question. Though nobody likes a show-off, right?