End of Year Meme

Well, my Top 15 of 2008 were listed yesterday, and now for something linked to it.
I did this meme at the end of last year, and thought it worth a revisit for 2008... I won't tag anyone, but do have a go if you'd like to.

-How many books read in 2008?
137 (so far!)

-Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
101 Fiction/36 Non-Fiction, which leans less towards fiction than usual. Mostly literary non-fiction - letters, biography, lit crit.

-Male/Female authors?
62 male, 72 female, 3 where there were mixed contributors. Women were comfortably outstripping the men until the autumn when my course started, and the reading lists became dominated by men. Still, women just win out.

-Favourite book read?
Top 15 listed here...

-Least favourite?
Not including the occasional review book which I didn't think much of (as I try to only write positive reviews of books if people have been kind enough to send them to me) - I was underwhelmed by Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and bored by Conrad's Heart of Darkness. And, of course, gave up on Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin.

-Oldest book read?
A re-read of Sense and Sensibility wins this title. A bit more modern than last year's winner - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

-Newest?
Quite a few read before they were published this year...

-Longest book title?
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer will probably be most bloggers' longest title for 2008.

-Shortest title?
I've cut a couple letters of last years (5, with 'Sylva') - the shortest title this year is Tru by Eric Melbye.

-How many re-reads?
Far more than usual... 18. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day; Year In, Year Out by AA Milne; Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice; Cold Comfort Farm; The Garden Party; four Mapp & Lucia books; four St. Clare's books, and four titles on my 50 Books... list: Speaking of Love; The Love Child; The L-Shaped Room; The Provincial Lady Goes Further

-Most books read by one author this year?
EF Benson and AA Milne win with 6 each; Enid Blyton managed 4; Jane Austen, EM Delafield, Olive Schreiner, Katherine Mansfield and Daphne du Maurier had a respectable 3 each.

-Any in translation?
2: The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Considering I'd hoped to read lots of Scandinavian lit this year, I rather failed.

-And how many of this year's books were from the library?
17, all the university library, which is better than none last year.

Stuck-in-a-Book's Books of 2008

Boxing Day, and the sales in Yeovil were rather underwhelming, since almost all the shops were shut. Did manage to buy most of Woolworths' stock for not very much money, but even at 60% off I couldn't bring myself to buy any of the books.

I'd hoped to give my list of favourite books after listing those by my family, as promised, but none of them have written about their favourite book of 2008 yet... tut tut... hopefully that will come to you before long. Instead, I'll offer my favourite reads of the year - I couldn't get it down to ten, in fact there were 42 on my shortlist... so here's my Top 15. (I don't include re-reads or more than one book by any author)

15. The War-Workers - EM Delafield
Written in the First World War, Delafield's novel is about women working in the Midlands Depot, though never very clear what they're doing - the central character, Charmain, is relentlessly work-focused, but rather selfish too. A last-minute entry, as I only read it last week; a bit of a slow start, but gathers pace, and some very witty turns of phrase. Some extracts here.

14. Vanessa and Virginia - Susan Sellers
One of the books I was lucky enough to review this year, a novel about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, written in the most exquisite prose. Not wholly Woolfean, as that would just be imitation, but certainly inspired by that most wonderful writer. My review here.

13. Alva & Irva - Edward Carey
Utterly quirky - twins make a model of their fictional town out of plasticine. And that's just for starters. So memorable, and in amongst the bizarre happenings are moving touches about growing up together and growing apart. More...

12. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets - Eva Rice
Very Dodie Smith, very Nancy Mitford, fun and joyous. Energetic tale about poverty-striken family in an old house (see the Dodie Smith comparisons?!) including Penelope, who meets whirlwind Charlotte at a bus stop. More...

11. Miss Marlow at Play - AA Milne
A play by AAM which I hadn't read, the usual Milne inimitable whimsy. Very short, but I always love dipping into Milne territory and enjoying the fanciful and inconsequential. In fact, with new reads and re-reads, Milne might be my most read author this year.

10. Pencillings - J. Middleton Murry
Mr. Katherine Mansfield's witty, literary and erudite essays, written in 1922, on many and diverse topics: literature vs. science; an amusingly poetic book about herbs; the use of the word 'genius' in reviews; Winston Churchill... More...

9. The Bestowing Sun - Neil Grimmett
I requested this book to review when I learnt it was set in Somerset - about families and art and so well written. Neil Grimmett has mentioned the potential of a trilogy... pop over to Flame Books and buy this before everyone else finds out. More...

8. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
After finding Human Voices so-so, I loved this melancholy but wise tale of starting a bookshop. Thank you Lynne for giving it to me. Which Penelope Fitzgerald novel to go for next? More...

7. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Finally rectified having not read this deserved classic, I'm sure everyone knows everything about it - I was surprised how little space the trial occupies, this is much more a novel about a father/daughter relationship. More...

6. Yellow - Janni Visman
Agrophobia and neuroticism were never so well told. This, along with Alva & Irva, was a novel I bought after seeing it in the Bodleian cataloguing department - quirky, striking, unique. More...

5. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A short story, but came in a stand-alone Virago. Superlative. (And proves the popularity of books with 'yellow' in the title this year.) A marvellously subtle depiction of mental illness and the inadequacy of the contemporary medical profession. More...

4. Lucia's Progress - EF Benson
My big re-reading project of the year was the Mapp and Lucia novels, inspired by Elaine aka Random Jottings discovering them for the first time. I'd never read the final two in the series, so it had to be one of them - and they keep getting better and better. Bereft to finish. More...

3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer
Thanks Elaine for putting this in my path; fun and moving and literary and wonderful. Set in 1946, and owing a little to the Provincial Lady, this epistolary novel sees authoress Juliet exchange letters with residents of Guernsey, and later visit them, bringing Occupation Guernsey to life. A lot of bloggers have delighted in this; so sad that the author died in 2008. More...

2. As It Was - Helen Thomas
Not just because the author shares her name with my aunt... Edward Thomas' wife was overshadowed by his fame, but her autobiography of their marriage is beautiful and honest. Despite obviously loving him enormously, he comes across as a fairly vile man - even so, As It Was and the sequel World Without End (published together, with extra material, as Under Storm's Wing) are must-reads for the true depiction of life and the exceptional writing quality. More...

1. The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters - ed. Charlotte Mosley
Unutterably divine - social history, comedy, insightful, moving. A lot of bloggers have eulogised about this collection, expertly edited by Charlotte Mosley, and indeed many reviews came last year - I read the collection slowly from November '07 to April '08, which is an ideal method. I've since got/read a few other Mitford letter collections, but this is something exceptional. This book felt like a journey with a family, and I have rarely been so upset to finish a book. More...


For the sake of simplicity, here's that list again, without the extra bits:
15. The War Workers - EM Delafield
14. Vanessa and Virginia - Susan Sellers
13. Alva & Irva - Edward Carey
12. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets - Eva Rice
11. Miss Marlow at Play - AA Milne
10. Pencillings - J Middleton Murry
9. The Bestowing Sun - Neil Grimmett
8. The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
7. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. Yellow - Janni Visman
5. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
4. Lucia's Progress - EF Benson
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer
2. As It Was - Helen Thomas
1. The Mitfords: Letters of Six Sisters - ed. Charlotte Mosley

Happy Christmas!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given!

A very wonderful Christmas to you all, hope Santa brought lots of books.

God bless,

Simon

Quirky

Thanks for your advice, I've done something which I haven't done in a couple of years - given up on a book. Bye bye Kevin, you're back on the bookshelf, for the time being at least. I know a lot of you believe books should be discarded if they're not working for you at page 50, but I can't adopt that policy. I feel I've entered into some sort of contract with the author - if they've put months into writing it, I can put days into reading it. So I only give up in exceptional circumstances.

And what have I read instead? Well, I actually picked it up yesterday because the computer was taking ages to load and it was the nearest book to me - but got hooked and finished it today. Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman. It's so modern that it was a website (quirkology.com) and a YouTube channel, and that's more than Jane Austen ever had.

It doesn't sound usual Stuck-in-a-Book fare, and I suppose it's not, but one of the other books I've enjoyed this year was Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. That was a book detailing psychological illnesses witnessed by Dr. Sacks, and his methods of treating them, in a manner which demonstrated his empathy as well as intelligence. Quirkology is rather more silly, though still keen to point out its scientific credentials - it's all about Wiseman's psychological experiments and what insights he has discovered into everyday lives. The psychological equivalent of Kate Fox's anthropological Watching the English.

Amongst Wiseman's investigations are attempts to find the world's funniest joke; see what sort of person takes more than 10 items in a supermarket's express line; how to tell if someone is lying; how your surname could decide your career; the trustworthiness of beards; how pretending to be a football hooligan will actually lower your IQ. Many, many interesting facts and studies, which often make you feel grateful that you weren't a participant (many of the studies claim to be about one thing, and trick a participant into having different behaviour analysed).

Here's one little starter. Using your forefinger, trace a capital Q on your forehead. Go on... done it? Click here to see what it says about you.

A fun, and indeed very quirky, book.

Should I Continue?

I made a small pile of books from the tbr pile to read over Christmas, before I had to start on reading for next term - first among them was Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin. I bought the novel not long after it appeared in paperback, my book group at home having read it and thought it very good - since then I've known various people proclaim the best or, alternatively, the worst novel they've read in a long time. I'm up to page 40 and so far I'm in the latter camp...

It's not the horrific nature of Kevin's deeds - which have yet to be particularly elaborated - it's the utterly awful writing. I'm all for fancy words in prose, but, when discussing the amount of water in the hot water tank, 'the awareness that there is no reserve permeates my ablutions with disquiet' - Really? The main character is that irritating I-don't-care-what-people-think-but-really-I-do type, all introspection and independence and sock-it-to-'em honesty mixed with psychobabble... I almost never give up on books, but...

...that is my question, really. For those who've read We Need To Talk About Kevin. Should I bother continuing?

Favourite book of the year...?

Tonight was the opening night of the Chiselborough Christmas Cracker, our village show, and the Thomas family were in full force performing a version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, cleverly reworked by Our Vicar into the Four Clergyperson sketch. Much fun had all round. It's our third turn in Somerset - last year we played ourselves preparing for the sketch, in a postmodern turn which baffled most, and the year before we did a chat show, hosted by Our Vicar; my character was a Sound of Music obsessive who sang all his lines, Our Vicar's Wife was celebrity chef Smelia Dith, and The Carbon Copy had a phobia of rhyme. I do love villages.

The other challenge of the day has been compiling my favourite books of the year. I always look forward to this, and then find it incredibly difficult... my list might well be slightly different if I'd made it last week or last month, but I've settled on my Top 15. I tried to make a Top 10, but couldn't bring myself to leave some out. Anyway, I'll keep that for a few days, because I've asked The Clan to each write something about their favourite book of the year. None of them keep a list of the books they read, like I do, but hopefully each will be able to drag into the depths of their minds for a special one this year... keep your eyes out for those.

So, for now, I open the floor to you - what's the best book you've read in 2008? Doesn't have to have been published this year, but preferably one you read for the first time this year. My end of year lists never include rereads or more than one book by any author... I look forward to hearing your choices, and reasons - and if you can link to a review on your own blog, if you have one, that would be great too! I might compile your lists in a future email.

After the Fox

Just to prove I have read *something * this month...

Quite a while ago I wrote about second-book-syndrome. By that I meant the second book you read by an author, after you've loved one. You might be reading them in order they were written, might be completely different - but it's so difficult for the second book to live up to the first. I wrote the first blog post about Frank Baker's Before I Go Hence, which was good, but nowhere near as good as Miss Hargreaves, which is one of my '50 Books'. I haven't read another novel by Baker since, though I have a few waiting on my shelves. Today's post is about another '50 Books' author, and the second book I've read by him - Aspects of Love by David Garnett.

I bought this in a secondhand bookshop in London a while ago, and read most of it on the train home - then a lull, and read the rest last week. I was attracted to it, other than by Garnett's name, by its brevity. The blurb says:

'Alone in a villa in the South of France, a penniless French actress and a star-struck English boy enjoy an idyll which they thought could not last. The years prove them wrong. Their entanglement endures, changing slowly, bringing in others - all of them concerned to keep the taste of life on the tip of their tongue.'

Well, that was quite misleading. I was anticipating a beautiful love story, but nuanced by Modernist whirls, as it were. Lady Into Fox, though it put some people off with its metamorphosis, was at heart a moving love story, told with a spectacular linguistic skill. Aspects of Love was like reading a rollercoaster - dramatic event after dramatic event whisked past me, before I had time to work out what was happening. When the blurb says the central relationship is 'changing slowly', they mean she goes off with his uncle; he shoots her, she has a daughter with the uncle, who falls in love with him... I usually love short novels, as they give the opportunity for something simple and polished, portraits of characters which shine like gems. Aspects of Love had some good points, but should either have cut out half the plot or doubled its length. I don't know what Garnett was trying to say, but whatever it was didn't convince me - I am rather disappointed, and can't say I recommend this novel. The odd sentence was beautiful, but you some sentences do not a great novel make. Shame.

And now the question is... will I bother with a third book by Garnett?