My luxuriously long post-thesis break has, of course, not proven as productive as I might have hoped. Two weeks into the new year, I've only just mustered the effort for a look back over last year's reading.
Not surprisingly, given that whole thesis thing, 2008 was a pretty lean year for me in terms of reading for pleasure. Discounting the mountains of stuff I read for work (except in a few cases where I went ahead and read the whole book even after I'd got what I needed, which I have therefore included), I got through some 55 books - down on 2007's tally of 67, and also on totals of closer to 80 or 90 in the years prior to that.
But I did narrowly beat Victoria. ;-)
My efforts to read all the Russian literature ever also fell foul of my work schedule, although I did manage four (and have posted about two to date, Pushkin and Turgenev), which is technically enough to complete the challenge - if not to meet my own, rather more ambitious target. My personal challenge continues, therefore; 2009 will be the year of War and Peace!
Of the 55:
- 8 were non-fiction
- 5 history monographs
- 1 literary criticism
- 1 memoir
- 1 translated medieval Persian chronicle
- 47 were fiction, including
- 34 science fiction/fantasy/speculative (a tally boosted by the fact that in some months my only reading was review books for SFX and Strange Horizons, and by the Clarke Award shortlist)
- 4 short story collections or anthologies
- 1 play (Hamlet)
- 4 novels in one omnibus volume (James Blish's Cities in Flight)
- 35 were by men, 20 by women
- 7 were translations
- one was in Spanish, and ~500 pages long to boot (Eduardo Manzano Moreno's Conquistadores, emires y califas: los omeyas y la formacion de al-Andalus)
- 5 were pre-1900
In general, my 2008 reading list looks and feels rather moribund compared with the previous year's: not only shorter and thinner, but also lacking some of the spark and surprise (and strength-in-depth) of 2007. Last time I did this, I was completely spoiled for choice when it came to my top ten; this time, there is quite a gulf between the best and the rest.
That said, my 2008 top ten can all stand proudly alongside their predecessors:
- Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel. My pick for the Clarke Award; tight, tense, and probably the best example I've ever seen of a stunning twist ending that feels, in retrospect, utterly organic to both plot and theme - and which, on looking back, was being hinted at throughout. Marvellous.
- Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. One of my biggest blogging regrets of 2008 is that I never had the time and space to rave about this book. A huge cultural history of the various conflicting and ever-evolving (and often wacky) attitudes to sexuality and the body among the Christian communities of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity. Cohesive, compelling, scholarly and surprising.
- Anna Banti, Artemisia. The most unexpected (and immersive) treat of the year, about the life of 17th-century artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Part fictionalised biography, part memoir, part examination of the writing process, part tortured cry for help.
- Richard Morgan, Black Man. Winner of the Clarke, and deservedly so. Fast-paced, bold, and challenging: a science fictional future that interrogates the present, without ever losing the balance between message and story.
- Gwyneth Jones, Life. A post is forthcoming on this. Emotionally-brutal feminist tale of how lives and loves are affected by advances in research into sex, gender and genetics.
- Sarah Hall, The Carhullan Army. Third in my Clarke shortlist trio; more feminism, more near future imaginings, now all dystopia to the end. Also with beautiful evocations of the Lake District. :-)
- Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others. Another forthcoming post: SFnal short fiction from a master of the form.
- Sarah Waters, Affinity. (Link is to Vicky's post.) Victorian lesbian ghost story/penny dreadful prison drama... what's not to like?
- Laurie J. Marks, Earth Logic. Enjoyed the first in this series, which I read at the end of 2007, but I really fell in love with this sequel. Nicely-written, well-plotted secondary-world fantasy, by an author actually bothers to think about family structures, social organisation, and the dynamics of power (rather than just sticking her characters in a Ren Faire version of medieval Europe). And more lesbians. I say again: what's not to like? Will be writing about the whole series for Strange Horizons in the near future, when I've finished the third volume.
- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union/Ian McDonald, Brasyl. Bit of a cheat, since I can't choose between them: the two books that ought to have been on the Clarke shortlist. Chabon's is a noir mystery in an alternate history 'Jewlaska'; McDonald's is an unbalanced but still remarkable imagined portrait of Brazil in past, present and future.
Just outside the top ten are Gwyneth Jones' Spirit: The Princess of Bois Dormant, a 2009 release that I recently reviewed for SFX, which does The Count of Monte Cristo in space with admirable feminist panache (review will be up here when the issue is off the stands); Kristin Cashore's infectiously-fun, sweetly-romantic, and quietly gender-subversive fantasy adventure Graceling (another SFX review, that will be up here in due course); and last but not least Temeraire, by Naomi Novik.
So much for the good. Onto the other end of the scale...
Dishonourable mentions go to The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (such a great idea, such a boringly chick-lit-y execution), The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua (I was not its midlife-crisis-male target audience, and I could feel it on every page), The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (so much less less transgressive and inventive than it wants to be), and The Music of the Spheres by Elizabeth Redfern (silly, and not in a good way).
Thus was my year in reading. Here's to many more books in 2009!
In other news, I finally more or less finished cataloguing my library over at the OCD heaven that is Library Thing. Here is my profile, and here are my books. I am vastly amused that my TBR shelves outnumber books I've read, by some way... better get reading...
~~Nic
Recent Comments