What Did You Read In 2010 And Best Of Lists

Grievous

As the year is coming to an end this can be the thread to list all/some of the books you read this year and discuss which 5-10 were the best/most enjoyable.

1) Watership Down By Richard Adam.
2) The 39 Steps By John Buchan.
3) The Wind In The Willows By Kenneth Graham.
4) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter By Carson Mccullers.
5) Anthem By Ayn Rand.
6) Breakfast At Tiffany’s By Truman Capote.
7) The Demolished Man By Alfred Bester.
8) The Invisible Man By HG Wells.
9) Pygmalion By George Bernard Shaw.
10) The Naked Face By Sidney Sheldon.
11) The Time Machine By HG Wells.
12) The Plough And The Stars By Sean O Casey.
13) The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyl And Mr Hyde.
14) The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James.
15) Pedro And Me By Judd Winnick.
16) The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck.
17) Two Short Accounts Of Psychoanalysis By Sigmund Freud.
18) The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
19) For Whom The Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemmingway.
20) The Cay By Theodore Taylor.
21) Hell’s Angels By Hunter S Thompson.
22) The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner By Coleridge.
23) My Name Is Red By Orhan Pamuk.
24) Invisible Cities By Italo Calvino.
25) The Knights Templar By Paul Ivison.
26) The Reluctant Fundamentalist By Hamid.
27) Jonathon Livingston Seagull By Richard Bach.
28) The Maltese Falcon By Dashiel Hammet.
29) The Handmaid’s Tale By Margaret Atwood.
30) I, Claudius By Robert Graves.
31) Dandelion Wine By Ray Bradbury.
32) Frankenstein By Mary Shelley.
33) Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad.
34) If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller By Italo Calvino.
35) Behold The Man By Michael Moorcock.
36) Gentlemen Of The Road By Michael Chabon.
37) Roman Lives (Caesar/Sulla/Antony) By Plutarch.
38) A Moveable Feast By Ernest Hemmingway.
39) The Torrents Of Spring By Ernest Hemmingway.
40) The Power And The Glory By Graham Greene.
41) A Canticle For Leibowitz By Walter Miller.
42) Flowers For Algernon By Daniel Keyes.
43) Darkness At Noon By Arthur Koestler.
44) The Martian Chronicles By Ray Bradbury.
45) The Colour Purple By Alice Walker.
46) The Illustrated Man By Ray Bradbury.
47) To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf.
48) The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx.
49) Labyrinths By Jorge Louis Borges.
50) The Vanishing By Tim Krabbe.
51) A Sentimental Journey By Laurence Sterne.
52) Mr Palomar By Italo Calvino.
53) The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe.
54) The Book Thief By Markus Zusak.
55) Time’s Arrow By Martin Amis.
56) Songs Of Innocence And Songs of Experience By William Blake.
57) The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy By Tim Burton.
58) A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens.
59) The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain.
60) Matilda By Roald Dahl.
61) Fantastic Mr Fox By Roald Dahl.
62) The Plague By Albert Camus.
63) Post Office By Charles Bukowski.
64) As I Lay Dying By William Faulkner.
65) The Tao Te Ching By Lao Tzu.
66) Herzog By Saul Bellow.
67) Attila The Hun By John Man.
68) The Doors Of Perception By Aldous Huxley.
69) The Patchwork Girl By Larry Niven (Re-read).

dr gonzo

Good lord thats a long fcuking list!

I need to get my act together, ive read maybe 10-15 books this year at absolute most.

UpCork

Fair dues OP, that's some list.

I don't really keep a list of what I read and I go through phases. I am always reading but sometimes I'd read two books a week, other times a book a week, depending how tired I am.

However, the book of the year for me has to have been "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Tomohawk

I got "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell last christmas, I've read the first chapter...and there it stands. Maybe I'll pick it up again over the christmas break. It's a bit like War and Peace set during WWII that follows the interior life of a nazi officer all the way from the Russian campaign to Auschwitz and then onto a post war existence. He's a bit of a cold observer of life whos only following orders etc etc...

That's an impressive list OP, some real classics in there...

june77

I finished Alone In Berlin a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to start anything since. I haven't read something that good in a while. Also read The Poisonwood Bible earlier in the year. I thought that was really good.

Denerick

My favourite reads of the year:

Troubles by J.G. Farrell - I'm a complete bandwagoner but I don't care. I bought this after Farrell won the Lost Booker prize. A very interesting portrayal of the British Empire in retreat in Ireland, rich with symbolic characterisation and a wit that is simply incomparable to nearly anything else I've ever read. I also enjoyed The Siege of Krishnapur, another Booker winner by Farrell (I have no shame) which explores similar themes in British India.

Postwar by Tony Judt - A history of Europe since 1945. Simple, right? Superbly written, history at its best. Its bold, opinionated and comprehensive. An excellent study of European politics since the war.

Tarry Flynn and The Green Fool by Patrick Kavanagh - the former is an autobiographical novel and the latter is a novelised autobiography. If you don't get that you don't get Kavanagh.

Cider House Rules by John Irving - This plot will stay with you for a long time. I find Irvings prose singularly compelling. Everything is subtly entanged in a profound web, and he isn't afraid of taking command of serious moral issues.

I managed about 40 or so books this year. My free time has been greatly reduced over the last two months and am still trying to rediscover a 'book life' balance! This is the first time I kept a record of what I've read, its provided interesting reading for me over the year as I've been able to read exactly what I thought immediately after reading a book. It also probably helps that I'm not usually bothered leaving an in depth review, with a few exceptions.

lemon_sherbert

Well my full reading exploits can be seen from my log over here. It hasn't been a great year for reading, what with working full time for most of the summer and the horror that is university. But the highlights have been:

Oryx and Crane - Margaret Atwood

The Mistborn series - Brandon Sanderson

Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House - Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The Children's Book - AS Byatt

Eliot Rosewater

Denerick wrote: »

Troubles by J.G. Farrell....

Did you ever read the Derek Mahon's poem A Disused Shed in County Wexford? It's dedicated to J.G. Farrell and is set "Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel / Among the bathtubs and the washbasins". I've been reading it a lot lately, and I think there must be some connection with the crumbling Co. Wexford hotel in Troubles (which I haven't read, mind).

The typical reading of the poem involves Northern Ireland: "They have been waiting for us in a foetor of vegetable sweat since civil war days". Some fantastic wording in it:

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.

...

only the ghost of a scream
At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

Anyway, do you think its all a reference to Troubles?!

Denerick

There are definately a few lines there that are a direct allusion to Troubles.

Grievous

Question for Book Forum Mod:
How can I edit my original post in this thread? I wanted to update my list.
Thanks!:)

This should be the original post.

1) Watership Down By Richard Adams.
2) The 39 Steps By John Buchan.
3) The Wind In The Willows By Kenneth Graham.
4) The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter By Carson Mccullers.
5) Anthem By Ayn Rand.
6) Breakfast At Tiffany’s By Truman Capote.
7) The Demolished Man By Alfred Bester.
8) The Invisible Man By HG Wells.
9) Pygmalion By George Bernard Shaw.
10) The Naked Face By Sidney Sheldon.
11) The Time Machine By HG Wells.
12) The Plough And The Stars By Sean O Casey.
13) The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyl And Mr Hyde.
14) The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James.
15) Pedro And Me By Judd Winnick.
16) The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck.
17) Two Short Accounts Of Psychoanalysis By Sigmund Freud.
18) The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
19) For Whom The Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemmingway.
20) The Cay By Theodore Taylor.
21) Hell’s Angels By Hunter S Thompson.
22) The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner By Coleridge.
23) My Name Is Red By Orhan Pamuk.
24) Invisible Cities By Italo Calvino.
25) The Knights Templar By Paul Ivison.
26) The Reluctant Fundamentalist By Hamid.
27) Jonathon Livingston Seagull By Richard Bach.
28) The Maltese Falcon By Dashiel Hammet.
29) The Handmaid’s Tale By Margaret Atwood.
30) I, Claudius By Robert Graves.
31) Dandelion Wine By Ray Bradbury.
32) Frankenstein By Mary Shelley.
33) Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad.
34) If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller By Italo Calvino.
35) Behold The Man By Michael Moorcock.
36) Gentlemen Of The Road By Michael Chabon.
37) Roman Lives (Caesar/Sulla/Antony) By Plutarch.
38) A Moveable Feast By Ernest Hemmingway.
39) The Torrents Of Spring By Ernest Hemmingway.
40) The Power And The Glory By Graham Greene.
41) A Canticle For Leibowitz By Walter Miller.
42) Flowers For Algernon By Daniel Keyes.
43) Darkness At Noon By Arthur Koestler.
44) The Martian Chronicles By Ray Bradbury.
45) The Colour Purple By Alice Walker.
46) The Illustrated Man By Ray Bradbury.
47) To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf.
48) The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx.
49) Labyrinths By Jorge Louis Borges.
50) The Vanishing By Tim Krabbe.
51) A Sentimental Journey By Laurence Sterne.
52) Mr Palomar By Italo Calvino.
53) The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe.
54) The Book Thief By Markus Zusak.
55) Time’s Arrow By Martin Amis.
56) Songs Of Innocence And Songs of Experience By William Blake.
57) The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy By Tim Burton.
58) A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens.
59) The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain.
60) Matilda By Roald Dahl.
61) Fantastic Mr Fox By Roald Dahl.
62) The Plague By Albert Camus.
63) Post Office By Charles Bukowski.
64) As I Lay Dying By William Faulkner.
65) The Tao Te Ching By Lao Tzu.
66) Herzog By Saul Bellow.
67) Attila The Hun By John Man.
68) The Doors Of Perception By Aldous Huxley.
69) The Patchwork Girl By Larry Niven (Re-read).
70) The Goshawk By TH. White (Re-read/Finish).

Comics Read This Year:

1) The Invisibles: Say You Want A Revolution By Grant Morrison.
2) Animal Man: Origin Of The Species By Grant Morrison.
3) Animal Man: Deus Ex Machina By Grant Morrison.
4) Scalped: Dead Mothers By Jason Aaron.
5) Scalped: The Gravel In Your Guts By Jason Aaron.
6) Doom Patrol: Crawling From The Wreakage By Grant Morrison.
7) Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris By Grant Morrison.
8) Doom Patrol: We Who Are About To Die By Keith Giffen.
9) Wednesday Comics By Various.
10) The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor And The Bogus Identity By Mike Carey.
11) Sweet Tooth: Out Of The Woods By Jeff Lemire.
12) American Vampire: Vol 1 By Scott Synder And Steven King.
13) Preacher: Gone To Texas By Garth Ennis.
14) The Flash: Rebirth By Geoff Johns.
15) The Flash: The Dastardly Death Of The Rogues By Geoff Johns.
16) The Flash: Terminal Velocity By Mark Waid.
17) Impulse: Reckless Youth By Mark Waid.
18) JLA: The Delux Editions #1-#4 By Grant Morrison And Howard Porter.
19) Fables: The Dark Ages By Bill Willingham.
20) Superboy: The Boy Of Steel By Geoff Johns And Francis Manupal.
21) Astro City: The Tarnished Angel By Kurt Busiek.
22) Star Wars: Legacy: Vector Vol II By John Ostrander.
23) The Return Of Bruce Wayne By Grant Morrison.
24) Batman: Batman Versus Robin By Grant Morrison.
25) Batman: Batman And Robin Must Die! By Grant Morrison.
26) Batman: Batman And Son By Grant Morrison.
27) Batman: The Black Glove By Grant Morrison.
28) Batman: Batman RIP (Re-read 3 times) By Grant Morrison.
29) Green Lantern: Blackest Night By Geoff Johns.
30) Green Lantern Corps: Blackest Night By Geoff Johns.
31) Blackest Night By Geoff Johns.
32) Blackest Night: Tales Of The Black Lantern Corps By Geoff Johns.
33) Blackest Night: Flash,Superman, Wonder Woman, JLA, JSA And Batman By Various.
34) Final Crisis Aftermath: Run And INK By Various.
35) Batman: Year 1000 By Paul Pope.
36) JLA: Earth 2 By Grant Morrison.
37) Secret Six: Unhinged By Gail Simone.
38) Secret Six: Depths By Gail Simone.
39) Supergirl: Who Is Superwoman By Sterling Gates.
40) Icon: A Hero's Welcome By Dwayne Mcduffie.
41) Red By Warren Ellis And Cully Hammer.
42) A Tale Of One Bad Rat By Brian Talbot.
43) Green Arrow: Brightest Day By JT Krul.
44) All Hail Megatron By Various Writers.



My Top Ten Most Enjoyable Reads

1) Watership Down By Richard Adams.
2) Breakfast At Tiffany’s By Truman Capote.
3) Herzog By Saul Bellow.
4) Pedro And Me By Judd Winnick.
5) The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck.
6) For Whom The Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemmingway.
7) Dandelion Wine By Ray Bradbury.
8) If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller By Italo Calvino.
9) As I Lay Dying By William Faulkner.
10) The Book Thief By Markus Zusak.

point7

june77 wrote: »

I finished Alone In Berlin a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to start anything since. I haven't read something that good in a while. Also read The Poisonwood Bible earlier in the year. I thought that was really good.

Isn't Alone in Berlin just fab; so insightful and to think at the time he wrote it during the war... My top 5 books this year:

Lottery - Patricia Wood (loved the writing - so clever, great story)
A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick (poetic and effortlessly descriptive, gripping, bleak, gothic, lusty)
The Help - Kathryn Scott (Oprah Lit - v good though)
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada (AMAZING)
American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld (compelling - although I found the first 2/3rds much more interesting. Brilliant portrait though)

Malari

I read 51 books this year (probably 52 by new year), compared to over 100 last year. I won't list all of them but these were my favourites:

The End of Mr Y & PopCo by Scarlett Thomas
D-Day & Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

Worst?

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse :rolleyes:

UpCork

I'm flying through "Skippy Dies". Am loving it. Say that will be the last full book I'll be reading in 2010

Sergeant

Denerick wrote: »

My favourite reads of the year:

Troubles by J.G. Farrell - I'm a complete bandwagoner but I don't care. I bought this after Farrell won the Lost Booker prize. A very interesting portrayal of the British Empire in retreat in Ireland, rich with symbolic characterisation and a wit that is simply incomparable to nearly anything else I've ever read. I also enjoyed

Got round to reading this last year. A fantastic book. J.B. Keane would have laughed heartily at this, if he did.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford was one of the highlights of my year, recommended and (eventually) delivered to me by the Times book club. An eccentric, funny, yet very searing look at some of the policies of the former Soviet Union. Told in a beautiful way.

Asphyxia

I didn't read much this year but I plan on reading loads next year going to buy lots of books during the sales

1. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
3. Hell's Heroes - Darren Shan
4. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
5. Faerie Wars - Herbie Brennan
6. 1984 - George Orwell
7. The Pact - Jodi Picoult
8. Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
9. Keeping Faith - Jodi Picoult
10. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
11. The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson
12. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest - Stieg Larsson
13. Celebrity Murder - Chris Ellis, Julie Ellis
14. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
15. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): Selected Poems - Oscar Wilde
16. I capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
17. W.B Yeats Selected Poems - W.B Yeats
18. Joyce's Kaleidoscope: An Invitation to Finnegans Wake - Philip Kitcher
19. Ulysses - James Joyce
20. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
21. The Twilight Phenomenon - Nicola Bardola
22. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

This is what I can remember of the top of my head but I know there was a couple more

Celtise

I had a very good start to reading last year, kept a list/blog and all but then after exam/studying/moving, somewhere in there I got too tired and out of habit.

Anyways the best standalone book was definitely The Book Thief by Mark Zusak; best reread was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (such an easy read); and best series (I haven't finished Stieg Larsson's yet) was surprisingly a young adult trilogy called The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Worst book was either The Magicians by Lev Grossman or else one of the Jodi Picoult books I read (after a few they get really repetitive and I couldn't even finish My Sister's Keeper for chr!st sake).

Dades

Matter by Iain M. Banks.

Most of the rest of my year was taken up reading Justin Cronin's The Passage.

Louisayankee2

I read with great interest, " The Gift of Fear". The man who runs nearly the largest and best security firm for politicians and movie stars, etc. began his life as a young , abused child.
He learned to use his primal instincts to learn how to try to avoid beatings.

He called it a gift. However, ironically, humans have abandoned the sensitive side of us, or we try to...........
It is a gift........ hence the name of the book. A good read, about our instincts for survival. Loved it! This book really gets you thinking ... I caught myself putting the book down, and going back very lost in time to things that had occurred to me long ago.
I had a few stalkers in my day, so it was imperative to use my ' instincts'. I had to scour my mind to try to give the police an accurate idea of who I thought the people were.
Ironically, they were people I had never had any relationship with of any kind. The people were just strangers to me. Phone taps got one, but the other two, just sheer instinct...........fascinating to read this book.

IvyTheTerrible

Wow, can't believe I've read 72 books! Glad I kept a reading log! The bolded titles are those I preferred. I think perhaps "The Help" by Katherine Stockett or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Bauby were my top reads of the year. I hope I read some good stuff in 2011.

1. Eric/Faust - Terry Pratchett
2. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution -Simon Schama.
3. Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
4. The girl who kicked the hornet's nest - Steig Larsson
5. Tom Bedlam - George Hagen
6. Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
7. The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
8. Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
9. The Partisan's Daughter - Louis deBernieres
10. The Outcast – Sadie Jones
11. If this is a man/The Truce: Primo Levi
12. Reaper Man - Terry
13. The Children's Book: AS Byatt
14. The Innocent Traitor:Alison Weir
15. Let the Great World Spin: Colm McCarthy
16. The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
17. The Periodic Table - Primo Levi
18. One Day - David Nicholls
19. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
20. Witches Abroad -Terry Pratchett
21. The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
22. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
23. Them - Joyce Carol Oates
24. Fermat's Last Theorem: Simon Singh
25. Murder on the Orient Express: Agatha Christie
26. The Lies of Locke Lamora: Scott Lynch
27. Death on the Nile: Agatha Christie
28. Small Gods: Terry Pratchett
29. Lud in the Mist: Hope Mirlees
30. The Shell Seekers: Rosamund Pilcher
31. The Last Dickens : Matthew Pearl
32. The Valley of the Squinting Windows : Brinsley McNamara
33. The Midwich Cuckoos: John Wyndham
34. Notwithstanding : Louis de Bernieres
35. 4.05 from Paddington : Agatha Christie
36. Lords and Ladies: Terry Pratchett
37. You're an Animal, Viskovitz: Alessandro Boffa
38. The Year of the Flood: Margaret Atwood
39. The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Agatha Christie
40. The Help: Kathryn Stockett
41. The Stand: Stephen King
42. Maps for Lost Lovers: Nadeem Aslam
43. The Murder of Roger Akroyd: Agatha Christie
44. Gomorrah: Italy's other mafia: Roberto Saviano
45. A Canticle for Liebowitz: Walter M Miller
46. And then there were none: Agatha Christie
47. Men at Arms: Terry Pratchett
48. The Yiddish Policemen's Union: Michael Chabon
49. My Man Jeeves: PD Wodehouse
50. Picnic at Hanging Rock: Joan Lindsay
51. Her Fearful Symmetry: Audrey Niffenegger
52. Soul Music: Terry Pratchett
53. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Jean-Dominique Bauby
54. Murder on the Links: Agatha Christie
55. The Egg and I: Betty MacDonald
56. Skippy Dies: Paul Murray
57. The House of Echoes: Barbara Erskine
58. The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
59. Interesting times: Terry Pratchett
60. The Big Four: Agatha Christie
61. Down Under: Bill Bryson
62. Player One: Douglas Coupland
63. Swan Song: Robert McCammon
64. The Mystery of the Blue Train: Agatha Christie
65. The Oh My God Delusion: Ross O'Carroll Kelly/Paul Howard
66. Diagnosis: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Medical Mysteries: Lisa Sanders
67. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Oliver Sacks
68. Maskerade: Terry Pratchett
69. Feet of Clay: Terry Pratchett
70. Death in the Clouds: Agatha Christie
71. Peril at End House: Agatha Christie
72. Five Little Pigs: Agatha Christie

Waterford City Council Library Services

Celtise wrote: »

Anyways the best standalone book was definitely The Book Thief by Mark Zusak; best reread was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (such an easy read); and best series (I haven't finished Stieg Larsson's yet) was surprisingly a young adult trilogy called The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

LOVED the Hunger Games this year! I think it's going to be a much stronger successor to the Twilight series, with great, properly complex male and female heroes aswell!

Celtise

Waterford City Council Library Services wrote: »

LOVED the Hunger Games this year! I think it's going to be a much stronger successor to the Twilight series, with great, properly complex male and female heroes aswell!

For sure it's way better than twilight. I expect it to get bigger than twilight and is loved by most HP fans that I know so that's a good sign of greatness. Movie in the making too will help it.

Enkidu

The best books I read this year:

Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce
I only ended up getting this because of donegalfella's posts here on boards. Despite being his masterpiece I must say it is actually his most accessible work.
Just read it and you'll catch something in your net.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
A very unusual book. Heinlein simultaneously treats "Rational Anarchism", a sort of distillation of the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson and continues to explore polyandry as the most stable form of human partnership. All of this place on the Moon struggling for freedom. However the real gem of the book is an extremely convincing portrayal of an Artificial Intelligence as it "wakes up".

At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, An Béal Bocht, Brian Nolan
The only writer who, in my opinion, bridges the two literary traditions of this island. Bringing Modernist manipulation of language to Irish and Irish sarcasm and dispassionate observation to English.

Judgement Day

Like a couple of the other posters here I've read "Troubles" last year, for the second time, and got the video from the USA. If anything the book is even better than the movie and that's really saying something! I also read "The Siege of Krishnapur" and "Girl in the Head" also by J.G.Farrell. The Siege is another epic but Girl in the Head is only for diehards IMO. I'm just starting "The Singapore Grip" and have his unfinished work "The Hill Station" ready to go.
I struggled through "Langrishe, Go Down" by Aidan Higgins and never really got into it - possibly I was too tired when reading it. I'm halfway through "Stand up and Fight" by Alan English - the story of Munster's defeat of the All Blacks in 1978 but it's so long since I put it down that I'll have to go back to the start. I also managed to read "Proxopera" by Ben Kiely - a bleak story from the NI Troubles which disappointed me.
Lined up for January I have a new railway book - "The Trains Long Departed" by Tom Ferris and William Trevor's first novel "A Standard of Behaviour" first published as far back as 1958 - the latter is being saved for a rainy day.

gaf1983

Enkidu wrote: »

At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, An Béal Bocht, Brian Nolan
The only writer who, in my opinion, bridges the two literary traditions of this island. Bringing Modernist manipulation of language to Irish and Irish sarcasm and dispassionate observation to English.

Couldn't agree more with you there about Flann. Actually the Irish Times published some great Christmas-related columns of his (well Myles') just before Christmas:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2010/1224/1224286035775.html

I actually read very few books this year due to a combination of increased work commitments and a decreasing attention span thanks to the Internet.

Started out fairly well, according to my boards.ie reading log I'm after unearthing, with 7 books in the first 6 weeks:

1. Ship of Fools - Fintan O'Toole

2. The New Pun Book - Thomas A. Brown, Thomas Joseph Carey

3. Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It - Allan Pease

4. Lustrum - Robert Harris

5. The Irish (& Other Foreigners) - Shane Hegarty

6. Stalin: The Court of The Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore

7. Dubliners - James Joyce

8. Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics - Jonathan Wilson

9. Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape - James Howard Kunstler

10. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle

11. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell

12. Welcome to Hell - Colin Martin

13. Rucks, Mauls and Gaelic Football - Moss Keane

14. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

15. A Mad World, My Masters - John Simpson

thenakedanddead

Last year, for me, was pretty much a literary famine. *makes mental note to get his damned act together*.

I read 1984. Read it before and liked it, but found some of it to be complex. This time around I found it thoroughly engaging.

thenakedanddead

UpCork wrote: »

I don't really keep a list of what I read and I go through phases. I am always reading but sometimes I'd read two books a week, other times a book a week, depending how tired I am.

You mean you would fly through book one to get onto book two, or you would read two books simultaneously. I always thought the latter would remove some of the escapism inherent in concentrating on one adventure.