Books read 2007

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(the lass was born in January, I did a lot of reading, but not so much blogging)

  • Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl
  • The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
  • After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
  • Frost on My Moustache – Tim Moore
  • The Careful Use of Compliments – Alexander McCall Smith
  • Boksamlere forteller
  • The Imperfectly Natural Baby and Toddler – Janey Lee Grace
  • First Among Sequels – Jasper Fforde
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J. K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J. K. Rowling (reread)
  • A Widow for One Year – John Irving
  • Death at La Fenice – Donna Leon
  • The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
  • Intimacy – Hanif Kureshi
  • So Many Books, so Little Time – Sarah Nelson
  • The World According to Bertie – Alexander McCall Smith
  • The Complete Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby
  • Citizen Girl – Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
  • Nattelangs – Gro Jørstad Nilsen
  • Matilda, litt av en robot – Philip Newth
  • The Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich
  • Uncle Dynamite – P.G. Wodehouse
  • Blue at the Mizzen – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Hundred Days – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Yellow Admiral – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Commodore – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Wine-Dark Sea – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • Clarissa Oakes – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Nutmeg of Consolation – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Thirteen-Gun Salute – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Letter of Marque – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Reverse of the Medal – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Far Side of the World – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • Treason’s Harbour – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Ionian Mission – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Surgeon’s Mate – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Fortune of War – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • Desolation Island – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • The Mauritius Command – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • HMS Surprise – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • Master & Commander – Patrick O’Brian (reread)
  • American Pastorale – Philip Roth

June to October

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Dreadful. And now I can hardly remember what I’ve read all summer (and autumn…). I’m bound to leave something out.

Anyway:

The Imperfectly Natural Baby and Toddler – Janey Lee Grace
Interesting and contains lots of tips for things I hadn’t heard about before, but reads a blit like a list of weblinks at times (this is good for usefulness but for readability? Not so good.)

First Among Sequels – Jasper Fforde
Brilliant, but missing something that I can’t put my finger on. Still, definitely brilliant. Just not quite perfect.

A Widow for One Year – John Irving
Yay! I finally got around to finishing a John Irving novel! I brought A Widow for One Year to Austria planning to release it once I’d finished, but somehow didn’t get as much reading done as I’d intended. For a long time I thought I might just leave it even if I didn’t finish, as I didn’t feel compelled to keep reading, even half-way through the book, but that would have entailed having to buy something else to read, and I never found anything I wanted to buy. By the time we were packing our bags to go home I only had a couple of hundred pages left, and found that the story had grown on me and that suddenly I could hardly put it down. Strange stuff. I might just have to buy some more Irving (especially if I find more cheap second-hand copies like this one).

Death at La Fenice – Donna Leon
A bookcrossing copy I picked up in Vienna. Pretty entertaining, I’ll probably read more Leon.

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
On the 1001 books list. I can see why.

Intimacy – Hanif Kureshi
Also on the 1001 books list, which is why I read it. That is, I read the story actually entitled Intimacy, and struggled to get through that, despite its relative briefness and it’s status as a «classic». I’m sure it’s a brilliant portrayal of a middle-aged guy planning to leave his wife, but I just thought it was dreary. I then read the following story in the book, something Night-ish, and found that it was basically about a middle-aged guy who’d left his wife. And then I gave up. I’m sure I’m at fault rather than Kureshi, we all have our hang-ups and one of mine is that my empathy fuse blows when you mix infidelity into the story and so I fail to connect with the characters at all, which takes the fun out of it.

So Many Books, so Little Time – Sarah Nelson
Unfortunately not as good as I’d hoped. As many of the other readers of the bookcrossing-copy I read I would have liked more books and less life, I guess, but my main gripes were with Nelson’s way of presenting herself and her reading. Firstly, she talks about her «discovery» that you really don’t have to finish books you don’t like as if it’s something profound – a rite of passage, «growing up» – which rather irritated me, but then she goes on to say that she doesn’t want to discuss or give her opinion on books she’s given up on. What? You read 200 pages of a 400 page novel and then decide you really can’t be bothered to finish it, but you maintain that you don’t have the «right» to say that the book sucked (or wasn’t quite to your taste) since you didn’t stick with it to the bitter end? Seriously, if a novel doesn’t manage to capture your attention sufficiently to make you finish it has fundamentally failed in its object and you’re entitled to say whatever you like (well, ok, I’d stay away from such statements as «the ending sucked» if you haven’t actually read the ending, but you know what I mean…). It made me suspect that Nelson really hasn’t «grown up» and that she’s still uncomfortable about leaving books unfinished, for all her protestations that this is something she has learned to do. The other is with the project itself: She reads books for a living, for goodness sakes, and still 50 books a year seems to have been a daunting task? Even last year, when I really didn’t read a lot, I read that much, and I’m up to 43 (and two halves) this year, despite giving birth in January (which everyone told me would be the death of reading novels, as I’d never be allowed to, or indeed able to, concentrate for long enough). I’m not impressed.

The World According to Bertie – Alexander McCall Smith
Perfect, as usual.

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby

Ordered from Play.com

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The World According to Bertie – Alexander McCall Smith
The Careful Use of Compliments – Alexander McCall Smith
The Bubblegum Three – Alexander McCall Smith
Slam – Nick Hornby
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby

I was reading Nick Hornby’s The Complete Polysyllabic Spree when I set up the bookblog in WordPress, and I thought this listing of books bought is actually a pretty good idea, perhaps I should do that. So here it is.

Oops. It’s been a while…

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Ah well.

After American Pastorale, I reread the Aubrey/Maturin series for the umpteenth time, so that accounts for about two months…

Since then I have no excuse, except it’s hard to keep both a baby and a laptop on your knee at the same time. Anyhoo, I’ve been reading:

Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus – not a high point. It’s engaging, but seems rather pointless and left me feeling that it lacked any sort of conclusion.

Nattelangs av Gro Jørstad Nilsen var noe meningsløs. Ingen god reklame for norsk litteratur denne heller. Er det bare jeg som er uheldig eller står det så dårlig til?

Matilda, litt av en robot av Philip Newth. Ny Matilda-bok! Litt skuffende, riktignok. Historien hang litt dårlig sammen, synes jeg, særlig har jeg vanskelig for å godta at robotene skulle kunne ønske seg følelser dersom de ikke har en slags følelser allerede (kan man ønske seg noe hvis man ikke kan føle?). Vanskelig å si om Newth er blitt dårligere eller jeg eldre… Det finner jeg vel ut om noen år når det er på tide å begynne å lese Matilda-bøkene for ungen.

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich – a reread, as it was one of the few books I could find on my shelves with a botanical word in the title and therefore useful for Alvhyttan’s May Flowers / Botanical Challenge 2007. Hence this is going to be bookcrossed shortly, but I wanted to reread it first. As usual with Louise Erdrich this story was magical and down to earth at the same time. Definitely an author to note on your TBR-list if she’s not already there.

Uncle Dynamite by P.G. Wodehouse – Wodehouse being Wodehouse, this was funny and clever.

I’m sure there’s more… In which case I’ll add them later.

American Pastoral – Philip Roth

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When I was admitted to hospital for observation rather unexpectedly because of high blood pressure in the last week before my due date, Martin had to be sent in to the town centre to provide reading material, as we had both, inadvertently, left home without a book. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral was not a bad choice for an emergency read. The novel is engaging and touches on some profound issues around identity and image. However, I found it ended somewhat prematurely, I would have liked another few chapters to «round off» the narrative. I assume Roth has his reasons for ending the way he does, and I suppose, in retrospect, I can see that it makes sense on some levels. And it should not put you off reading the book.

I finished American Pastoral while waiting for the inducing of the kid’s birth to take effect, and the next book I picked up was Master & Commander. Jupp, I’ve started my – uhm- is it fourth or fifth? – reread of O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, so if I do not update the bookblog for a month or two (what with a newborn baby in the house, there is limited time available for reading) you’ll know why.

Rambling on the Road to Rome – Peter Francis Browne

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Rambling on the Road to Rome is another book I picked up in Hay last year. As travelogues go it’s ok, but that’s about it. It never really caught my interest, and had anything else beckoned, I might easily have put it down and never returned.

For one thing the narration it is far more disjointed than such a linear journey gives any excuse for. In fact, I almost gave up right at the start when on the very first night Browne is waiting outside a hotel that, according to a sign on the door is supposed to open at seven but doesn’t. He is on the point of giving up and finding somewhere to pitch his tent, when a couple arrives who also want to stay in the hotel and the woman – the husband is parking the car or something – says «You wait here, I’ll find a phone and call their number.» What happens next is not clear, as the narrative gets lost in a musing on dreams and dogs, and suddenly it is next morning (that is, I assume it’s next morning, it’s Monday morning, at least, Browne does not actually make it clear whether it is next morning or two months later, but that the hotel debacle took place Sunday evening would tally well with Browne’s statement that Toul «was closed when I arrived»). Not that I expect a painstaking account of every minute of every day of the whole journey, but I do feel that the reader should not be left to assume large parts of the action.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that the book – if not necessarily the journey – seems rather pointless. I have a hard time defining for myself exactly what the point of a travel book should be, but whatever it is, it’s missing from this one. Still, it’s not badly written, and it’s interesting enough in parts. I’m unlikely to ever want to read it again, though, so it’ll be bookcrossed soonish.