Books read, 2008

[dreamer_easy]

My recommendations from the year's reading:

Ben Aaronovitch. Genius Loci. I can't believe how long to took me to get around to reading this. Ben writes one of the rarest kinds of Doctor Who-related stuff: honest-to-God SF. Plus it's as funny as hell.

Christine Pevitt Algrant. Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France. I rarely read history; this was a terrific read.

Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven't read. Cheeky little book full of serious insights on writing, reading, and publishing.

Russell T. Davies. The Writer's Tale. Entertaining and enlightening - plus hopeful writers (and old hacks like me) get an invaluable glimpse of a master works.

Charles Dickens. Bleak House. My first ever Dickens! Now I see what all the fuss is about! I hope to give Our Mutual Friend a stab this year.

Kate Fox. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Suddenly so much makes sense that never did before. (Don Watson's On Indignation was similarly enlightening. :)

Gita Mehta. Karma Cola. Knockout collection of anecdotes about clueless Westeners visiting India in the sixties, with no idea of what was waiting for them. I picked this up completely by chance in an op shop. I would read a shopping list written by this woman. Instead, though, I'll read her novel Raj.

Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Death Note. So clever, so funny, so twisty.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Holy flaming cow. I'm still reeling from the final line. Cancer Ward is on the shelf for this year.

Ben Aaronovitch. Genius Loci.
Douglas Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.
Christine Pevitt Algrant. Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France.
Trezza Azzopardi. The Hiding Place.
Iain M. Banks. Matter.
John Barrowman with Carole E. Barrowman. Anything Goes: The Autobiography.
Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven't read.
Billie T. Chandler. Crafts and trades of Japan, with doll-and-flower arrangements.
Julian Clary. Murder Most Fab.
Frank Close. The Void.
Russell T. Davies. The Writer's Tale.
Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
Phil Drabble. A Weasel in my Meatsafe.
Kate Fox. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour.
Neil Gaiman. Anansi Boys.
Jody Gehrman. Tart.
Steven Hall. The Raw Shark Texts.
Patrick F. Houlihan. Wit and Humour in Ancient Egypt.
Senei Ikenobo. Ikebana.
Damien Keown. Buddhist Ethics: a Very Short Introduction.
Bruce Kinloch. Sauce for the Mongoose.
Naduki Koujima. Great Place High School.
Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood.
Gita Mehta. Karma Cola.
Magnus Mills. All Quiet on the Orient Express.
Elizabeth Moon. Speed of Dark.
Clive Moore (ed). The Forgotten People: a history of the Australian South Sea Island community.
Kiriko Nananan. Blue.
Sara Nelson. So Many Books, So Little Time.
Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Death Note.
Francine Patterson and Eugene Linden. The Education of Koko.
William Poundstone. Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb.
V.S. Ramachandran. A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.
Oliver Sacks. The Island of the Colour-blind.
Charles Siebert. Wickerby.
Charles Seife. Decoding the Universe: how the new science of information is explaining everything in the Cosmos, from our brains to Black Holes.
Byron E. Shafer (ed). Religion in Ancient Egypt.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Osamu Tezuka. Buddha.
Don Watson. On Indignation.
John Williams. Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub.
Diane Yapko. Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Comments

[colonel-barker.livejournal.com]

I got The Writer's Tale just as it came out an devoured the whole book in an afternoon. I looked at it yesterday feeling a little sad, it cost so much money and was over so quickly.

I think I might work my way through your recommendations list.

Aaron

[jedi-elf.livejournal.com]

Death Note would have to be one of the best mangas ever :D

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Wrters Tale is genius.

Genius Loci was also good, but for me suffers for a poor and rushed ending.

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

I just got The Writers Tale and I'm loving how it was put together. What could have been a very dry read is in fact brilliant and full of what could have beens and surprises. It won't stop the RTD haters hating, but it definitely gives me some insight.
My other big series of books for this year has been Sergei Lukyanenko's 'Watch' fantasy tetralogy. I started reading them a year or so ago but re-read them all this year in preparation for the release of the final book (for now) which I am currently devouring alongside The Writers Tale. I really find it very hard to find fault with them.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

It won't stop the RTD haters hating

Like they're gonna read it. lol

fantasy tetralogy

Are there elves?

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

Like they're gonna read it. lol
I can fully predict some will read it just to fuel their fannish bile. Much like some people watch TV or Films just to be offended.
Are there elves?
No Elves. In essence the Watch books are about the balance of power between the light and the dark and the respective groups that observe and maintain that balance. I can't quite think of anything like them. At a stretch it could be a bit like Torchwood, but mythology and magic based, and a lot less technology. Except there are two groups to follow. The forces of the light who monitor and police the Dark Others, and vice versa. The tone is definitely torchwoodesque but with a distinct eastern block feel and in my minds eye everything is in muted tones. Contemporary Russia providing an excellent and alien backdrop for some confrontations. The form of the books is also intriguing, with each volume containing a number of separate cases, novellas almost, that carry a story arc to a logical conclusion. In some cases these will then carry threads over to the next book. The cover notes keep describing the author as a Russian J K Rowling. The only sense that I agree with this in is that they are incredibly hard to put down and have resulted in nights where I should have put down the book and got some sleep but instead decided to read more.
If you fancy a recommendation for 2009, check out one of the books and see if it tickles your fancy. The starting point is Night Watch, and the author is Sergei Lukyanenko. I feel it my duty to enthuse about them in the hope someone else picks them up and reads them. And really, SF/Fantasy books are not something I enthuse about often.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I can fully predict some will read it just to fuel their fannish bile.

Nah - that can be accomplished by trading snippets of the text with one another (context and accuracy unnecessary).

Oh, wait a minute, I know the books you're talking about - wasn't Night Watch made into a (pretty unusual and cool) movie?

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. A film that did wander off quite considerably from the beaten path of the book but was quite awesome and did, in some versions at least, contain the best implementation of subtitles I've ever seen in a foreign language film. Take something normally dull and 2 dimensional and make it very very cool.
Whilst I enjoyed the films the books are still to my mind infinitely cooler, although without the film I doubt an English translation of the books would have ever seen print. Even then the last book was hampered by being printed with a chapter missing. Thankfully this has now been rectified and that is the book I am now going to wander back to, having nothing to challenge me today other than untangling the duvet and maybe making a cup of tea.