Tag: lists

June wrap-up

1st July 2011 / / 0 Comments

June was an exceptionally lean month in the life of this blog (and things are likely to remain that way until I’m in a position to devote more time to reading and blogging), but here’s what there was.

Book of the Month

I’ve been reading quite a lot of short stories lately (in preparation for ShortStoryVille), and my pick of the month is a collection of those: Sarah Salway’s Leading the Dance.

Reviews

Features

May wrap-up

31st May 2011 / / 0 Comments

As spring comes to an end, it’s time to look back over the month of May…

Book of the Month

It’s tough to narrow it down to one title this month, so I’m going to declare it a tie between two. Naomi Wood’s The Godless Boys was a very fine debut, while Conrad Williams’ Loss of Separation was another great read from a favourite author. (And this was nearly a three-way tie, because Chris Beckett’s The Holy Machine is not far behind them at all.)

Reviews

Features

Fiction Uncovered: the list

20th May 2011 / / 6 Comments

The Fiction Uncovered list has been announced. The idea behind this initiative was to highlight books from the past year by eight established UK writers whose work may not have had all the exposure it deserves. You’ll be seeing displays of these titles in bookshops; let’s look at what the judges have chosen…

Lindsay Clarke, The Water Theatre (Alma Books)

Clarke is the only author of the eight whose name was completely unknown to me, though I understand now that he has written seven novels. I’m not sure that the synopsis of The Water Theatre (a war-reporter searches for two old friends, without knowing that they harbour a secret) instinctively appeals to me, but I am pleased to have been alerted to an unfamiliar writer.

Robert Edric, The London Satyr (Doubleday)

Edric is one of two writers on the list whom I’ve already read, albeit a different book in this case. I had mixed feelings about Salvage, but would certainly read the author again. The London Satyr sounds rather different in setting and subject matter, as it examines the dark underbelly of Victorian society in the 1890s.

Catherine Hall, The Proof of Love (Portobello)

A mathematician spends a summer working as a farmhand in the Lake District, and gets tangled up in the lives of the locals. I have The Proof of Love to review next for the Fiction Uncovered site; now I know that it’s on the list, my anticipation has only increased.

Sarah Moss, Night Waking (Granta)

I’ve heard interesting things about Moss’s previous novel, Cold Earth. This new novel, which interweaves the stories of a mother and her young family on a Hebridean island in the present day, and a midwife attempting to address infant mortality on the island in the 19th century, alaso sounds intriguing.

Chris Paling, Nimrod’s Shadow (Portobello)

I experienced an ‘Aha!’ moment when Paling’s name was read out, when I realised I’d seen his work being recommended before, but had forgotten about it. At the time, I was convinced it was Scott Pack I’d read enthusing about Paling’s books, but actually I was thinking of this piece by Stuart Evers. Anyway, Nimrod’s Shadow — the tale of an Edwardian murder and its investigation in the present day by an office assistant who finds clues in paintings from the time — has gone staright on my to-read list.

Tim Pears, Disputed Land (Heinemann)

Pears is one of those writers of whose name I’ve been aware without really knowing anything about his work. Again, Disputed Land is not a novel that grabs me just from its synopsis (a man looks back on the childhood Christmas when his grandparents summoned their family to discuss their inheritance), but I’ll look into Pears’ bibliography.

Ray Robinson, Forgetting Zoë (Heinemann)

The only book on the Fiction Uncovered list that I’ve already read; one of my very favourite reads of last year; and a novel that absolutely deserves its place here. Emma Donoghue’s Room has received plenty of attention, and Forgetting Zoë (which likewise deals with the long-term captivity of a child, though otherwise the two books are quite different) rather less so; but I think Robinson’s novel is the better of the two, and I hope more people will now take the time to discover it.

Jake Wallis Simons, The English German Girl (Polygon/Birlinn)

In the 1930s, a girl is sent from Berlin to England on the Kindertransport, but loses touch with her family when war comes. I’d already heard of this novel, but was undecided about reading it; its appearance on this list might just spur me on to do so.

***

Overall impressions of the list? I’ve no reason to doubt the quality of the books (and if Forgetting Zoë is the standard, then that’s great); but, structurally, it feels something of a missed opportunity. For one thing, Fiction Uncovered was open to prose novels, story collections, and graphic novels; but there are no books from the latter two categories on the final list {*}. 75% of the authors are male, all are white, and all (as far I’m aware) English. There are no books published as genre fiction on the list. Half the titles do come from independent publishers, though, which is good to see.

Whatever the shape of the list, though, I do wish the best to all the authors featured, and hope they gain more attention as a result of Fiction Uncovered.

[*Since posting this originally, I have heard from Fiction Uncovered that relatively few story collections were submitted by publishers, and no graphic novels at all.]

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four… and Five…

13th May 2011 / / 6 Comments

This is a little questionnaire with which Simon from Stuck in a Book came up last week, to provide a little snapshot of one’s reading. So let’s see what my books are…

1) The book I’m currently reading

Cornelius Medvei, Caroline (2011)

The story of a man who becomes smitten with a donkey. I’m not yet far enough in to be able to form a useful opinion, but it has started off well. I’ll be reviewing this for Fiction Uncovered in due course.

2) The last book I finished

Leo Benedictus, The Afterparty (2011)

A tale of tragic happenings at a film star’s birthday celebration, wrapped in the email correspondence  between a fictional author and his prospective agent, discussing the very book in one’s hands. This is probably the most self-referential book I’ve ever read, and to be honest I wasn’t sure whether I’d get along with it. The Afterparty turned out to be a delight, though: nicely written, and a smart commentary on celebrity culture and the gap between public perception and private reality.

3) The next book I want to read

Katie Ward, Girl Reading (2011)

So I’m reading a lot of 2011 work at the moment. Girl Reading is structured as a series of novellas on the painting portraits of girls and women reading. It seems an unusual subject for a debut novel, and I am intrigued.

4) The last book I bought


Colin Greenland, Seasons of Plenty (1995)

Strictly speaking, the last book I bought was The Afterparty, but I want to list five different books here; so we’ll go for this — which was on the book-swap shelf at work, instead. I loved Take Back Plenty when I read it last year; now I’ll get a chance to see what the sequel is like.

5) The last book I was given


Ian McDonald, River of Gods (2004)

This was a birthday present, which I was very grateful to receive. My introduction to McDonald, The Dervish House, was one of the very best books I read last year. River of Gods comes with a very high reputation, and I look forward to seeing if it lives up to that; I am confident that it will.

***

There we go. That was quite interesting to put together, and actually it’s not a bad encapsulation of the kinds of books I most like to read. Speaking of which, I have at least two books to be getting on with, and plenty more to follow after that…

The bestselling books in the week I was born

10th January 2011 / / 1 Comment

There’s a page here on BibliOZ.com that lets you look up the New York Times bestselling books in the week you were born. I tried it out, and this is what I got:

Fiction bestsellers

1. James A. Michener, The Covenant
2. Ken Follett, The Key to Rebecca
3. Stephen King, Firestarter
4. E.L. Doctorow, Loon Lake
5. Cynthia Freeman, Come Pour the Wine
6. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, The Fifth Horseman
7. Sidney Sheldon, Rage of Angels
8. Lawrence Sanders, The Tenth Commandment
9. Irving Wallace, The Second Lady
10. Helen MacInnes, The Hidden Target
11. Jean M. Auel, The Clan of the Cave Bear
12. Danielle Steel, The Ring
13. Robert Elegant, Manchu
14. J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales
15. Irving Stone, The Origin

Non-Fiction bestsellers

1. Carl Sagan, Cosmos
2. Douglas R. Casey, Crisis Investing
3. Woody Allen, Side Effects
4. Wayne Dyer, The Sky’s the Limit
5. Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey, Craig Claiborne’s Gourmet Diet
6. William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness
7. Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to the Birds
8. Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess, Ingrid Bergman: My Story
9. Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook
10. Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great
11. Studs Terkel, American Dreams
12. Milton & Rose Friedman, Free to Choose
13. Shelley Winters, Shelley: Also Known as Shirley
14. Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons
15. Robert G. Allem, Nothing Down

There are many books there that I don’t know, which I suppose is only to be expected, given that these bestseller lists are American and I’m not. But I do have a few thoughts:

  • Even though it’s the fiction list that intrinsically interests me most, having Carl Sagan’s Cosmos at the top of the non-fiction list is pretty cool.
  • I have never heard of James Michener or The Covenant, but I looked it up; and, as it’s over 1,200 pages long in paperback, it is unlikely to go on my TBR pile any time soon.
  • I didn’t realise Ken Follett had been writing for so long.
  • I’ve only actually heard of four of these books (Cosmos, Firestarter, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Unfinished Tales), but not read any of them. so that preculdes me from being able to say anything interesting about them. Ho-hum.

Notable books: January 2011

5th January 2011 / / 0 Comments

Towards the end of last year, I decided to look through some publishers’ catalogues, and make a note of any 2011 books that sounded interesting. I found more than I could have any hope of reading, so I’ve decided to introduce a regular feature where I highlight some books from the coming month that have caught my eye. Here, then, are my notable books for January:

Paul Bailey, Chapman’s Odyssey

A novel viewed from a hospital bed, where the protagonist lies as the voices of characters from literature and his life speak to him.

Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall

A collection of six stories on the theme of memory. Sounds nicely wide-ranging.

Faïza Guène, Bar Balto

I’ve not read Guène before, but I understand that her work has been both acclaimed and successful internationally. This, her third novel, is a murder mystery told in multiple voices.

Ida Hattemer-Higgins, The History of History

This looks to have an intriguing combination of elements: an amnesiac woman trying to regain her memories, the history of Berlin, and a vein of fantastication.

Simon Lelic, The Facility

Last year’s Rupture was a fine debut, and this sounds an interesting follow-up, as Lelic writes of a near future in which laws have been tightened in the name of security.

Cornelius Medvei, Caroline: A Mystery

Of all the 2011 books I’ve learnt about so far, this may be the one that sounds the most fun — a story of a man who falls for a donkey.

Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

Technically a 2010 book, but, as its UK publication date was so close to the end of the year (30th December), and I didn’t actually realise, I’m going to include it here. It’s the story of a young Ethiopian-American retracing his parents’ journey, with (so I gather) a mixing of stories that sounds particularly interesting.

Sunjeev Sahota, Ours Are the Streets

I’ve heard good things about this debut, which examines what drives a young man from Sheffield to become a suicide bomber.

Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy

Apparently it draws on Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, which I’ve not read; but the idea of this tale about a woman travelling to New York to investigate the life of her friend’s missing cousin still intrigues me.

David Vann, Caribou Island

One of the most anticipated books of the whole year, as far as I’m concerned, never mind January. Legend of a Suicide was one of the best books I read in 2009, enough to make anything else that Vann writes essential reading. Simple as that.

Favourite books of 2010

28th December 2010 / / 7 Comments

As the year draws to a close, I’ve been thinking over all the books I’ve read and picking out my favourites. And here they are, my favourite dozen from the year (all published for the first time in 2010, or older books receiving their first UK publication this year) — in alphabetical order of author surname:

Robert Jackson Bennett, Mr Shivers

I didn’t know what to expect when I read this book, and it turned out to be a simply stunning debut. Bennett’s fusion of fantasy, horror and historical fiction is a smart book that uses its fantasy to comment on the period.

Shane Jones, Light Boxes

This tale of a balloon-maker’s war on February is constructed from story-fragments that add up to a marvellously strange whole. It works on about three different levels at once, but resists being pinned down to a single interpretation. A beautiful little jewel of a book.

Simon Lelic, Rupture

A perceptive and well-written novel chronicling the investigation into a school shooting committed by an apparently mild-mannered teacher.

Emily Mackie, And This Is True

A sharp study of a boy who has grown uncomfortably close to his father, and the pressures exerted on him when the life he has known begins to change.

Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

A near-future Istanbul is the setting for this sprawling-yet-elegant tale of six interlocking lives, and the wider structures and systems of which they are a part.

Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

A vast boarding-school comedy with added theoretical physics. Murray’s novel has huge ambitions, and achieves them brilliantly. It reads like a book half its length, and its sheer range is astonishing.

Véronique Olmi, Beside the Sea

A very strong launch title for Peirene Press, this is an intense study of a mother taking her two children to the seaside — an apparently ordinary surface that hides much darker depths.

Adam Roberts, New Model Army

This tale of armies run of democratic principles is both a cutting examination of warfare, and a novel that left me with a feeling that I genuinely cannot describe.

Ray Robinson, Forgetting Zoë

The very powerful story of a girl’s abduction and captivity. Exquisite prose, acute characterisation, and masterfully-controlled narrative flow.

Amy Sackville, The Still Point

Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and deservedly so. An intense and beautifully written novel of Arctic exploration and the parallels between two couples living a century apart.

Nikesh Shukla, Coconut Unlimited

One of the funniest books I read all year, this tale of three Asian boys at an otherwise all-white public school is also an acute portrait of adolescence and the ways in which people try to build identities for themselves.

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

A novel that ably switches states between time-travel metafiction and examination of its protagonist’s relationship with his father, interrogating and blurring genre boundaries as it goes.

And three great reads from previous years…

Liz Jensen, The Rapture (2009)

The brilliant tale of the mental chess-game between a psychotherapist and her patient who can apparently predict disasters — which proves equally adept at being a thriller in its later stages.

Christopher Priest, The Affirmation (1981)

A man begins to write a fictionalised autobiography… and an account by a version of himself in a different reality vies for space in the same book — which, if either, is ‘real’? Nothing is certain in this novel by the reliably excellent Priest.

Marcel Theroux, Far North (2009)

A beautiful story of survival and endurance set in a near-future Siberia.

Books of 2011

23rd November 2010 / / 5 Comments

Anyone who has been to university may remember the feeling of looking at all the societies during Freshers’ Week and going, that looks fun, and so does that, and so does that… until you end up joining more than you reasonably have time for.

Well, I thought I’d have a look through some publishers’ catalogues for next year, and make a list of books that sounded interesting. You can guess where this is going.

So, let us be clear that the following is not a list of books I intend to read in 2011, though I certainly will read some of them. Think of it more as a kind of ‘advance recommended reading’ list, with the caveat that I don’t know what any of them are like. But that one looks interesting, and so does that one, and so does that…

***

Alice Albinia, Leela’s Book
Paul Bailey, Chapman’s Odyssey
Elia Barceló, The Goldsmith’s Secret
Kevin Barry, City of Bohane
Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Company Man
David Bezmozgis, The Free World
Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care
Frances Bingham, The Principle of Camouflage
Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie
Sharon Blackie, The Bee Dancer
Stefan Merrill Block, The Storm at the Door
Chaz Brenchley, House of Doors
Chaz Brenchley, Rotten Row
Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination
Keith Brooke (ed.), The Sub-genres of Science Fiction
Ellen Bryson, The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno
John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning
John Butler, The Tenderloin
Lucy Caldwell, The Meeting Point
Warwick Cairns, In Praise of Savagery
George Makana Clark, The Raw Man
Ben Constable, Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa
Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall
Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf
Enruque de Hériz, The Manual of Darkness
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
Will Elliott, Pilgrims
Stuart Evers, Ten Stories About Smoking
Tom Fletcher, The Thing on the Shore
Essie Fox, The Somnambulist
Claudie Gallay, The Breakers
Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory
Rachel Genn, The Cure
Andrew Sean Greer, The Path of Minor Planets
Jon Courtenay Grimwood, The Fallen Blade
Faïza Guène, Bar Balto
Benjamin Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
Sophie Hardach, The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages
Dermot Healy, Long Time, No See
Ida Hattemer-Higgins, The History of History
Alois Hotschnig, Maybe This Time
Lars Iyer, Spurious
Richard T. Kelly, The Possessions of Doctor Forrest
M.D. Lachlan, Fenrir
Simon Lelic, The Faciility
James Lovegrove, Diversifications
Michael Marshall, The Breakers
Cornelius Medvei, Caroline
Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air
China Miéville, Embassytown
Angela Morgan Cutler, The Letter
Bradford Morrow, The Diviner’s Tale
Adam Nevill, The Beast
Cees Nooteboom, Foxes in the Night and Other Stories
Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Helen Oyeyemi, Mr Fox
Matthias Politycki, Next World Novella
Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides
Christopher Priest, The Islanders
Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb
Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
Adam Roberts, By Light Alone
Geoff Ryman, Paradise Tales
Sunjeev Sahota, Ours are the Streets
Nat Segnit, Pub Walks in Underhill Country
Jacques Strauss, The Dubious Salvation of Jack V.
Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy
Jan van Mersbergen, Tomorrow Pamplona
David Vann, Caribou Island
Katie Ward, Girl Reading
David Whitehouse, Bed
Conrad Williams, Loss of Separation
Luke Williams, The Echo Chamber
Naomi Wood, The Godless Boys
Alexi Zentner, Touch

What are you looking forward to next year? What have I missed?

Twenty fantasy books from the last 20 years

20th January 2010 / / 4 Comments

Yesterday I came across this post at Torque Control, which is about trying to put together a list of twenty ‘essential’ fantasy books from the previous twenty years. Although the post dates from 2008, I’ve been inspired to put together a list of my own (the TC discussion sprouted from a similar one about essential science fiction, but I’ve stuck to fantasy as I’m more widely read in that genre).

First of all, I should make it clear what this list is and is not. It’s not a list of ‘essential’ books, ‘recommended reading’, nor even a list of favourites. Some of these books are not, strictly speaking, fantasy — but I’ve included them anyway. Some of these books, I haven’t even read. These are simply books that I’m glad to have read, would like to read, or would like to re-read (because I think I’d appreciate them more second time around).

Ursula Le Guin, Tehanu (1990)
John Grant, The World (1992)
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993)
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995; tr. 1997)
Christopher Priest, The Prestige (1995)
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights (1995)
Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1997)
Mary Gentle, Ash (1999)
China Miéville, Perdido Street Station (2000)
Robert Holdstock, Celtika (2001)
Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen (2001)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind (2001; tr. 2004)
Graham Joyce, The Facts of Life (2002)
Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen, 2nd ed. (2002)
K.J. Bishop, The Etched City (2003)
Allen Ashley, Somnambulists (2004)
Margo Lanagan, Black Juice (2004)
Tim Lebbon, Dusk (2006)
Ramsey Campbell, The Grin of the Dark (2007)
Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching (2009)

Comments are, of course, welcome — and what would be on your list?

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