52 books (well, almost)
I made an attempt to read a book a week in 2011. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to keep that average up – I often read a few books in a week when on holiday. Alas, I didn’t quite make it, and only managed 46 books up till now (2 hours before midnight doesn’t leave me much time to squeeze the last 6 in!).
I don’t think I’ll bother trying again next year, as occasionally it did seem almost like work, but it was mostly fun to try at least. As as well as doing the actual reading I had to find quite a lot of new stuff to read, so on the upside I probably read some things I wouldn’t have usually considered and found some new authors to read.
There were a few books I went into with low expectations of and ended up enjoying a lot:
J.G. Ballard - High-Rise
I hadn’t read any Ballard before, and the synopsis of this book make it sound miserable and bleak, nobody mentioned it’s actually pretty funny. It’s definitely black humour though… hopefully it’s not just me that found it amusing anyway!
Nicholas Carr - The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember
The title alone put me off, as I figured it would be some sensationalist nonsense, but actually there was a lot of fascinating stuff about language, learning, and the brain in there, and in the end I was mostly convinced by the book’s central argument too.
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
I really didn’t enjoy 1984, and these two books are often referenced together, so I was expecting more of the same but was pleasantly surprised. It’s supposed to be a dystopian novel, but it’s a bit more ambiguous than that. It’s also very silly to a reader in 2011 in a lot of ways, but it was an entertaining and interesting read at least.
There were some books that I started not really knowing what to expect and ended up enjoying:
Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
I just picked this up on a whim in a 3-for-2 deal as the premise sounded interesting, and India always makes for an interesting setting. I can’t really articulate what exactly it was that I liked about it, but it was a nice surprise anyway.
Christopher McDougall - Born to Run
Someone at work lent this to me after I picked up some Vibram FiveFingers. I’m not really a running enthusiast, but the author’s love of running was infectious, and the book’s subject matter was actually pretty fascinating too.
Francis Spufford - Red Plenty
A work of fiction about the soviet planned economy? This could have been really boring, but as it was – woven together from short stories – made for an engaging as well as informative read. Often at the end of a chapter I’d even be a little disappointed that I’d be leaving a character that I’d like to read more about.
There were some books I probably should have picked up years ago considering my taste but hadn’t got around to:
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat’s Cradle
I’ve read some Vonnegut before, but didn’t exactly enjoy it. Slaughterhouse 5 really wasn’t my cup of tea, and The Sirens of Titan was interesting but a bit odd, but Cat’s Cradle I thought was great. Perhaps it took this long for me to get his sense of humour, but whatever, I loved it.
William Gibson - Zero History
I’ve not ready any Gibson before, and this was the first book of his I picked up. Zero History might well be set now-ish, but the way it illustrates just how sci-fi our current technology and lifestyle can be at times made for a fascinating read. I also went out and picked up the whole of the Bridge trilogy and read that afterwards, which was also great.
Finally, there were also a few books I really didn’t like at all:
First there was Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated - one of the few books I’ve ever given up on. I wanted to like it, especially as the parts I read from Alex’s perspective were actually quite amusing, but the style of the rest of the book was intolerable… and it didn’t help that I wasn’t interested in the story either.
And secondly, Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things. After my good experience with The White Tiger I was interested in finding more novels set in India. Unfortunately, style again put me off in a big way. I did finish this, but ultimately the experience was very irritating with the strained metaphors (often to the point of non-sequitur) and callbacks to confusing similes that were introduced 50 pages previously and such like.
Oh, and I tried reading a few things by Thoreau. While I might have appreciated the arguments he put forth, I found the writing so overwrought and each point made so laboured that it was a real struggle even to make it to the end of each essay, so I can’t really say I enjoyed that at all either.
Perhaps my taste just isn’t very sophisticated when it comes to literature considering in all cases it was the style of prose that ruined them for me!
Finally, there were a few books that stood out as being pretty incredible for various reasons.
Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief
I don’t imagine this would be the easiest book to read if you didn’t know where some of its ideas come from (luckily I seem to share similar tastes to the author), but the ingenuity and imagination that went into this book is incredible. The way it’s written mean a lot of story specific invented terminology is just thrown in, and you’re left to catch up (even to the point there is a Wikipedia page for it) but that didn’t bother me much once I got past the first few terms - it’s kind of like the process of reading A Clockwork Orange, it might be a bit confusing at first, but you work it out soon enough.
Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
The breadth and depth of things covered in this book is amazing, it’s mostly a history of 20th century classical music but also touches on culture and society. I think I read somewhere it took 10 years of research and writing to produce this book and I can believe it! As well as the amount of information packed in the book, Ross is a brilliant music writer - he has that special trick of making the music he writes about sound so appealing, so even when he’s talking about pieces I know I don’t like already I end up wanting to go back and listen again.
I’ll stop now, I didn’t really intend to write something of this length, and at this rate I’ll be writing mini reviews for everything I read!
