Books I’ve Read This Year

Now that the Best of Year book list season is upon us, it seems a good moment to compile my own – a snapshot of my reading over the year. The trouble is that three books – the usual number in such round-ups – isn’t nearly enough. I started off with twenty, thinking I’d probably be able to get the list down to ten – only to find that other books kept popping up, insisting on being included. Even if I restricted my selection to one book per author – difficult, when my preferred reading habit with an author I like is to read everything by them (kind of like chain-smoking, only with books), it still came out as close on fifty titles. That’s not including the books I’ve started reading and found I couldn’t finish, through boredom or irritation (several of those); nor those skimmed in libraries.

Nor does it include all the books I’ve read for review this year, although a couple of those I liked are included. It isn’t a list of favourite books – though some are books I’m re-reading (my particular way of re-cycling). Some of the books I’ve chosen are very good indeed; some are not-so-good, but have been included because they were published this year, or have won prizes, or otherwise been talked-about. I don’t offer this list as prescriptive, although there are books on it I would highly recommend. It’s just a list of some of the things I’ve been reading and thinking about in the past twelve months, and necessarily reflects my obsessions during this time. These, it appears, have been with three main topics: Astronomy, the Eighteenth Century, and the First World War. That these are related to the subjects of my last and current novels is hardly surprising.

What is surprising is how few books of poetry there are (I must try harder next year), and how few plays (only King Lear, and Jerusalem – and those because I saw both plays performed). There isn’t much in the way of non-fiction, either – although non-fiction is probably what I spend most of my time reading, for research purposes. With this in mind, I was tempted to add a wonderful book I’m reading at the moment called Munitions of War, about the BSA and Daimler companies during the First World War, but thought it might be of limited appeal to anyone without an interest in guns and ammunition. A couple of biographies of the aviatrix Amy Johnson – one, by Midge Gillies, entitled Queen of the Air – were rejected for similar reasons, but only because I speed-read them in the library.

So here (in no particular order) are the books that – for me – have made up 2010.

FREEDOM by Jonathan Frantzen
Already a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic, this depiction of a dysfunctional family wears its symbolism lightly, and is full of darkly funny moments (though I can’t agree with its central character’s views on cats).
SOLAR by Ian McEwan
More symbolism in McEwan’s latest, whose main character – fat, junk-food addicted and unfortunate in his choice of wives – is also a scientist specializing in climate change. Not the author’s best, but it still should have been on the Man Booker short-list.
THE PREGNANT WIDOW by Martin Amis
Sex was invented in 1970, according to Amis’s protagonist, Keith Nearing – the trouble is, nothing since then has quite matched up. Amis at his best is still a brilliant writer, but I didn’t enjoy this as much as earlier novels like Success – or indeed, his 1970 debut, The Rachel Papers.
THE FINKLER QUESTION by Howard Jacobsen
This Man Booker winner has some funny moments (as one might expect from the author of Kalooki Nights, The Mighty Waltzer et al) but in the end one’s left feeling slightly short-changed. It’s hard not to think this was A Lifetime Achievement Award…
THE BETRAYAL by Helen Dunmore
Now this is good. A sequel to her extraordinary account of the Siege of Leningrad, The Siege, Dunmore’s depiction of life during the last days of Stalin’s Russia is utterly compelling from start to finish. A young doctor, Andrei, finds himself confronted with a terrible dilemma, when the gravely ill son of a senior Party official is transferred into his care… Beautifully written, too.
WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel
Last year’s Man Booker winner is another riveting read: England under the rule of Thomas Cromwell is recreated with powerful immediacy, as well as a good deal of sympathy for its central figure.
THE CHILDREN’S BOOK by A S Byatt
I had to review this – twice. It’s a bit a ‘curate’s egg’ of a book. Parts of it are excellent (the research into early twentieth century Arts and Crafts especially) but the ending is rushed, and some of its enormous cast of Bohemian writers, artists and revolutionaries don’t really come to life.
A GATE AT THE STAIRS by Lorrie Moore
An interesting ‘take’ on the way terrorism has affected our lives in recent years. A naïve young woman becomes infatuated with an attractive fellow student – only to find he isn’t what he seems…
BROOKLYN by Colm Toibin
Another book I was asked to review (what a pleasure when it’s actually something good). A young woman from a small Irish town during the 1950s goes to New York, and begins to make a life there – but finds her heart is still very much at home. Again, beautifully written. Shades of Henry James’s Washington Square, I thought…
THE GREAT SILENCE by Juliet Nicolson
A fascinating account of the period immediately following the First World War, when the first ‘two minute silence’ was held.
FOR KING AND COUNTRY edited by Brian MacArthur
Splendidly comprehensive anthology of poems, journal entries and first-hand accounts of the Great War and its aftermath.
THE AGE OF WONDER by Richard Holmes
Holmes’s magisterial work chronicles scientific developments in the 18th and early 19th centuries through the lives of some of the period’s greatest figures: astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline are just two of these.
FULL MERIDIAN OF GLORY by Paul Murdin
The race to establish the Meridian in France in the early 19th century is described with a wealth of fascinating detail, focusing around the life of the astronomer François Arago.
CECILIA by Fanny Burney
This story of an innocent heiress menaced by fortune-hunters still has the power to thrill over two centuries after it was first published. Burney was much admired by Jane Austen, the title of whose novel, Pride & Prejudice, is a quotation from Cecilia.
THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER
By Rebecca West
A soldier returns from the Western Front, having lost his memory. Waiting for him are the three women who love him – only one of whom he remembers… Mesmerizing.
TESTAMENT OF YOUTH by Vera Brittain
Powerful first-hand account of life as V.A.D. on the Western Front, which compares with Graves’s Goodbye to All That and Sassoon’s Journals for sheer immediacy.
WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James
A shy young heiress falls in love with a man who is only interested in her for her money. I re-read this immediately after visiting New York for the first time, and was amazed at how much more the story came to life.
A GUN FOR SALE by Graham Greene
Brilliant, cold-hearted thriller written just before Brighton Rock, but anticipating many of its stylistic elements. Noir at its most classy.
BLASTING AND BOMBARDIERING by Wyndham Lewis
Re-reading this account of the author’s experiences as a gunner on the Western Front was to be reminded what a dazzling writer Lewis is: funny, satirical and fearlessly honest.
THE CHILDREN by Edith Wharton
This brilliantly observed tale, about a middle-aged man who falls in love with a fifteen year-old girl, exhibits the same understated language and breath-taking narrative twists as The Age of Innocence and its successors.
PEACE by Richard Bausch
Another novel I was happy to review – I thought it was amazing. Set in Italy during the closing days of the Second World War, it is narrated by a young soldier, drawn against his will into a dangerously compromising situation.
BETWEEN THE ACTS by Virginia Woolf
Published in 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War, this immaculately crafted short novel centring around a country house pageant foreshadows the coming cataclysm.
VILE BODIES by Evelyn Waugh
London during the era of the Bright Young Things is captured with Waugh’s acidulous wit and stylistic flair.
THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
Another masterpiece: surpassing even Dickens at his bleakest, in its portrayal of London as a ‘city of dreadful night’, swarming with would-be terrorists and double agents, for whom everything has its price.
THE HISTORY OF MR POLLY by H G Wells
I first read this at school; now, re-reading it aeons later, I’ve found it as funny and touching as I remember, and as full of sharp social observation.
OSCAR’S BOOKS by Thomas Wright
An unusual – and wholly absorbing – account of Oscar Wilde’s life, as seen through his treasured library, painstakingly recreated by the author.
BLUESTOCKINGS by Jane Robinson
A very readable – and often very moving – history of the struggle for women’s education, from Girton College onwards.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING by Edmund Crispin
A lost Shakespearean manuscript and a disastrous school Speech Day are beguilingly entwined in this classic murder mystery, featuring Professor of Language and Literature (and part-time detective) Gervase Fen.
THE GREEN HAT by Michael Arlen
A mysterious femme fatal is at the centre of this 1920s classic, which sparked a vogue for the eponymous titfer.
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS by William Boyd
The South London badlands are the setting for this only slightly implausible thriller, about a young scientist on the run from an Evil Corporation intent on suppressing potentially damaging pharmaceutical research.
FAR FROM HUMDRUM: A LAWYER’S LIFE by William Charles Crocker
An entertaining memoir by a top London solicitor of the 1930s, describing some of his famous cases. Crime – and criminals – were so much more interesting in those days…
VERY GOOD JEEVES by P G Wodehouse
The incomparable Wodehouse is at his best in this 1930 collection – but when isn’t he at his best?
THÉRÈSE RAQUIN by Emile Zola
This dark little tale of adultery and betrayal bears comparison with Madame Bovary as one of the masterpieces of realist fiction. It made me think of a Manet painting – all those pale faces looming out of dark shadows…
SEPARATE BEDS by Elizabeth Buchan
The damaging effects of the economic downturn on a single London family is the starting-point for this present-day version of The Way We Live Now, written with the sharp eye for social nuance and the subtle humour so typical of this writer.
THE PRIME MINISTER by Anthony Trollope
I have to confess I read all six ‘Palliser’ novels at a sitting this year. This is one of the most gripping – if only for its portrayal of the strains of a ‘political’ marriage.
A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau
Bittersweet love story, set in the South of France, and told from three different perspectives – a Cubist painting of a novel.
MY FATHER’S TEARS AND OTHER STORIES by John Updike
A fine last collection by the great and late-lamented Updike, who – unlike his contemporaries, Bellow and Roth – never seems to have mislaid his sense of humour.
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE by Nancy Mitford
Mitford is in a class of her own. LIACC, and its predecessor, The Pursuit of Love, show her at her elegant best. A delight.
POLICE AT THE FUNERAL by Margery Allingham
Such a great title. Allingham’s intellectual ’tec, Albert Campion, has to be one of my favourites. Those horn-rimmed spectacles, concealing an ice-cool analytical brain…
KING LEAR by William Shakespeare
Not the first, but undoubtedly the greatest, ‘dark tower’ in literature.
POEMS by Christopher Smart
I read this for ‘My Cat Jeoffry’… then came across all the other creatures celebrated in Smart’s visionary verse.
POOR KIT SMART by Christopher Devlin
A friend gave me this book – the first full-length biography of the poet, published in the 1960s, by Jesuit priest and scholar Devlin.
DARK MATTER: POEMS OF SPACE edited by Maurice Riordan and Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Lovely mix of contemporary and classic poems about stars, planets, and all things between Heaven and Earth…
POEMS by William Blake
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand…’
HISTORIC LONDON; AN EXPLORER’S COMPANION by Stephen Inwood
An engrossing and wonderfully detailed book, which enables one to ‘walk’ through London as it was, in the eighteenth, nineteenth (and earlier) centuries.
THE HERSCHEL PARTNERSHIP by Michael Hoskin
Definitive study of the remarkable scientific and emotional partnership between astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline – Holmes’s Age of Wonder owes a debt to Hoskin, as do I (c f my forthcoming novel Variable Stars).
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD by Agatha Christie
She really is good. And this fiendishly clever little tale is one of her best…
JERUSALEM by Jez Butterworth
A brilliant play about what it is to be English – and about the English Language. Mark Rylance’s performance as ‘Rooster’ Byron was one of the best things I’ve seen in the theatre.