2009 Review

As it’s the last day of December, the time seems right for a look back at what I read in 2009.

I’ll start this post with a quick look at my December reading list. I started the month by racing through the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse box-set then read William Boyd’s The New Confessions (large) and then The Quincunx (even larger) and then I zoomed through 13 Treasures and 13 Curses in the last couple of days. At £1 per book, that makes a £10 donation to Book Aid this month.

Whilst on the subject of Book Aid, I just want to mention again how pleased I am that Jodie from book gazing set up The Year of Readers. The self-imposed “fine” of £1 a book this year has meant that I have given £125 to Book Aid International in 2009. Or, looking at it another way, this year I effectively bought 62.5 books to send overseas which gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I will definitely continue to support them next year but have not quite decided if it’ll be in the same structured way. I’ll post more about that in the new year.

And on to the almost obligatory (in blogging terms) 2009 review! Of the 121 books I read this year, the genre breakdown* was:

General Fiction: 57
Fantasy/Science-Fiction: 55
Graphic Novels: 5 (of which 2 were fiction and 3 non-fiction)
Non-fiction: 4

Blimey – that’s a lot of SF&F! In a nicely even split, 61 of those books were written by female authors and 59 by males. I also read books by 48 authors who were new (to me) in 2009.

Out of those 121 books, 51 were bought as new by me this year with an additional 16 new books coming in as gifts or prizes. 18 were purchased second hand (from either green metropolis or local book stalls) and 28 were borrowed from the library and two more from a friend.

That means that just a handful of the books I read this year came from the 2008 brought forward TBR pile… Gulp! I am also pretty confident that the actual number of books I personally bought this year was far higher than the 69 I read which is shocking! Perhaps I need to impose a stuck-in-a-book style “Project 24” buying cap in 2010…

It’s time for my worst stat of all… I only read one book that I have previously read. Yes. One. This utterly flies in the face of my constant assurances that I need to keep so many books in our home because I will re-read them. It strikes me that perhaps I should not have been quite so honest in this post in case my husband reads about it so let’s leave it as our dirty little secret for now!

All in all, 2009 was a pretty good reading year for me - although I did read a lower number of books than I expected to. I’ve just checked my 2008 total and that was a final count of 133 books so perhaps it was just in line with the norm!

Next year I would like to read more non-fiction (perhaps one a month?), catch up on un-read classics, delve into some poetry and try to push the boundaries of my reading comfort zone a bit further. Taking into account my Christmas book loot, and the additional 15 books I “accidentally” bought on Boxing Day, I’m definitely set up for an enjoyable first few months.

* Slightly arbitrary but it works for me!

Plainsong - Kent Haruf

Picture this. Me. It's yesterday morning. I've just finished back-to-back reading the Age of Unreason series by Greg Keyes which had itself followed on from Karen Miller's Mage duology. I need a Change of Pace. A break from SFF. I also need to make inroads on the TBRs as all the above don't count as they were library books. I picked up Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Hrm. Not sure. Could be a bit worthy. What the hell - Scot Pack liked it when he read it recently so I'll give it a bash. Can't hurt... Stay up in bed reading it until finished. Blimey. That was good.

I just can not believe that I let it sit untouched on my TBR pile for five months. This is a serious contender for May's Bookling POTM and it'll have to be a pretty special book that knocks it off the top spot.

In Plainsong, "The story weaves together several characters: pregnant 17-year-old Victoria Roubideaux; the McPherons, an elderly pair of cattle rancher brothers who take Victoria in; Tom Guthrie with his two young sons 'Ike and Bobby, who've been abandoned by their depressed mother; and a high school teacher who knows them all, Maggie Jones."

An aside: Interesting that I used speech marks for the quote I lifted, as Haruf's own approach to punctuation disregards their use entirely. This is not as irritating as it sounds.

Plainsong is a deceptively simple, spare telling of these characters day to day lives and their intersection with each other in the rural community of Holt. Nothing unexpected happens, you can see what's going to happen to the characters and the plot itself almost non-existent. But it's all so beautifully written. All of the people, and the situations they find themselves in, are so very real and it was heartbreaking to watch them do or say things that you know will bring them unnecessary pain. This is such a beautifully written book and I shall be making people read it. Possibly while I watch.

Kent Haruf is an absolute master storyteller and I see that he revisits some of these characters in Eventide so I'll have to tell Mr B to add "just one more book" to the birthday demands list. Or perhaps two if I also include Tie That Binds...

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

Bowing to popular demand, (Well, Nicole B posted a comment yesterday) here are my thoughts on The Book Thief now that I’ve had time to think about it some more.

The Book Thief is set in WW2 Germany and it’s the story of Liesel, a nine-year old girl who has been sent to live with foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, on Himmel Street in Molching. It’s the story of Max Vandenburg , a Jew hiding in their cellar. It’s also the story of Rudy Steiner (who would like Leisel to kiss him) and of Ilsa Hermann, the mayor’s wife.

*-* SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION *-*

This novel is narrated by death. It's a small story, about: a girl; an accordionist; some fanatical Germans; a Jewish fist fighter; and quite a lot of thievery.

*-* ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW*-*

Death will visit the book thief three times.

So… A book about Nazi Germany that’s narrated by Death. Tasteless? Just a gimmick? Not at all. It gives the story an impartial observer who can give a broader context to WW2 than could be expected from a girl growing up in a suburb. It also enables the expectation to be set for the reader from the first chapter that this is not going to be a comfortable read - as Death says in the first chapter, “I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling amongst the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise. They have punctured hearts… It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors – an expert at being left behind.”

Given when (and where) it’s set, it is only to be expected that this book is heartbreaking in places and it most certainly is. However, it’s not all doom and gloom and The Book Thief doesn’t easily fit into the “worthy WW2 read that will make you think” category. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments in the book and the main characters are certainly engaging. Leisel’s friend (and sometime partner in crime) Rudy Steiner is a delight and I defy anyone not to grin when reading the account of him painting himself black with coal and running around the local track in an effort to emulate his hero, Jesse James.

The originality of the layout gives The Book Thief a freshness that’s one of the book’s major assets. Max writes Liesel a book at one point, using material he has on hand, and the whitewashed text of Mein Kampf leaking through into the handwritten story of a man living in hiding gives his creation a poignancy that it could not have achieved in another way.

Having said that it’s not a worthy WW2 read , I would love to see it being used in schools and read alongside Anne Frank as a companion piece. I am sure GCSEs have moved on since “my day” but I am sure that a book like this would have stimulated debate in History, RE or English Lit as a pseudo-source material text. Yes, it’s a great read and kept me turning the pages (probably too quickly at the end) but it’s also a very thought provoking book .

The Book Thief has been marketed at both the teenage and adult market (depending where in the world you live) however this is a book that could, and should, be read by all ages. It manages to successfully combine being a page turner with providing plenty of food for thought and I can’t offer higher praise than that.

*-*SOMETHING ELSE YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW *-*

Have tissues to hand.

Matter - Iain M Banks

So. I was going to write a review on Matter...

Well. I wrote it, played with it, rephrased bits of it and then went out into the Interweb to see what other people thought and if I agreed.

Chris the Book Swede thought this.
SF Signal thought this.
io9 thought this and published an interview with Iain M Banks here.

After all those other words (which I pretty much agreed with), I felt a bit redundant so decided not post my review after all. I might video his reading/Q&A session that I have a ticket for on Thursday and in which case I shall edit that and link to it here. Depends how vigilant the Waterstones staff are!