This year was a bit up and quite a lot down in terms of reading satisfaction. I seem to be getting (a) more impatient and less tolerant, or more optimistically (b) more discerning and sophisticated in what I expect from a book. There are just so many books out there, and when an average-length novel takes me five or six evenings to read I am increasingly offended by books that don’t seem to earn their time. There are a limited number of evenings and afternoons in my life to be spent reading, and I am sick of finishing a book only to realise that I shan’t remember it for more than a few more hours, and the time I devoted to it might have been better spent on another, more deserving book.
I felt that many books I read this year, especially novels, were bloated, presumptive, over-earnest, tediously posturing, lazily derivative, badly unedited or simply mediocre. On the other hand, as I worked on writing two novels myself this year, I have to give immense kudos to anyone who finishes and publishes one. I just felt so frustrated and bored by some books, and resolve in the future to piff any recalcitrant or pompous books if they’re not earning my love by page 20. It’s a sad thing to be disappointed by a book — and, of course, a very subjective disappointment. Mostly I would think, ‘Will my life be diminished if I put it down right now and never go back?’ and when I realised it wouldn’t, down would go the book.
But there were some books which set me on fire and made my heart race with sheer pleasure and send me to bed early every night to snatch up the pages and dive back in. They were all characterised by my sense that this was something I hadn’t read before, and that the author enjoyed writing it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of a book. Here are my top reads of 2011 (details of each one in the list that follows):
A Time of Gifts / Patrick Leigh Fermor
Indelible Ink / Fiona McGregor
Year of Wonders / Geraldine Brooks
Ghost Story / Peter Straub
Music and Silence / Rose Tremain
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union / Michael Chabon
The Sisters Brothers / Patrick DeWitt
You’ll be Sorry when I’m Dead / Marieke Hardy
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay / Michael Chabon
And the total list of wot I read:
Beauty of the Husband / Anne Carson
Anne Carson, a classicist as well as poet, wrote ‘The Autobiography of Red’ which is one of the most exquisite long poems/novels I know. This is beautiful also but didn’t stop my heart quite so much.
Beautiful Thing / Sonia Faleiro
An extraordinary non-fiction portrait of a bargirl in Mumbai, and the lives of poor women in the slums there. I got to interview Sonia at Sydney Writers Festival and it was a total pleasure.
A Time of Gifts / Patrick Leigh Fermor
I adore Paddy Leigh Fermor, and he is a long-standing hero to my family. My father met him and had lunch with him in the late 60s. This is the first part of the most incredible travel story from the 1930s when Fermor, who died this year at a great old age, walked from London to Constantinople.
Mani / Patrick Leigh Fermor
A book about the Mani area in southern Greece, full of tales, history, arcana and the spirit of a vanished world.
Pleasures of a Tangled Life / Jan Morris
Morris is another family hero(ine), and this is a collection of short essays about things she likes.
Palimpsest / Catherine M. Valente
Speculative fiction, very good but a bit overworked.
Roumeli / Patrick Leigh Fermor
A companion to ‘Mani’, similar, entrancing.
Reflections on a Marine Venus / Lawrence Durrell
Fermor’s friend, and a man my father also met (I might nearly have been Durrell’s granddaughter if my mother hadn’t been at lunch as well when his daughter made a pass at my dad). Memoir of his time on Rhodes after WWII.
The Witch of Lagg / Ann Pilling
Loved her earlier books in the series when I was a kid. Schlocky but well done children’s horror story.
Spirit of Place / Lawrence Durrell
Durrell’s letters and short collected works. Bit annoying, to be honest. These try-hard young men!
Bitter Lemons / Lawrence Durrell
This time, about his years on Cyprus in the 50s and political strife. My ignorance of Cypriot politics made it a little hard to follow.
In Tearing Haste / Patrick Leigh Fermor
Letters between dear Paddy and the Duchess of Devonshire, very arch and British, entertaining.
Meanjin 1 2011
Now under editorship of my friend and former editor at A2, Sally Heath.
Affinity / Sarah Waters
I adore Waters and I liked this but it wasn’t quite as wonderful as ‘Fingersmith’ or as scary as ‘The Little Stranger’.
Dark Roots / Cate Kennedy
I read this on the beach in WA after having shared a small writers festival and house with darling Cate. Impossible to believe the sweet, warm woman can write these tense, shadowed, brilliant stories: but no doubting her intelligence as well as generosity. One of Australia’s treasures.
Indelible Ink / Fiona McGregor
Read, also, on that beach, just before hanging out with Fiona at Perth Writers Festival. The Sydney ‘The Slap’ as it’s sometimes described, I loved it entirely, this portrait of a modern family, and was so fucking happy it won at the Age Books of the Year awards later.
Lambs of London / Peter Ackroyd
A slight novel by the promiscuous and prodigious Ackroyd, about Charles Lamb and his sister in the 19th century and a Shakespeare hoax.
Reading by Moonlight / Brenda Walker
Exquisite, pensive, moving and erudite discussion of reading and illness. Brenda is a quiet woman but a wonderful thinker about books and meaning.
Me and Jeshua / Eleanor Spence
Re-read this treasure from my childhood, about Jesus as a child, a surprisingly unsentimental and evocative portrait, beautifully written and full of the atmosphere of warm Levantine nights.
Harbour / John Ajvide Lindqvist
I love his stuff (author of ‘Let the Right One In’), just a great mix of violent horror and dark humour. Great for when you just want a book that’ll take you somewhere and make you flinch.
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Universe / Douglas Adams
The classic. No words. The manifesto of my adolescence.
Your Voice in my Head / Emma Forrest
A scintillating, wildly written, astute and wrenching memoir by a young woman about her mental distress, a love affair, and her relationship with her therapist. I got to do a wonderful panel with Emma at Sydney Writers Festival and hang out with her: she’s great.
The White Earth / Andrew McGahan
I’ve had a crush on Andrew McGahan ever since ‘Praise’. Grand, gothic, melodramatic and haunted novel about rural Australia in the Mabo era. Kudos for just going for it without embarrassment.
Cloudstreet / Tim Winton
Re-read it for the first time in twenty years, still astounding. I wept at the end. It shimmers and shines.
Bereft / Chris Womersley
Less said about this the better. Sorry.
My Brother Jack / George Johnston
Couldn’t finish it, alas. I just didn’t give a shit.
Love Letter from a Stray Moon / Jay Griffiths
My total hero and role model, her first novel, a short and incandescent fiction about Frieda Kahlo, love and sorrow.
I Hate Martin Amis Et Al / Peter Barry
Read it for a review for ABR, unsettling, clever, challenging, brutal, rather unpleasant, sardonic novel.
Traitor / Stephen Daisley
I met Stephen at various festivals this year, he’s a sweet man. This is a delicate and sorrowful novel set in and following WWI and with a surprising friendship.
The Sooterkin / Tom Gilling
Recommended to me by its editor, a lovely change from the grim and earnest male Australian writing: a clever and original little tale set in early Hobart, with a woman who gives birth to a seal.
Presence of the Past / Penelope Lively
Lively, another of my role models as a writer, in rather serious mode about British landscape.
Museum People / Thompson
A delight of a book I picked up in an op shop, portraits of all the staff at the Smithsonian Museum in the 1970s. It made me want to go and volunteer at the Melbourne Museum. Fascinating.
Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds / Gregory Day
A lovely warm novel set on the Great Ocean Road coast by the delightful Greg. He writes various novels set in his fictional town and brings characters to life with sweetness and truth.
The White Garden / Carmel Bird
Strange, original, rather abstruse novel, dark and suggestive. Very 80s, but that’s not a bad thing.
Year of Wonders / Geraldine Brooks
Fabulous historical fiction, in crystalline prose, set in the 17th century during the Plague. Loved every word.
The Dress Lodger / Barbara Holman
Gothic historical fiction, not bad but not memorable.
Red Shift / Alan Garner
Stunning, stunning bit of 1970s time fantasy/mythos. Set the bar for everything else in the genre.
The Sea Kingdoms / Alaistair Moffatt
History of the Celtic kingdoms from Bronze Age to present. Part of my perpetual ‘Time Team’/British archaeology mania.
The Invention of Dr Cake / Andrew Motion
Odd, pleasant little fable about a dying old man who may or may not resemble a surviving John Keats.
Ghost Story / Peter Straub
A book like a nice rich casserole, full of inventiveness, good horror, twisting plots, and chewy scenes. A classic of horror.
A Leopard’s Kiss / Maria Fazio
Small and slight prose and poems based on the life of De Lampedusa, writer of the classic ‘The Leopard’.
Music and Silence / Rose Tremain
Beautiful, beautiful novel, rich and plangent, sweet and sad, a great work of historical imagination and humanity.
Breath / Tim Winton
Re-read this for a Wheeler Centre bookclub gig, loved it the first time I read it, admired it the second time, and suddenly, in talking about it onstage, decided it was rather flawed. I don’t quite know why, but somehow I liked it less once I began to think about it. A book perhaps best absorbed and felt.
Melbourne / Sophie Cunningham
Read it for an Age review, a really nice portrait of urban Melbourne, especially those bits habituated by people like me and Sophie (*cough*artsytypes*cough*)
The Woman in Black / Susan Hill
Classic terrifying ghost story: actually, the 1980s tv version was even scarier, until I re-watched it recently and wasn’t as scared as I hoped I would be. But Hill does a great deal of good stuff in only a few pages. Incredible foreboding…
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union / Michael Chabon
Fabulous, wonderful, energetic, original novel that helped salvage my opinion of fiction this year. A putative Jewish homeland in Alaska, not Palestine; and a noir crime story with Yiddish slang. Supposedly to be made into a film by Coen Bros – that would be perfection. Just fucking great.
Queen of the Wits: Life of Letitia Pilkington / Norma Clarke
My mum lent me this, a great (if rather lengthy) portrait of a now-forgotten legend of 18th century Irish and London letters, a woman who lived by her wits and her pen, despite perfidious male jealousy etc.
The Family Law / Ben Law
Ben’s delightful, fucking funny and surprisingly heartbreaking memoir about his family. I needed this book like a sherbet to wash down more glutinous fare, and it worked a treat. Just great stuff. And a smashingly nice bloke.
Change of Climate / Hilary Mantel
I have now read all of Mantel’s books, and my awe of her never grows any less. This is from her middle-class 1980s phase, probably my least favourite of her moods, but still, a perceptive and mordant family drama.
The Monsoon Bride / Michelle Aung Thin
I launched Michelle’s book at Readings this year, and as I said at the time, considering how grumpy I was with reading at that moment, I was really glad to enjoy her debut novel so much. Set in Burma in the 1930s, ‘steamy’ is a word that has to be applied to it, but also ‘elegant’.
Case Studies / Kate Atkinson
A friend recommended this to fix my reading malaise; good fun, shockingly dark in places, ultimately a bit silly but a good holiday book featuring one detective chasing four connected crimes.
Fair Cop / Christine Nixon
I read this for a panel on memoir I did with Christine at Brisbane Writers Festival, and enjoyed it more than I expected: a feisty, admirable and self-possessed woman. We need more of them. She was very nice company on the panel and gave me a hug after.
Street Fight in Naples / Peter Robb
A bit disappointing, much devoted to 17th century Naples, and kind of all over the place. Interesting stuff though, and made me want to go back to Napuli very much.
Meanjin 2 2011
Griffith Review: Such is Life
A Walk in the Woods / Bill Bryson
Ah, Bryson, he makes it look so easy. A nice ramble of a book about a ramble.
Danse Macabre / Stephen King
As I’m writing horror, I read this about the arts and wherefores of horror writing; very interesting, anecdotal, informed and perceptive stuff. I also highly recommend his book on writing in general.
The True Deceiver / Tove Jansson
As a life-long devotee of the Moomins, I am exploring Jansson’s other work (‘The Summer Book’ and ‘The Winter Book’ are both gorgeous) and this adult novel is quite dark, serious, strange but compelling.
Haphazard House / Mary Wesley
Apart from her adult novels she also dabbled too briefly in childrens’ fiction, and this is a wonderful, original time-slip take on ‘Last Year in Marienbad’-style fantasy of a peculiar old house in the country, featuring a complicated family. She never talks down to children and this book weaves a spell.
The Sisters Brothers / Patrick DeWitt
Shortlisted for Booker Prize, like a Coen Bros western in prose, just great fun, dramatic satisfaction, fantastic voice and a horse that made me actually cry.
Meanjin 3 2011
Among the Islands / Tim Flannery
Tim’s new memoir about his days exploring for mammals in the Pacific islands, full of interesting biology and funny stories.
Over Sea, Under Stone / Susan Cooper
I finally gave myself permission to just indulge in re-reading this series, one of my all-time favourites, a splendid, original, powerful mythic fantasy work for young adults. I was so happy that I loved it as much now as I did when I was 14. Stunning.
The Dark is Rising / Susan Cooper
The Greenwitch / Susan Cooper
The Grey King / Susan Cooper
Silver On the Tree / Susan Cooper
All That I Am / Anna Funder
I enjoyed the second half of this more than the slightly awkward first part, and emerged moved and informed about German anti-Nazi activists just before the war.
Travels with a Medieval Queen / Sileti
Following a 12th century Sicilian queen journeying from Germany to her kingdom. Nice travel stuff and a lot about the complicated history of that period in Italy.
You’ll be Sorry when I’m Dead / Marieke Hardy
Marieke’s bravura memoir essays, funny as hell, sometimes sad, very brave, and perfect for reading on a couch in one big savoury gulp.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay / Michael Chabon
The book that got me back in love with reading after a rough few months, totally energetic, imaginative, generous and both funny and terribly sad. Big and bolshy.
One Man’s Meat / EB White
Gorgeous columns from the 1940s by this master of style, lovely warm tales from his life on a farm in Maine and reflections on life and humanity. I learned a lot about column-writing from this, and got dozens of quotes to pop (credited!) into my own work. A delight to read slowly over many afternoons with a cup of tea.
The Secret History / Donna Tartt
Oh my god how I loved this book when it came out. It felt it was written especially for me, a classics student who wore men’s 1930s suits at a sandstone uni, was completely isolated and melancholy, and liked horror and ghost stories. Re-reading it this year was an exercise in complete delight and satisfaction, and envy of her confidence. Come on Donna, write another book already.
The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald
First read it as a uni student; began re-reading this year it as I keep hearing how it’s so many people’s favourite book in the world. Actually I found it mannered and a bit tedious, and put it aside half-way through (and it’s not even a long book). Oh well.
Griffith Review: Fiction
The Final Solution / Michael Chabon
A slight and wistful tale set in England with an elderly Sherlock Holmes. Quite different to his other big novels. Okay but not as wonderful as I hoped.
A Model World / Michael Chabon
Short stories/novellas, very carefully written, Richard-Ford-esque, beautifully turned but again, not as ebullient as Kavalier & Clay.
Gentlemen of the Road / Michael Chabon
His books seemed to get thinner and slighter as I went along! This is a historical picaresque, enjoyable but forgettable.
The Last Thread / Michael Sala
Memoir I read for a review for ABR, very nicely written, frustratingly self-conscious.
The Little Friend / Donna Tartt
Quite different to ‘The Secret History’, a big sprawling Southern Gothic novel about a young girl in a sinister world. I liked it very much, and more and more as I read, though I felt I could sense Tartt’s confidence creaking at times and there were (I can’t believe I’m saying this) too many adjectives. Still, I was sorry when it ended.
The Mortgaged Heart / Carson McCullers
The library didn’t have her classics so I tried this, short stories and bits and pieces from her beginnings, nice if self-conscious little stories with memorable imagery and suggestions of great things to come. I’d like to read her more famous works now.
As I Lay Dying / William Faulkner
Another famous classic that defeated me, just days before I saw Marieke on television extolling its virtues. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.
Man in the Dark / Paul Auster
People keep telling me how great Auster is, and I keep trying him, and wondering what the fuss is about. Did I even finish this? I can’t remember.
Constantinople / ?
Some book about the fall of Constantinople (a perennial fascination for me), which sadly I ran out of time to finish and don’t remember the author’s name. It was interesting, though.
American Gods / Neil Gaiman
I bought this in the quest for sure-fire, bona fide good reads, and enjoyed it and its mixture of horror, mythos and picaresque, but began to get a bit tired towards the end (it’s a big book). I’ve only read a couple of Gaimans, funny since I write a bit in that vein myself.
To the Ends of the Land / David Grossman
Read this in a burst of interest in Middle East politics, and after an inspiring review in NYRB, and it was good, it was okay, following two friends going on a hike in Israel and talking about life and love and their history, but then one night I realised my level of interest was almost zero and there were another 200 pages to go, so that was that.
White Teeth / Zadie Smith
Managed to finish the year by finishing a book! I loved, loved ‘On Beauty’ and this was good too, though that first chapter wouldn’t have got a million-pound advance from me. Uneven, bit saggy and sloppy, but steadied by her fabulous ventriloquist rendering of dialect and voice, and her diligent summoning of her characters and all their perversities. I did enjoy it.
To sum up: read 29 works of non-fiction, and 57 of fiction, total of 86 books, though some of them I didn’t actually finish. That’s one book every 4.2 days! Well, some of them were short and some of them were long. Let’s see how many of them I even remember in a year’s time.
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