2009 Reading Review

(Cross-posted from my legendarily unread book blog)

2009 was the Year of Reading Dangerously with no library borrowing and no new purchases (well, one) so that I could get through the backlog of material on my bookshop. In the end I read a new record of 107 books, which meant that my bookshelf went from a double layer:



To a single layer:



Which is quite good, but 2 weeks into the new year and already it’s back up to this;



Best books: The Alexandria Quartet, The Go-Between, The Human Factor, Fingersmith, Framley Parsonage, The Restraint of Beasts, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Poisonwood Bible

Worst book: Either Alice's Masque or The Private Patient

Longest book:Not sure...Framley Parsonage, maybe?

Shortest book: Nehemiah

Non-fiction books: 17

Australian authors: 13

Female authors: 14

The complete list

Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Churchill and Australia - Graham Freudenberg
Joan Makes History - Kate Grenville
Inside the Whale and other essays - George Orwell
The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Child in Time - Ian McEwan
Silas Marner - George Eliot
The Human Factor - Graham Greene
Mr Darwin’s Shooter - Roger McDonald
Intimacy - Hanif Kureishi
The Map That Changed the World - Simon Winchester
The History Boys - Alan Bennett
Bob Wilson’s Ultimate Book of Peculiar Sporting Lingo - Bob Wilson
If This Is A Man - Primo Levi
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Kowloon Tong - Paul Theroux
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
London; A Pilgrimage - Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold
Gould’s Book of Fish - Richard Flanagan
Bone; eyes of the storm - Jeff Smith
The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley
The Viceroy of Ouidah - Bruce Chatwin
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
The Pianoplayers - Anthony Burgess
The Private Patient - P.D. James
Bound For Glory - Woody Guthrie
Justine - Lawrence Durrell
Balthazar - Lawrence Durrell
Mountolive - Lawrence Durrell
Clea - Lawrence Durrell
The Meaning of Liff - Douglas Adams & John Lloyd
Bone: The Dragonslayer - Jeff Smith
Brave New World Revisited - Aldous Huxley
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
The Subterranean Railway - Christian Wolmar
Sabbath’s Theater - Phillip Roth
1 Samuel
Leviathan - John Birmingham
2 Samuel
The Eye - Vladimir Nabokov
The Biographer’s Tale - A.S. Byatt
Seats In All Parts - Leslie Halliwell
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer
Bone: Rockjaw, master of the eastern border - Jeff Smith
The Europeans - Henry James
Bloody Margaret: three political fantasies - Mark Lawson
Shakespeare Wrote For Money - Nick Hornby
Absolute Friends - John le Carre
1 Kings
2 Kings
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Humphrey Clinker - Tobias Smollett
Framley Parsonage - Anthony Trollope
The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks
Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
Wake Up - Tim Pears
All The Conspirators - Christopher Isherwood
According to Queeney - Beryl Bainbridge
Stone’s Fall - Iain Pears
Mary - Vladimir Nabokov
The Lieutenant - Kate Grenville
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills
The Third Man & The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene
King Rat - China Mieville
1 Chronicles
Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins - Rupert Everett
Bone; Old Man’s Cave - Jeff Smith
2 Chronicles
Shakespeare - Bill Bryson
Ezra
Bone; ghost circles - Jeff Smith
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
Nehemiah
Esther
The Rip - Robert Drewe
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
The Riders - Tim Winton
The Millstone - Margaret Drabble
Alice’s Masque - Lindsay Clarke
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Lush Life - Richard Price
Doctor Sally - P.G. Wodehouse
Illywhacker - Peter Carey
The Devil’s Pool - George Sand
Shepperton Babylon - Matthew Sweet
The Light of Day - Graham Swift
Jonathan Wild - Henry Fielding
My Life as a Fake - Peter Carey
The Service of Clouds - Delia Falconer
Bone; treasure hunters - Jeff Smith
Job
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
Bone; crown of thorns - Jeff Smith
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
The Constant Gardener - John Le Carre
In The Winter Dark - Tim Winton
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
A Big Life - Susan Johnson
The Comedians - Graham Greene
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Talking It Over - Julian Barnes