At the end of June I posted a list of the novels I’d read so far in 2012. Here are those I read between July and today the end of the year- not all are novels, as there are a few books about cycling too, though given events this year some of these surely count as fiction… I have a few that I expect I’ll read over the holidays too.
It was a year when I rediscovered Sebastian Faulks and Ian McEwan; discovered a host of new (for me) writers including several from Africa, Kamila Shamsie and Roberto Bolaño; and grudgingly realised that Umberto Eco just isn’t going to write anything as good as Foucault’s Pendulum or The Name of the Rose again.
- David Millar, Racing through the Dark (true story)
- E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops (short story)
- Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo
- Teju Cole, Open City
- Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love
- Rob Kitchin, The White Gallows
- H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
- H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
- Amos Oz, To Know a Woman
- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick – for perhaps the fourth time
- Sebastian Faulks, The Fool’s Alphabet
- Roberto Bolaño, Amulet
- Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
- Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (non-fiction)
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
- Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
- Iain Sinclair, Lights out for the Territory: 9 Excursions into the Secret History of London (non-fiction)
- Daniel Coyle, Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force (also known as Lance Armstrong’s War)
- Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike
- Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
- Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
- Philip Roth, The Human Stain
- Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder
- Michael Cunningham, The Hours
- Graham Swift, Last Orders
- Thomas Meyer, Beowulf – open access from Punctum books
- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
- Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis
- Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland – I was surprised how different the film was from this, as large parts of the story were completely changed.
- Ian McEwan, Solar
- Imre Kertész, Faultless
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Matt Rendell, The Death of Marco Pantani
- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
- John Fowles, A Maggot
- Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
- Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- Nanni Balestrini, Sandokan
- Joshua Ferris, Then we Came to the End
- Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
- W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
- Max Apple, The Oranging of America
- Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
- Lars Iyer, Spurious
- Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
- Sebastian Faulks, On Green Dolphin Street
- Michael McCormick, Across the Pond
- Kate Walbert, The Gardens of Kyoto
- Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus
- Saul Bellow, Seize the Day
- John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
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Stuart – I’m astounded. How do you find the time to read so many novels? (I haven’t read more than a handful in years…) Or listen to so many new albums? That’s really amazing. (But it does make me wonder what I’m doing wrong. Of course, having a 2-year-old doesn’t help my case…) Thanks for sharing; it gives me great vicarious pleasure. Best, Adrian
Thanks Adrian. I made a new year’s resolution a few years back to read more novels, as I found I was either reading academic works that were not central to my research in non-work time, or wasting time with tv. So I always have a novel on the go and try to read before sleep and sometimes before getting up. I always have novels with me when I travel, and I travel a lot for work. My wife works in Nigeria at the moment, so that also means I am travelling a lot, and as we don’t have children we have less going on in non-work time. Plus I read novels fast, and rarely remember much about them after they are over.
You might want to look at Abdul Rehman Munif’s writings (Arabic translated to English) if you are interested in literature and geopolitics. His Cities of Salt trilogy is a very important investigation of the relationship between western imperialism and local sheikhs during the oil boom of the early 20th century. Cities of Salt, The Trench and Variations on Night and Day are the three works in the trilogy.
Thanks Chathan – may take a look.
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