These are the novels or non-fiction I read as a break from work-related reading in 2015. Not as many as previous years, which was mainly due to a slow start.
- Daniel Coyle and Tyler Hamilton, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs (non fiction)
- Fred d’Aguilar, The Longest Memory
- Rebecca Hunt, Mr Chartwell
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, One Night in Winter
- Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
- Mark Kurlansky, Birdseye (non-fiction)
- Peter Temple, Truth (set in Melbourne)
- Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara, Rabbit-Proof Fence
- Arundati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story (non-fiction)
- Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain
- Christopher Lee, Lord of Misrule (autobiography)
- Honoré Balzac, The Marriage Contract
- Michael Connolly, The Black Echo
- James Hamilton-Patterson, Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds (non-fiction)
- Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist
- Eric Rasmussen, The Shakespeare Thefts (non-fiction)
- Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic (non-fiction)
- Edmund White, Caracole
- Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt
- Rob Kitchin, Stumped
- William Golding, Pincher Martin
- Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (memoir)
- Ian McEwan, The Children Act
- Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III (play)
- Hervé Guibert, À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie
- Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and other plays
- A.L. Kennedy, Day
- William Boyd, Restless
- Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk
- Ali Smith, The Accidental
- Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
- James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
- Kate Atkinson, Life after Life
- Rebecca Hunt, Everland
- Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
- Val McDermid, The Skeleton Road
- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice (again – in advance of the film, which I didn’t like)
- Annie Proulx, Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other Stories
- Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
- John Williams, Stoner
- Helen Bryan, The Sisterhood
- Vladimir Nabakov, Bend Sinister
- J. Robert Lennon, Familiar
- Greg Baxter, Munich Airport
- Chibundu Onuzo, The Spider King’s Daughter
- Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin
- Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone
- A.S. Byatt, The Matisse Stories
- Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
- Michael Moorcock, Mother London
- Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary
- Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
- Valerie Martin, Property
- Andrea Levy, Small Island
- Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
- Ellis Peters, A Morbid Taste for Bones
- Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony
- Serge Livrozet, De la prison à la révolte: Essai-témoinage (memoir)
- Tom Sperlinger, Romeo and Juliet in Palestine: Teaching Under Occupation (non-fiction)
- Benoît Peeters, Derrida (biography)
- Emile Zola, The Earth
I particularly liked H is for Hawk, Everland, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Familiar and Bel Canto, and thought the Derrida biography was terrific. I have another pile to take on holiday in a few days…
These lists tend to generate some questions or suggestions – while I am grateful for both, I say a bit about this here.
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Very happy that you read The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus is one of my favorite new writers. Given your interest in Shakespeare, you might very well like Emily St. John Mandel’s recent release Station Eleven – about a Shakesperean acting company in a post-apocalyptic world. Other titles to consider:
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (I’m still plodding through this one as of right now).
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi (this is a new release from this year about an American Southwest in a post-apocalyptic drought scenario a la J.G. Ballard and a fight between states for water resources).
Sorry if this is too long.
Thanks for the suggestions. I found Munif’s Cities of Salt hard work, after an initial good start. As I’ve said before I don’t tend to recall much about novels after I’ve finished them.
Munif writing is influenced by an oral Arabic tradition that doesn’t always appeal to western readers. John Updike famous dismissed his quintet as “insufficiently westernized.” In case if you’re interested: http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/can-arabic-literature-ever-be-fully-understood-in-english
PS: what were your thoughts on Munif’s Cities of Salt? Just noticed you read that too.
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