Bibliography, 2009

Here are my books of the year by month

January - R.Musil, the Man without Qualities
February - J. Heller, Catch 22
March - B. Bryson, Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
April - J. Lees-Milne, Another Self
May - A. Trollope, Phineas Redux
June - P.M. Kendall, The Universal Spider
July - J. Barnes, Cross Channel
August - A. Burroughs, Dry
September - G. Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain
October - B. Bryson, A Walk in the woods
November - G. Greene, A sort of life
December - G. Greene, The ministry of Fear

I'd stand by these, though Barnes feels lightweight set against the others. In fact, the list as a whole is a little lightweight. This is driven in part by lack of time and volume (in 2009, I read a mere 111 books, compared to 2008's record 148), but also by the moratorium on new books, which has meant that quality has tailed off a little

Anyway, last year I split this into a fiction and non - fiction category, and I'll do the same here, but I'm struck by the imbalance of genre - six are what I term Cultural (mostly memoir plus a couple of travel), while five are fiction and only a single historical work.

Of the fiction, it's a straight fight between Musil and Heller's masterworks. Both astonishing, both overlong and both entirely unwritable by anyone else. Catch 22 has an enduring resonance in popular culture, which makes it compelling, but - despite its length, the Man without Qualities is simply astonishing and resurfaces in my mind on a frequent basis. I have a feeling it will repay rereading again and again.

In non-fiction terms, the prize is harder, though I think that's a reflection of the lack of stellar performer, rather than jostling for position. With regret, I leave at the last, Kendall's masterly account of Louis XI, excellent though it it, I'd be voting for the subject not the book. Instead, I'd look to reread Tremlett's Ghosts of Spain, which made real for me the complexity and tensions inherent in modern Spain in a way only a few pieces of work have done for any country.