Bibliography, 2016

A reminder:

Jan: G. Maxwell, The ring of bright water (1960)

Feb: H. Trevor-Roper, The hermit of Peking (1976)
Mar: R. George, The Big Necessity (2008)
Apr: R. Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929)
May: T. Capote, In cold blood  (1966)
Jun: E. David, An omelette and a glass of wine (1984)
Jul: P.K. Dick, Flow my tears the policeman said  (1974)
Aug: P. Frankopan, The Silk Roads (2015)
Sept: E.L. Carr, A month in the country (1980)
Oct: P. Beatty, The Sellout (2016)
Nov: H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze  (2016)
Dec: J. Rayner, The Ten (food) commandments (2016) 

It's been a terrible year. I've read 75 books, ten below my previous low. Two thirds were fiction, and half of that was SF/Fantasy - some of which were outstanding, but too much was comfort reading. I blame the doctorate.

Fiction has taken the brunt of this and, despite the weight of reading, mustered only three BOTMs,m one of which was pretty much by default. I read a lot better works of fiction than Flow my tears... this year, just nothing in July. So sparse are the fiction pickings that, for the first time, I feared my monthly ranking is inadequate to the task. I briefly wondered if the best novel I read this year was Kathryn Stockard's The Help, which lost to Maxwell in January. However, that isn't the case. And although comparisons between the two options I have here are invidious - it is hard to line up a novella about English villages and churches with a freewheeling satire on US race relations in LA - I would plump for Carr on England, above other contenders. It's a gem.

Non-fiction should be harder. The list above is packed with quality, and is probably one of the most consistent of any year, both the famous and the obscure. I'd give honourable mentions and strong recommendations about Maxwell, Trevor-Roper, Capote and Jeffreys, but my favourite was Graves. It was probably always going to be.

Bibliography, December 2016

BOTM: J.Rayner, The ten (food) commandments

W. Cooper, Scenes from provincial life (1950)

P.K. Dick, Maze of death* (1970)

P. Suskind, Perfume (1985)
S.S. Tepper, Singer from the Sea (2000)

L. Thomas, The Lives of a cell (1974)

Nothing really to see here. I was underwhelmed by Perfume and this was the worst Tepper I have read. Both were good, I simply expected more. As with Lewis Thomas' collection of essays, which are really designed to be digested slowly; they felt disjointed when read in a couple of sittings. Rayner, similarly short, was punchier, more coherent and a good read. He's also been reading the same books as me. (I note that despite him also being struck by Michael Pollan's assertion that KFC ran an ad campaign with the slogan Women's Liberation [from cooking], I can''t find it. Though this is close). Worth a read. It was a perfect Christmas present.