A current poster in the Berri-UQAM metro station; note that some of the people waiting are, in fact, reading paper documents. (No, I don't own an IPod, Kindle, or any other kind of electronic reading device. I can, however, read the writing on the wall, even if I'm resistant…)
Inspired by my friend Ed at Blork Blog, here's the list of books I read in 2009. Usually I only keep track of them on my Book List page, but looking through Ed's list and his analysis of it, I thought it was fascinating, and wondered if I might be able to encourage some of you readers to post your own lists, too. Mine is way top-heavy on male authors too (39 out of 43) and on fiction (35 of 43). About half were originally written in languages other than English.
I no longer try to read a "balanced" list each year, however that might be defined, and as time seems an ever-decreasing commodity, I'm more and more deliberate about what I do read. I see an emphasis on Canadian fiction here (the six books in Robertson Davies' trilogies, and expect that to continue; just yesterday I was talking to a relatively new friend who knows a lot about contemporary Canadian literature, and she made some enticing suggestions that I know will enlarge my knowledge about the country and its people. Classics still figure pretty heavily in my book choices: obviously I've been doing the Joseph Conrad thing, six down and a number of books still to go, and in the earlier part of the year I was working on the Greek tragedy project. (Reading plays artificially bloats the total count, too; some of those were pretty short.)
What's ahead? Well, I just started a book about the Beatles and the social history of their times that J. read and liked this fall, Jonathan Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love;" and I'll probably read Caroline Alexander's "The War That Killed Achilles" pretty soon, along with some fiction – maybe a book about Newfoundland that my friend recommended, or one of the world lit novels I've been looking forward to, like Kumar's "Sea of Poppies," Pamuk's "The Museum of Innocence," Andrei Bely's "Petersburg," or one of Carlos Fuentes big novels. It may take all year to finish Conrad's oeuvre, and I think this may be the year to tackle Borges. And, at a minimum, I need to read a couple of things in French. Any ideas? Pica, I see, is knitting while listening to audio books – another good plan for those of us who're time-challenged.
What's not reflected here, at all, is the huge amount I now read online, which certainly constitutes the majority of my reading, by a long shot. In addition to the informal and formal essays, poems, and micropoetry on so many fine blogs and networking sites, I read a great deal of poetry and short fiction because of my involvement with qarrtsiluni and Read Write Poem. It's a telling fact that I begin 2010 without a single magazine subscription – probably the first year since pre-literacy that that's been true for me.
What about you?
2009 Book List
Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad
Grandfather Stories, Stephen Hopkins Adams*
A Mixture of Frailties, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, III)
Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, II)
Tempest Tossed, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, I)
The Pragmatist and his Free Spirit, Susan Chan Egan and Chih-p'ing Chou*
World of Wonders, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, III)
The Manticore, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, II)
An Outcast of the Islands, Joseph Conrad
Thirty-Two films About Glenn Gould (screenplay), Francois Girard and Don McKellar
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, I)
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Joseph Conrad
Almayer's Folly, Joseph Conrad
The Arrow of Gold, Joseph Conrad
Une Vie, Guy de Maupassant
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Fresco, Luljeta Lleshanaku
Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare
Complete Poems, C.P. Cavafy (Daniel Mendelsohn, translator)
Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks*
Other Colors, Orhan Pamuk*
The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas
Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone, Sophocles
The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton*
Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 1, Werner Jaeger*
The Demons, Heimito von Doderer
Philoctetes, Sophocles
Elektra, Sophocles
Iphegenia in Taurus, Elektra, Hippolytus, Euripides
En Relisant les Evangiles, Arnaud Desjardins*
Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, John Ellis*
*non-fiction