Reading List 2008

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Books, Personal

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Published:

2:14pm on Saturday 17th January, 2009

This time last year (and with a little help from All Consuming) I looked back at the books I had read over the past twelve months. 2007’s haul was an impressive forty-four books; in 2008, however, I overdosed on door-stop fantasy novels bringing the total down to a less respectable twenty-six.

No Stalgia

Unlike last year, I did not re-visit any old favourites this time. I also read very few non-fiction books (at least compared to last time around). Here’s the full list.

Fiction

I’m still trying to fill the gaping classic literature-shaped holes in my reading record. The year started off well, with some Kingsley Amis and Mary Shelley, but then somehow took a left-turn into modern lit before becoming bogged down in turgid epic fantasy.

• The Transit of Venus (Shirley Hazzard)
• Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)
• Last Exit to Brooklyn (Hubert Selby, Jr)
• Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
• American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
• No Country For Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)
• Last Argument of Kings (Joe Abercrombie)
• Dead Air (Iain Banks)
• Atonement (Ian McEwan)
• Starship Troopers (Robert A Heinlein)
• Maskerade (Terry Pratchett)
• Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)

Comic books

Not very many graphic novels this year, but Watchmen is definitely on my reading list this year before the film comes out in March.

• 1602 (Neil Gaiman)
• The Complete WildC. A. T.s (Alan Moore)

Enormo-fantasy novels by George RR Martin

I’m a huge fan of quasi-historical fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay, and discussions of the “you might also like” variety on the official GGK forums almost always turned up George RR Martin as a recommendation, so I finally took the plunge and dived into his epic “A Song Of Ice And Fire” series. And very good it is too.

• A Game of Thrones
• A Clash of Kings
• A Storm Of Swords Part 1: Steel And Snow
• A Storm Of Swords Part 2: Blood And Gold
• A Feast for Crows

Non-fiction & autobiography

A bit of web design, a little screenwriting, some drug-fuelled debauchery, every bit of science known to man, and the saviour of the 21st century…

• Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond (Aarron Walter)
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell)
• Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (Blake Snyder)
• Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Luke Wroblewski)
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Jason Beaird)
• Slash (Slash)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
• Dreams From My Father (Barack Obama)

Top Picks

Without a doubt the best book I read last year was Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, an exploration of just about every branch of science for the benefit of the uneducated everyman. It’s that rarest of things - an approachable science book; it does for science what Sophie’s World did for philosophy.

Aside from Short History, I also rated Last Exit To Brooklyn (by Hubert Selby Jr, the author behind Requiem For A Dream); and Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, was also a good read - I hadn’t realised that it was written so long ago, when Obama was around my age in fact.

For 2009 I’ll be tracking my reading as per usual, although I have a feeling I’ll be using the excellent Readernaut this time around.