It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

Last year I matched my 2018 total with 25 books under my belt. It wasn't a good year in terms of selections in 2019 though. I got some great books for Christmas and bought another 4 in the Kindle sale though so I am optimistic I'm already half way to a better year of reading.

2020 is my 11th year of making this post (updated as the year progresses) and I've found it very enjoyable to have this record - especially without the added pressure/structure, and gameification of reading, which GoodReads tends towards.

January
1. Star Trek Discovery: The Way to the Stars by Uma McCormack This is only the second or third time I've read a tie-in novel for anything, and my first Star Trek one. I bloody love Tilly and my friend told me about the existence of this for Tilly backstory. It's not necessarily the backstory I wanted for her, and I would have liked less angst and Mallory Towers-esq drama and more time with her on her adventure. I was frustrated and a bit confused by her persistent naming of her father "Daddy" which seemed out of character for a 16 year old. Overall, it was pretty reasonable for YA and rattled along well. I liked some of the topics and themes covered and was very, very amused by the characterisation of academics - and a bit horrified that even in the Federation academics didn't get proper holidays (but omg, imagine being on a social sciences Starship! Dream!)
2. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy A friend sent me this with a really moving short note after, I assume, she saw my blog earlier that week about struggling with my mood. It is in many ways, really not my thing but it comes from a place of kindness and hopefullness and the art is beautiful and I read it and sobbed all the way through in quite a cleansing way. I like the mole.

February
3. Munch by Steffen Kverneland Bit variable. I appreciated the insertion of the author/illustrator, given what an enormous project it was, it's understandable. I wanted a different narrative of Munch, I think, it was definitely at odds with what they said about him at the British Museum exhibition I went to last year and that was disappointing. But maybe it was also less sentimental and more accurate?

March
Nothing. Not a sausage. Was too mad and then too stressed to concentrate. I was pleased with myself for listening to a four part Radio 4 play of Dostovesky's The Idiot. But it didn't quite hang together so I read the wiki entry and discovered they'd ommitted and elided things in ways that changed meaning. So that was a disappointment. Escatic epilepsy is fascinating though isn't it.

April
4. Hostage by Guy Delisle I read this in an afternoon on the balcony in the sun. It was an astonishing book and my heart was in my mouth all the way through. Beautifully understated, very carefully told. Sort of useful to read during lockdown? "I can't do it. I want to die. Stay positive. Just one day at a time" type thinking is familiar - although obviously not the same.

May
5. The New Bottoming Book (2nd edition) by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy Lockdown prompted me to start exploring online repositories of books liberated from copyright and actually embrace PDFs for the first time. I've intended to read this forever. It's nice, very affirmative. I didn't really care for the section on spirituality, although I strongly agreed with one of the opening lines in that chapter: "Every orgasm is a spiritual experience". I liked the reflection prompted by another line as well: "greed makes you generous"
6. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado I loved this. I haven't read a short story collection in ages and I adored how distinct the voice in each story was, the story 'Inventory' was especially on the nose for reading during a Pandemic. 'Especially Heinous' is the weakest for me. Lots of parts of it stayed with me and I suspect will continue to stay. The prose is sparkling and the confidence of the storytelling really is surprising for a debut. It reminds me of Angela Carter, but only in broad strokes rather than being in any way derivative.

June- July
Nothing. I have spent lots of this year really struggling with concentration. I can graze across internet writings, articles, blogs, for hours and hours. But sitting down to something which requires sustained attention has been to daunting. This also goes for any tv over 40 mins an episode (sometimes that's still too much) and all film. 

August
7. To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers Becky Chambers always makes me cry. Always. This one took me entirely by surprise though; it got right inside my head, moved from me just being delighted by and enjoying the topic and style of writing, to having itchy brain and then being utterly broken, sobbing through the end of a chapter. It was a perfectly balanced novella. I still wish it was 1000 pages longer.
8. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman I didn't enjoy this. The 'twist' was blindingly obvious from the outset, for me. The 'resolution' was entirely too neat and Eleanor's journey was entirely too convenient and directly travelled. And in many ways, I just didn't care. It read quickly and was easy to get through, so that's something.

September
9. Spring - Ali Smith Technically, I didn't read this, I heard it, because Teddy read it (and you can listen to them read it too, if you want/are on their access list). I know of Ali Smith, of course, but I didn't have any sense of who she was as a writer, or that I would enjoy her writing. Which it turns out is deeply wrong headed because she's exactly the kind of writer I adore and this was a tremendous book which caught me off guard more than once and made me angry and sad and perhaps even hopeful. 

October
10. Murder in Mesopotami - Agatha Christie An indication of just how slowly I'm going with books this year. I have had a tradition of asking for Christie's for Christmas each year - this is 2019s gift I slogged through it as well, hated narration style and, exceptionally, guessed the murdered really early on. It was ladden with racist descriptions and all in all just felt like I shouldn't have bothered. Not unlike 2020 as a whole.

November and December 
Nothing finished

Last year I limped to 16 books. Optimistic I'll break my streak of shit books from last year and do better than that this year.

January
1. Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson So much better than the second one in this trilogy. I might even prefer it to Necromancer. Kumiko was a pointless pointless nothing character and I resented her existence as a fantasy-Japanese-girl-trope and nothing more. Really enjoyed the pace, language and overall plot, such as it was.
2. Saga Volume 8 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples Oh god it's so so good. How is anything this good? Read the entire thing on train home from East Croydon, so under 50mins. Glorious. Funny, clever, heartfelt, beautifully drawn, perfectly paced. It's literally perfect.

February
3. The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson I decided I must read this last year when a keynote speaker at the Lesbian Lives conference structured her presentation around it and it appeared to be about everything I wrote my thesis on. It's a willfully and unapologetically intellectual piece and touches on all sorts of bits of theory I read and use which was really engaging. It reminded me a little of Hallucinating Foucault, a little of Written on the Body, and a little of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (all of which I love). It's entirely it's own creature though and really well put together. Very pacey despite it's style and potentially dense content.  The final third was the least engaging for me, because I think it veered too much into a more traditional narrative of pregnancy and romance but in all I found it creatively and intellectually inspiring.
4. The Rime of the Modern Mariner - Nick Hayes I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The illustration is beautiful and the period when the ship is becalmed in the sea of plastic is really compelling - as are the illsutrations of the various animals wrapped into knots with plastic and sea ending in a tangled mess. The thing that let it down was the language - the rich rhythm of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was utterly lost and occasionally tripped over itself trying to crowbar ill-fitting words into some sort of rhyme. There was also a bit of a nagging thing for me about the uncritical celebration of pastoral life/small scale farming. Because I'm not at all convinced "cities are bad and rural farming life is the solution" actually represents a meaningful environmental critique.

March
5. Playthings - Alex Pheby This was so promising and initially it was really exhilarating but the final third/final quarter really seemed to lack the concluding flourish it needed. In all, it just seemed to fizzle out - not even 'not go anywhere' which well written literary fiction comfortably can - but just not maintain it's own momentum. The claims it explored the "psychological structure of fascism" was massively overstated - or entirely inaccessible to someone without extensive knowledge of psychoanlysis. It was good, but given liberties were already taken with the representation of a real person, there was scope to do something else at the end and it just left me feeling disappointed.
6. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman I'd only read this once but seen the not-very-good film a lot of times and as a result the latter has kind of overtaken my imagination. For that reason, it was really good to go back to the book and rediscover a proper Lyra and a really rich world with complex motivations for different characters. Flew through it and glad to have the whole trilogy as a beautiful hardback to go on to the next book soon.
7. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers Feminist sci-fi! Good feminist sci-fi! Finally! Brilliant! Character driven! Complexity, depth, care, love, family, friendship, enduring bonds! Oh god this was like a warm bath. Loads of queerness, great writing compelling me through, proper conversations that sound like each person is their own person. I loved every second, Corbin's character arc, Sissix's complexity. Dr Chef's warmth and pain. Pei's resolution. Kizzy and Jenks' relationship! Oh god I want to read it again and/or become a Spacer.

April
8. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher I really wanted to love this. And it was an appropriately pithy, easy read for the plane - although sadly much too short for my 7 hour long haul - finished it in a little over an hour. But equally, it was written in such a repetative, conversational way it became a bit infuriating. Given it's on kindle, I could search this but I suspect the number of "well anyway", is truly painful. It reads like transcribed speech - perhaps that's exactly what it is given it was 'adapted' from a play but...blah. Won't be rushing to read anything else, much as I liked the light-touch of philosophy versus anecdote.

May
9. A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers It's definitely not as good as the first one but the focus on people and relationships still drives it forward with a good pace. The deep dive into questions about the ethics of creating AI and what it means to be human was great and really got me thinking on that stuff - including changing the way I viewed the droids in Solo: A Star Wars Movie.

June
10. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline This is such a good concept totally ruined by that neck beard, women hating, incel mentality. It's so obnoxious. I absolutely believed that Parzival was a projection of Ernest Cline, that's part of where the bad taste that this book leaves you with comes from. It's really pacy, and the fights are written really well. But the world building - the reference points are all media texts made by men, of course - is shoddy, lots of holes in the logic. And it's shot through with a really nasty streak. The characters are largely two dimensional - especially clear in the big 'reveal' about Aech - and Wade is utterly detestable. His 'reward' at the end of the book is so inevitable and so offensive for a book written in 2011. 

July
11. Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan I found this weirdly frustrating. Pacing seemed to go in peaks and troughs which is no bad thing, but sometimes it was a slog and sometimes I couldn't put it down so I never got into a good rhythm with it. Fundamentally, I think I hated the world that was built - it was cruel and hard and empty. Something Gibson, for example, never does despite his cyberpunk dystopias being very hard edged. I liked the concept and it was densely plotted. For a first novel, it was pretty impressive. However, I found there were too many characters to keep track of and I kept losing the thread of who was who and why they were significant - I think this is a problem of writing and a need for greater detail in the introductions. I was also left with a bad taste in my mouth over the sexual violence. Even the protagonist [spoiler] gets turned into a woman in order that he can be tortured and we are treated to a truly gratuitous description of her being burned from inside her vagina. The Madonna/whore stuff was, ultimately, pointless and served to reinforce my sense the author had a crummy view of women. Disappointing and a bit of a slog in the end.
12. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix - J.K. Rowling. I wanted something to absord me when I couldn't switch off from work so this was the choice - next in series from last one I read last year. I don't know why I read this one. It makes me so, so sad. Sirius' end is so unfair. The storyline with Hagrid and Grawp is also long and unnecessary in an already very long book. Sirius needn't have died if literally anyone in the order had said to Harry "you need to learn Occulemency so Voldermort won't give you false visions and lure you into a trap". Dumbledore still wouldn't have had to tell him about the prophecy. Sirius needn't have died if Harry had used the goddamn mirror which he gave him when he left for Hogwarts. I am, obviously, hugely compelled by the story and utterly in love wih Sirius and Lupin or these things wouldn't bother me so much but goddamn it Rowling, there is a lot in this story that just seems to be about torturing Harry and punishing Sirius for being a bit of a rebel. I want a version of the story from here out where Sirius, Lupin and Tonks all survive.
13. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling I didn't really want to read this but I couldn't remember how Harry did in his OWLs and, for some reason, it seemed incredibly important to me to find out. It's the weakest book in the series, I think. There's a lot of necessary narrative work and the way Snape is written is really strong and careful. But in all I'm a bit 'meh' about it. Even with the death - and the very relatable grief and depiction of the funeral service.

August
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling I haven't been able to concentrate on anything for a month so I borrowed this from a friend (so much easier to manage in paperback, who knew?!) and ploughed through it in 2 days. It hurts, this book. I always start crying in earnest from the point Harry goes to Dumbledore's office with Snape's memories, through to the point Harry wakes up in Kings Cross. Every time. Can literally not see the page. There are, of course, plotting and pace issues with the series and everyone seems to love pointing these out as though they invalidate the story telling or strength of the core characterisations. And if I see another 'hot take' about how Dumbledore is terrible and Snape is evil and/or a lamb I will absolutely burn the place down - anyone who has read the books carefully sees these things acknowledged and worked through. Characters can be complex. People are broadly good but act cruelly and selfishly, and vice versa. Why is that considered a weakness of these books? It's true of all great books - Jane Eyre? Wuthering Heights? Charie and the Chocolate Factory? Crime and Punishment! 1984, The Outsider....I could go on and on and on. Anyway. Yep. Read it again.
15. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath There was a great documentary on BBC4 about this book which weaved together the personal and fictional and interviewed lots of people close to Plath from her childhood and adolescence. It was super moving and engaging and I thought it was about time I revisited this. I first read it when I was aound 16, I think, and was really into the introspective sadness, as is the nature of teens. I was interested to know whether it would still move me or if it would seem indulgent. I was delighted to find it as compelling as ever and to read it with adult eyes - a perspective Plath herself is applying to that time in her life when she came to write the The Bell Jar. Tremendous, and careful book.

September
16. Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie I picked this up in a splurge in Waterstones - when I also bought number 15, and a fancy hard cover copy of Frankenstein to replace my ancient, heavily annotated copy. I had my 4 day holiday to Salzburg in mind because I find Christie so engaging and easy to read - even if regularly interrupted. I should have paid more attention to the chronological listing of non-series books on the back because this is a late one and like others of her later work, it's really repetative and lacks the complexity and claustrophobia of her best work. It felt like a short story spun out to a full length novel without anything being added. I also didn't really buy the resolution - the original murder for sure, but the later ones made no sense. And that's never happened before. Nevertheless, it occupied me for about 3 hours so good value in that respect.
17. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Unlike most of the English speaking world, I'd never read this! I think one of the lower English sets read this at school but we had longer books in the top set. It's a nice enough novella, very open in structure and style - I can almost hear the school lessons on it, it so clearly lends itself to introductory literary criticism. Bleak as fuck but a good vignette of a very particular time and place.

October
18. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks I read this against my better instincts. Years ago I tried and failed to read Complicity by Banks which was a set text on a literature module I was doing - the opening violence in that book was so disturbing to me I abandoned the attempt entirely. Unfortunately, I found the violence - graphically written and towards both humans and animals - just as distasteful. I've read a lot of really violent books - various hard boiled crime and A Clockwork Orange, being first examples to jump to mind - and I can stomach it if the violence is in service of something. I fail to see what Banks achieves with violence in this (or Complicity) and I actually found myself dreading returning to read it. The 'big twist' I've seen and heard people talking about was nothing of the sort - I had it pegged in the first 50 or less pages. The final few pages after that reveal were so badly written and so fucking self-satisfied (imagine! aren't I a clever author! I've made a big point about masculinity!) whatever shred of goodwill toward the project I had remaining evaporated.
19. Trumpet - Jackie Kay A friend recommended me to this when we were drunkenly discussing books one night and I gushed "omg that sounds amazing". I waited until my drunken expectations had faded and then read it. It's a very uneven book. The first few sections - the first 50 or so pages? - are tremendous. Wonderfully drawn characters and I even cried. Then it turns into a slog. In the sense it's about grief this perhaps isn't a surprise but I think the sort-of-epistolary form interrupted any sort of flow so it is hard to read at the pace you need to manage that sort of content. The final quarter returned to form and we moved satisfyingly to the end. But it went from being "omg, this is one of the best books I've read" to "ugh, I must finish this" to "meh, it was good enough". I wish there had been more of Joss' voice in the book, rather than that final letter, although I suppose it would have lessened the impact of that. In all, disappointing.
20. The Power - Naomi Alderman Ugh. This is a good concept wasted on poor character development, slightly questionable politcs, and a lack of vision. There's so little texture on the world as it changes, there's so little information on or motivations for characters - Margot and Tunde are the only people who have any depth or drive but it's nowhere near enough.The observation and way the news anchors were written was the sole highlight for me. For such a long book, it's very shallow, all it has to say is; "if women had power to inflict pain and death with a touch, they'd all behave like men". It's so on the nose in it's rape/violence/control stuff - it's not clever, it's not subtle, it's no more sophisticated than a moderately popular Tumblr post. Gender is handled so naively and it illuminates nothing. I saw one review that said it was great to finally see a feminist sci fi book where women fight back - but it's not. The reason feminist sci-fi/dystopia/speculative fiction doesn't usually include women-on-man violence is because feminist writers seek to explore something other than a straight reversal of power and brutality, and consider what it means to control or dominate in other ways, or what happens when women are no longer dominated. The vision of Islamic nations versus 'democratic' USA after the change was offensive - women overthrow the government in Saudi and set up a non-religious government, but in the US they just eventually vote in a couple of women? Fuck off. Its poorly thought through, poorly conceived, poorly understood takes on the contemporary world is a waste.
21. Saga Volume 9 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples I found this uncharacteristically slow - utterly gorgeous to look at again though. Given how it ended, it became clear why the run up to that had been as it was. I find it amazing they can write The Will as they do - he's a total bastard but I am always rooting for him. The best anti-hero I've ever read? 

November
22. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson This was great. Really tense and scary. Great study of a human mind. Wonderful use of setting as a character in and of itself. Subtle commentary on gender roles and domesticity. Like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I found the ending vaguely disappointing. I understood the ending - and I really liked how utterly disorientated I became towards the end of the book and how I only understood what had been happening with the reported speech of other characters at the point Eleanor was leaving the house - but somehow it didn't deliver what I wanted.
23. Riffs and Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy - Stephen Lee Naish I hesitate to pan this as dispassionately as I want to because I contributed some comments on my relationship to the album, and the author kindly sent me a copy when it was published but...the book is about 150 pages long but only 62 pages are dedicated to discussing Know Your Enemy specifically. It doesn't work as a book for someone unfamiliar with the band - there are too many missing details to understand the discussion for that. Given this is true, the lengthy summary of the band's albums before and after KYE is all the more baffling. The structure was incomprehensible to me - there was no systematic handling of the tracks or the events/biography of band surrounding it. There were multiple typographical and grammatical errors. There were a number of factual errors which seem to have been copied over from fan lore and other publications on the Manics. There was no clear central thesis - the claim KYE needs re-examining and appreciating as per the blurb was solid - but there didn't seem to be any sustained argument to that end. There were weird references to the contemp context of the album  - the Iraq War was baffling referred to as a "pre-emptive war" - but the political climate, whilst potentially a fascinating lens to understand the album by, was handled unevenly and non-systematically. It felt, ultimately, like a wasted opportunity and I'm sad about that.

December
24. Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie Generally, I really loved this. But I found the use of pronouns (obviously intended to be provocative in prompting reflection on how we construct ideas about characters based on gender markers, and works well to reflect on how different languages have different gender convetions) incredibly frustrating - it made it really challenging to follow who was being refered to when there were more than 2 characters in a scene. Similarly, the naming conventions of characters occasionally meant I struggled to get characters sorted out. I was there by the end but it was really unforgiving in allowing you to acclimatise to those elements. Looking forward to the next two in the series.
25. The Adventure of Black Peter, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons - Arthur Conan Doyle More short stories. I enjoyed the second one particularly. The third was exceptionally easy to predict.

Last year I read 30 books, although really it was 29 as the first one of the year was read between Christmas and finished on New Years Day so all in all, I'm maintaining my awesome pace of the last 5 years. I treated myself to 5 new books immediately after Christmas so I'm all stocked up and ready to read more graphics, sci fi, and the odd bit of crime fiction this year.

January
1. Watership Down - Richard Adams I bought this in the kindle sale, which in itself is becoming something of an annual bookfest for me.  I really, really enjoyed it. Having only seen the film before I didn't have the highest expectations because whilst the film is lovely, it's quite a thin story. I really loved the book - in particular I found the rhythm and texture of the prose to be really delightful, very rich. I also found the near ceaseless, but quite well defined, various conflicts to be really compelling.  My only critique would be that I wish we could have come to know Fiver better.
2. Pattern Recognition - William Gibson It's hard to know what to say about this book, on the one hand the plot was thin and nothing really happened and there were no twists where there should be if it was, as the blurb said, a detective/mystery novel.  On the otherhand, I loved Cayce (what is it with me and Gibson's characters?) and I loved having a protagonist with serious and non-dramatic anxiety issues which were both hindrance and gift. I also really like the portrayal of online relationships which absolutely correspond with my experiences over the last 10 plus years (back to 2003 when this was written/set). I'm sure I'll read the rest of the trilogy eventually, but it's not high on my list.

February
3. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick It's hard to know what to make of this book and I'm trying to resist listing its faults.  I like the focus on minutae of life post WWII/German victory but I didn't really like any of the characters - except all of the Japanese who actually seemed to have integrity. I liked the acknowledgement that, had the Allies lost the war, they would have gone down hard and been accused of war crimes after the German victory - that felt true.  Otherwise it was very weak, quite meandering, lacking a real critical reflection on what fascism means - the idea that Germans were only interested in exterminating black and Jewish people felt really naive. I kept thinking of Swastika Night which gives a detailed account of the logical end of fascism with regard to women which Dick totally ignored/was unable to imagine. Similarly the Japanese are represented as reasonable, broadly compassionate victors which is problematic given the ideology which drove the Japanese war involvement in WWII.  As usual his female characters are all Madonna or Whore.  The suggestion, on the cover and in the foreword, that this was "the best sci-fi novel of all time" and that Juliana was a "fulled formed" character are laughable. It's not sci-fi and it's not even the best Philip K Dick novel I've read.
4. Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett Another of the 'old' ones I missed when I started reading Discworld.  I still adore the idea of a hero who, unlike your typical hero, hates finding himself in life or death situations and views every adventure as a disaster waiting to happen, or happening already. It shouldn't work, but good god it does.  Laughed all the way through. I must read the Last Continent again.

March
5. The Art of Flying - Antonio Altaribba This was a middling graphic. On the one hand, I enjoyed the history (the primary reason I bought it) and learning about the concentration camps Spaniard fleeing fascism were placed in, in France which was news to me. I disliked the representation of women - they were all Madonna's or whores and drawn in quite a juvenile way - all boobs and arse.  But there was a certain integrity to the story - even though it was the half-imagined life of a dead man. It's good.  Just not good enough to own forever more.
6. Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig I hated this. I bought it against my better judgement after Buzzfeed listed it. In short; his solution to depression and anxiety is basically; be lucky enough to have a partner who will support you and not leave you because you are suffering crippling depression and parents and a partner who will financially support you until you can work again.  He is also frustratingly evasive about medical intervention - he says he doesn't take meds which is fine, but did he have counselling or therapy? What interventions did his GP offer or make? There are a few mentions of GP visits which suggest he was known to doctor as a depressive/suffering anxiety - but nothing on what came, or didn't come of them.  Ultimately I found him patronising, privileged, myopic.  And as for the title? The reasons basically are "you won't be depressed for ever" which - great. Yes. True. But something more is needed for this sort of book, some baring of the soul, some revelation of the self. Instead, I found it superficial and evasive. The points where it was specific on what helped were things which are often part of the cause of depression for me and others - i.e having/not having family, friends, children.

April
7. Phonogram Volume 3. The Immaterial Girl - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie It's a surprisingly long time since I started on my Phongram journey and I am sad and sort of happy that it ends here.  I liked it a lot more than Singles Club (vol. 2) and I was glad to find the reasons I liked Emily were right, somehow.  It feels like a document of our generation.  I'm glad of it.

May
8. The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett I started reading Carol but the PhD is sucking up all my emotional energy so I abandoned it/put it on hold for some laughs.  I don't remember much about the story from the first time I read it in 1999 so rereading was especially nice. I do remember that all the cultural-reference-point jokes largely flew over my head when I first read it so it was especially enjoyable to read again and actually *get* it.  I love Pratchett, and I miss him.  The sparkling wordplay and the confident, exhilarating plotting is just a delight. 
9. The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie After the success of getting through above, I picked up a Christie from the library as I always fly through them.  This was no exception.  Great story, lovely knowing, meta-stuff regarding how detective novels (usually) work and so on.  Great discussion of mental health and pathology (yay for non stigmatising depictions and nuanced descriptions of insanity!). And, as ever, the 'big reveal' was just a small element in a rich story.  Wonderful.

June
10. Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett In the first flush of thesis submission I started three different books but finally settled on giving this one a proper go.  I love it.  Granny standing firm, busting arses - and younger than she is in more recent Pratchett's I've read which is a beautiful thing about books - time travel.  She'll always be there, young and old, wise and impulsive. Waiting.
11. Divergent - Veronica Roth Good things; a largely pacey read - but becomes very repetitive in final third.  Bad things: the clear Christian-Right themes and morality (guns are power! fat is ugly, ugly is evil! Knowledge takes you away from the one true path - aka god) were really offensive.  As a young adult novel, I genuinely find it disturbing it represents handguns as a route to power and control and a whole heap of 'good' things.  Also: the characterisation was very poor, even when I finished I still didn't have a sense of Tris as a person.  Similarly, the writing was poor and the vocabulary was embarrassingly simplistic.  I hated being talked down to at age this novel is targeted at.  It left me with a bad taste in my mouth. 

July
12. Saga: Volume 6 - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona K. Staples I love love love this series. Rationed myself through this again.  I adore that more and more great female characters are emerging in every volume. And there is a trans character in this one which I loved. And yes.  Never end, Saga, never end.
13. Carol - Patricia Highsmith Took me bloody ages to read this. For the first half to first two thirds, I was bored.  It felt like same-old sad-lesbian story with everyone wringing their hands and carrying around lots of shame and sadness and it was so frustrating.  When Carol and Therese finally left on their trip it got radically more enjoyable really fast.  Ultimately, a really joyful book and radical for its conclusion which the author's postscript, written 30 years after publication, says was as well received and powerful as you might expect.  Glad I stuck with it.

August
14. Pyramids - Terry Pratchett Tried and failed to get into a Stephen Baxter book that I got cheap on kindle in order to make a decision about whether or not to read the 'The Long...' series he wrote with Pratchett before abandoning that, then tried to start the second in the William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy but couldn't get going with that and ended up doing impulse buying in Waterstones.  This was the last Discworld novel I had to read. So that's it, I've read them all now.  A very bittersweet achievement.  I loved every moment, read the whole thing in 3 days. Just wonderful, sparkling wordplay, and silly jokes and clever jokes, and warm, open storytelling.  Time to start the full re-read, perhaps.
15. A Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein The first half to two thirds of this novel are a delight. Save for some nagging sexism it's pretty much perfect and then it disappears up its own arse and becomes a trudge.  A contemporary review said it was "a disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism" and i really feel that sums it up.  I don't know how or why it's come to be known as a 'sci fi classic' because it's barely sci fi, most of it reads as [erotic] wish fulfilment, which in principle is fine, but it's not what I signed up for.  It's not half as clever as it thinks it is and veers between loving women for being intelligent and independent, and some truly horrendous sexism.  I couldn't decide if Heinlein hated or loved women - I suspect it was a bit of both. He certainly didn't respect them as equals, more as exotic creatures.  The logic of his 'free love, human sexuality is wonderful' versus the explicit homophobia and expressions of disgust about m/m sex (predictably f/f sex is FINE) also really grated for me.  This review really covers the bases for me, I will try one more Heinlein - best 2 out of 3 - as I did enjoy Starship Troopers.

September
Nothing.

October
16. Spook Country - William Gibson I don't really know why I bothered with another in the Blue Ant trilogy. It was worse than previous one with absolutely no meaningful thrust and a really predictable conclusion. It was pacey enough for the first half but really dropped off and I slogged through the second half.
17. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham Finally a good book! I loved this.  Really got in my head, really engaged me, really well rounded characters and such striking imagining of total collapse of society.  I started off thinking 'of it wouldn't be like that now with all the voice recognition...' but I think we might be closer than I think to similar hopelessness.  Like all good sci-fi, it also acts as a really great document of it's time - paranoia about total destruction, lingering trauma about mass casualties, a new perspective on women and their abilities and potential.  Good stuff.

November
18. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula LeGuin It's hard to know what to say about this. Initially I hated it but ploughed on, then I came to love it and finished it in one marathon session. It really came into it's own when Genly and Estraven went over the ice and it turned into classic epic material.  Their love and determination was compelling. But there were a lot of inconsistencies - why if Genly was taught to hone his instincts about people did he never trust Estraven even though his actions all seem consistent and clearly motivated, but he went against his stated distrust of the Orgoreyns? There was also a level of embedded misogyny/sexism which was not only unexpected from a female writer generally, but firmly anachronistic for sci-fi from this era by women.  I don't know why LeGuin made those choices and it felt like an opportunity squandered.  The place names and various bits of Winter's language were distracting and I couldn't ever get to grips with it - this I think is an authorial failing as there are plenty of books with made up languages and words in which are immediately comprehensible (Stranger in a Strange Land, Clockwork Orange, pretty much all William Gibson stuff). I felt sad and worn out when I finished it - so it definitely connected with me emotionally, I'm just not sure I'm happy with how we got there.


....And that's it. Given it was the year I finished my PhD I suppose that's not too bad. I also read about half of Bleak House in November/December, and started about 3 more during year - I have been nothing if not indecisive/flaky.    Onward, to 2017!

 I was delighted to make it to 30 books in 2013 despite the demands of the PhD.  I proved to myself that investing in books I really want to read rather than dutifully trudging through unread books I own is worthwhile so I'll be keeping that in mind this year and allowing myself non-academic book purchases.

January
Nada (well, nothing finished)

February
1. Adventure of the Empty House, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, and The Adventure of the Dancing Men from The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle Still longing to get back to the full length stories but they are much more rounded in The Return of Sherlock Holmes than The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

March
2. The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke Loved this, read in no time at all and completely adored the city and the stars and all the other rich descriptions.  I sense that my imagining of Alvin's robot was significantly shaped by Eve from Wall-E though...!
3. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes What a book! I had nightmares the second night of reading it which, although not fun, is always a hallmark of a book that I'm really connecting with.  Incredibly affecting, beautifully crafted narrative, tremendously magnetic narrator with flaws, faults and deeply felt pain and...wow.  Yes.  Really hit home with my own long term fears of losing my mind and watching it go but being unable to stop it...amazing.
4. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke In a future where there is no war or hunger and all inequality is ended it fucked me right off that all women did was keep house, have babies, and make dinner for their husbands.  Supremely depressing resolution, supremely unhappy making. And I don't believe in a resolution being positive when it says that all that humanity must be lost - I'd rather we remained children in the universe.  I was struck at Clarke's ability to make Karellen the only character we ever have any sort of lasting emotional connection with.  Him and Jan....this book made me sad. And angry.  So I suppose it was extremely good?
5. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson Picked this up in a charity shop because the title rang a bell.  It was a good read and very compelling stuff but it ended incredibly abruptly and whilst I understand why it ended the way it did, I still felt a little cheated.

April
6. Saga: Volume 3 - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples Try as I might, I couldn't limit myself to a chapter a day and ended up reading all but two chapters in one sitting. Oh god it's so good! Lying Cat and The Will probably my favourite characters but actually really liked the journalists who came through in this volume. Argh, more! Soon!
7. Brighton Rock - Graham Greene Took me about 7 years to find a second hand copy of this in a Brighton second hand bookshop (the restriction I had placed on my buying it given the connection to the city) so this was really exciting to finally get hold of.  I adored it - I always thought the Dicky Attenborough film was good, and it is, but compared to the book? A hollow imitation.  The film strips every female character of motivation and agency - and these are some really complex, interesting female characters.  The awful, grinding, absolute poverty that Pinkie and Rose come from simply does not translate in the film (or if it does, it's now lost in time and generational differences/cultural reference points) and without that, their actions become directionless/inexplicable. The book just makes sense, and it is all shades of grey and damning indictment of a society which lets those at the bottom slip under, and, to a lesser degree, of the Catholic church's dogma.
8. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman I've had this book for about 3 years and never got further than the first 20 pages previously.  This was a mistake because it's tremendous. I love that the main thing moving the plot along is just the cruelty of time. Relativity is a brilliant villain. And what an ending! Such authorial compassion. The way homosexuality is handled is, I suppose, of its time (1970s) but it wasn't so awful as to spoil my enjoyment.

May
9. Goodbye Chunky Rice - Craig Thompson Not as good as Blankets but better than Habibi.  Made for a nice read and had one particularly affecting panel.  Quite a difficult to follow sub plot though.

June
10. Good Dog - Graham Chaffee This is officially an adult graphic but non of it really has adult content and despite the hysterical reviews on back cover, it doesn't hold a torch to Animal Farm or Watership Down.  That being said, it's a good story about a dog, albeit a melancholy one.
11. Masquerade - Terry Pratchett Yay! Greebo! Also hijinks and such.  One of the Discworld's that came before I started reading and I never got to when I tried to read from the beginning.  As enjoyable as a Pratchett ever is.

July
12. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett Reorganised my bookshelves at my parents house and pulled this out, having never finished it when I bought it 16 or more years ago.  After getting through the dry introductory section that put me off last time, I really enjoyed it. Old school Pratchett; left me considering what he does with male and female characters - Brutha, Rincewind, Carrot all male characters who are good sorts, through and through, and get to stay in the books with no real character development.  Conversely, lots of interesting female characters Sybil Ramkin (later Vimes), Magrat, Adora Belle, Angua, are interesting and independent, and through-and-through good, but they get married and then disappear into the shadows of their husbands, or disappear entirely in the case of Magrat.  I'm not sure how I feel about that because I don't want to be annoyed with Discworld.  Susan Sto Helit is only woman I can think of who doesn't suffer that fate, but she does disappear, unlike, for example, the much less likeable Moist Von Lipwig. Hmm.
13. Behold the Man - Michael Moorcook The best thing I can say about this is that the narrative technique was interesting. It was shitty anti-women bullshit, navel-gazing Christianity revisionism, which in turn wasn't nearly as clever or original in doing that as the author thought. Nope.
14. Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett I think this will be the last new Pratchett I read. So much has gone from it and there wasn't a single good female character in it - plenty of characters who *used* to be good female characters were just shadows and wives and background noise. And just a nothing of a conclusion.  Felt like a waste.

August
15. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling I forgot how slow this one is, and how the grammar catches you awkwardly. Still a better world than this.
16. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling I must be getting old, spent a long time wanting to shake Harry and Ron. And oh god, the crashed Ford still makes me feel guilty by proxy.  My favourite in the series up next...
17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling Oh Lupin, Lupin, Lupin, I love you.
18. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling When Harry hangs on to Cedric's body, that's perfect writing, basically and everything about Harry's affect from then to the end of the book is just spot on. Makes me howl.
19. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - JK Rowling I love who Harry is becoming in this book, love how real his hurt and angry and irrational lashing-out seems. I ache for Sirius' loss; when Lupin hangs onto Harry to stop him going through the curtain after him? Kills me.
20. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - JK Rowling I remembered this as being tiresomely plotted with very little action but I think I read it slower than I have previously and as a result the pacing was more agreeable. I did a real close reading of Snape in this, this time, knowing the 'truth' about his actions and it holds together pleasingly well.

September
21. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling I kept putting off starting this as I didn't want to lose Dobby, Fred, Tonks, and most of all, Lupin, again.  The cruelty of their deaths never gets less and I am still pissed at Rowling for doing it. Sobbed and sobbed as Harry walked along with the ghosts of Sirius and Lupin, as I have so many times before.  Had secondary level of reading happening where I refuted all the crap I keep seeing on Tumblr about Snape and Dumbledore being terrible people to name your kids after because they weren't through-and-through good guys. Personally I think heroes who act against their nature, or inclination, in order to do the right thing are more worthy of reverence than Superman-types, but there we are.  Certainly it's why I find Dumbledore and Snape such engaging characters, and Snape's life in particular, to be an unmitigated tragedy.
22. Now and Forever - Ray Bradbury I picked this up impulsively in the library as I scanned the blurb and it said it was a rewriting of Moby Dick set in the future/ship was a space ship and whale was a comet.  Turns out this book is two novellas, Somewhere a Band is Playing and, the one I wanted to read, Leviathan '99.  They were both written in fairly open faced prose and were an easy quick read but I never got engaged. Somewhere a Band is Playing wound up being rather indulgent and didn't move me. Leviathan '99 was better but suffered for being too short and not developing any sense of claustrophobia, as Moby Dick does, or loyalty to Ishmael or the Captain - the Forever War totally nails that part of space travel..  It also missed the great sweeping Romantic reflections on beauty and nature which, given they are speeding through freaking space past planets and comets and stars is a MASSIVE oversight.  All in all? It was no Fahrenheit 451.
23. The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov This was a really easy read with a compelling plot but the resolution was fairly dissatisfying, as was the sudden Christianity.  And, in the final quarter, the sudden, wholly unnecessary section about how women put make up on, those peculiar creatures! lolz! Which just underlined the problem which up until then I had been prepared to ignore, namely that in a future where a complete overhaul of the way we live, work and eat was reasonable, and the positronic brain had been invented, and technology functioned in astonishing ways, women still just had babies and stayed home. FOR FUCKS SAKE EVERY MALE SCI-FI WRITER EVER WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE FEMALE LEADERS BUT NOT FUCKING HUMANOID ROBOTS AND INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL?!?!?!  Also, less angrily, loads of stuff lifted from this for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which is no doubt not news to everyone else, but was for me.

October
24. A Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy This was...disappointing. I explicitly sought out woman-authored, woman-protagonist science fiction because, as above, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with sausage-fest futures.  This disappointed for being really woolly science-fiction, no hard sci-fi elements and really focused on emotion and physical descriptions and narratively-dull sex scenes. I didn't realise until just now it was written in the 70s which contextualises it better for me but still not a life changer. It was very dry in places, and I can't understand why there was only one, brief visit to the dystopian future as that was considerably more interesting than the utopian Mattapoisett.  I also can't get on board with a utopia being at war (which was plot hole anyway given the obsession of Mattapoisettians with eradicating waste in all other areas of life) and the death penalty continuing to exist.  It reminded me of Swastika Night and News from Nowhere, neither of which are gripping reads but are worth giving time to if you've got no better options/like to be well read within the genre.
25. The Clone Rebellion: Republic - Steven L Kent This is such a promising series but about half way I through I realised there were NO WOMEN. And then it started to make me angry.  There are so many ways women *could* have been in it, for a start - why not make the Liberators women? Then there'd be this amazing social commentary going on about society's fear of strong women and retribution/revenge.  I liked all the war and explosions and armour stuff though. Military sci-fi apparently appeals. Just not sausage fest military sci-fi.

November
26. On Red Station, Drifting - Aliette de Bodard I bought this in reaction to my previous read. It was dreadful. Lots of godawful grammar and comma abuse that even outdoes my worst habits. Then the story...which was very nearly good but failed to do anything science fiction-y and was just 'imperial China in space!!!!!'  Yes, there were female leads, yes they were in charge of their own actions and destinies but that's not enough - they need motivations (precious little of that for any of the characters) and some sort of characterisation (again, not so much for anyone) and some of the components that make me read sci-fi, like actual science fiction rather than a broadly magic system of psychic communication. I finished it out of spite, not enjoyment.
27. Virtual Light - William Gibson I loved, loved, loved this all the way to the last 50 pages or so when the narrative sped up and the careful, painstaking storytelling fell to the wayside to the point it was difficult to grasp how the plot was resolved.  I was also, unexpectedly, disappointed with the happy ending. It felt inauthentic.  I loved Chevvy though - yay decent female lead! Really enjoyed the threaded narrative of the end of the AIDS crisis and the conceptualisation of the shift to radical groups and massive division between rich and poor post social/economic collapse. It was just a really rich, textured world. Must read more Gibson.

December
28. The Wicked and the Divine Vol. 1 - Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson I was a bit on the fence about this all the way through and glad I was able to borrow it from the lirbary rather than commit to buying it.  I liked all the references to musical idols I just didn't quite...click with it.  I think I'm uncomfortable with the fantastic elements which is obviously what the series is built on...It's just not as me as Phonogram, I need to stop expecting everything McKelvie and Gillen write will be.
29. Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne This was an impulse charity shop buy and I'm glad I did.  I think I managed to get a good translation and it read very quickly.  Ultimately, the fiction of the science was a little too much of a stretch for me, although I did reflect I would have happily suspended disbelief had it been set on a distant planet and not Earth - funny what a little knowledge will do in that respect.  I enjoyed the Victorian-Romantic reflection on landscape of Iceland and Denmark so much I plan to re-read Frankenstein in the new year so a Good Read.



The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, The Adventure of the Priory School - Arthur Conan Doyle I read these two sometime in 2014 but as they are short stories I only count them as one book if I read more than three. So recorded for completeness.

In 2011 I managed a respectable 29. Commitment to 'read a shit load' rather waned in the tail end of the year so that is my primary target this year.

January
1. Sherlock Holmes short stories from The Complete Sherlock Holmes; The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet and The Adventures of the Copper Beeches - Arthur Conan Doyle
2. When God Was A Rabbit - Sarah Winman This was a book my Mum passed to me after reading it as she said "it's more your sort of thing than mine" which usually means it's either abstract or gay. Turns out it was a bit of both but badly written with an implausible plot designed to pull at the old heartstrings. Pulp fiction in the highest degree.
3. Snuff - Terry Pratchett Really disappointing. Discworld has been sadly going downhill rapidly since TP sadly became ill. A lot of the word play, humour, complexity and depth has gone out of the books and whilst the characters are engaging enough to read compulsively to the end, it doesn't satisfy in the way TP books used to.  On a unrelated note, this was the first eBook I've purchased - from Amazon - and I was reet pissed off because it didn't have any chapter divisions in, which books I've got from Project Guttenberg do have.
4. Sympathy for the Devil - Howard Marks Rubbish. I only read it because the Amazon reviews were so good and, allegedly, a character was based on Richey. Striking similarity, yes, but I sincerely hope Marks doesn't know something about Richey the rest of us don't.
5. The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie Good ol' fashioned Christie action - although I think I detected just a hint of anti-Semitism...

February
6. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare - G. K. Chesterton I enjoyed this but, by the end, I'm not sure I fully understood the depth of references in there. One to read again I think.
7. Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
8. Catching on Fire - Suzanne Collins
9. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins I read this entire trilogy in 5 days. Had nightmares every single night.  Was absolutely captivated by Katniss - what an incredibly written character. In some ways it's typical sci-fi/post-apocalyptic fiction fayre, but in other it does what so many fail to do; it is utterly immersive. My only criticisms would be the way one character's death was dealt with and one aspect of the content of the epilogue which I didn't feel was inkeeping with the nformation we'd had on that character up to then but otherwise? Pretty much perfect.

** Leap Day Freebie; 10. A Hunger Artist - Franz Kafka Great, typically Kafka, typically numbing. **

March
11. The Plague - Albert Camus Vaguely disappointed with this. It took me months and months of stop-start to read it but I'm not sure why. It's interesting enough and the narrative style is typical of Camus but something of the pessimism I found so engaging in The Fall and The Outsider was missing. I'm glad I read and glad I finished it but...not a life changer.
12. The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson Good, lost focus in the second half; touched on lots of interesting points that could/should have been developed but weren't and made some blindingly obvious points too. A bit of a let down, particularly given how well it started.

April
13. Gig - Simon Armitage Great, great book. Just my kind of thing. A fusion of prose and poetry, anecdotes and earnest longing. Some fantastic descriptive passages - although I would expect nothing less from Armitage - and it does it all without crossing over into unadulterated pretentiousness. Adored it; made me laugh, made me think.
14. Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett  I resolved to go back and read all the Discworld books I've missed (the middle ones - I read in order for a while then skipped to new releases as they happened) which include characters I like, first up i'm back tracking through the history of the Watch.  This was good. Although coming to it from Snuff I can't believe Lady Sybil is the same person - MASSIVE change in her characterisation.
15. How to be a Woman - Caitlin Moran Started off brilliantly, my enthusiasm waned about halfway through and by the last quarter it was actively hard work. She moved from inclusive feminism to proscriptive feminism and a few things made me cringe which wouldn't ordinarily have made me cringe but she was so insistent "this is feminism!" that I felt compelled to engage with just how successfully she was a feminist...so yeah.

May
16. Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett It seemed to get a bit lost at times.  Although the Corporal Carrot of this book is 100% the Carrot I fancy, which is nice.

June
17. Daytripper - Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon Good In principle this was a good graphic. In practice I didn't quite connect.  The style and colouring were a bit imprecise for my liking. The 'surprise' element of each chapter ending with the death of the same character was verging on trite.  Somehow, it just didn't come together for me - although it came close.  
18. Starman: David Bowie, The Definitive Biography - Paul Trynka Great book, enough narrative pace to keep it interesting, a good overall view of the 'facts' with plenty of clearly marked personal stories to flesh it out.  As with all rock biographies I'm sure many people will claim it's pure fantasy but it ties up with other things I've read and heard.  I really enjoyed it although it did flag a bit towards the end.

July
19. James Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing - G. Norman Lippert  Objectively, this really wasn't very good - far too many Americanisms, a real betrayal of the basics of the canon (why are different year groups taking the same class? Why would there be a ban on flying brooms for under 11s? etc etc) but somehow, I believe the character of James.  I probably won't read any more of the series but this one has entered my imagination rather determinedly.
20. The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie Brilliant! Best Christie I've ever read, absolutely adored Tuppence and Tommy and the little (explicit) feminist asides. Yes!

August
21. From The Complete Sherlock Holmes; Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; Yellow Face, Silver Blaze, Stock Brokers Clerk, The Gloria Scott, The Musgrave Ritual, The Reigate Puzzle - Arthur Conan Doyle Not as good as some of the previous stories I've read, these are much shorter and as a result suffer from underdeveloped mysteries. Holmes is such a magnetic character, and Watson such an engaging narrator my enthusiasm has't waned much though.

September
22. Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie Fun but, as reviews on Amazon warned me, a bit repetitive by virtue of the short story formula.  Still enjoyable - Tommy and Tuppence really magnetic characters.
23. Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett Super quick read and all the things I love about Pratchett. Plus, Vimes, Carrot, and Angua <3.
24. Maurice and His Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett First book I read in Brighton - found it whilst emptying boxes in the attic of my parents house having believed I'd lent it to a friend who had made it disappear so read with real joy at being reunited.  As, ever, fabulous; the man knows his rats.

October
25. Are You My Mother - Alison Bechdel As so many other people have observed, this book doesn't really hang together.  The first third s dedicated to the author's reflections on how hard she is finding it to write the book she's writing which, instead of being pleasingly meta, is just annoying. It ends well but I found it, overall, to be navel gazing and quite thin.  Certainly not in the same league as Fun Home.
26. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson Until I downloaded this to my kindle, I had no idea RLS wrote it, how ignorant of me.  An enjoyable read, beautifully Gothic, spoiled somewhat by the fame of the story which meant I already knew the twist but well worth a read all the same.

November
Apparently I didn't read anything in November...Although I made a start on Mysteries of Udolpho but it is slow going.  Weirdly, this happened last year too.

December
27. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - Guy Delise I've wanted to read this for a long time and picked it up on the spur of the moment at the library.  It's a quick read but not really a life changer - a little too self involved to mean anything much...I think I was disappointed. Nothing to Envy remains the go to book on North Korea.
28. Y: The Last Man Vol. 3 One Small Step - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan, Jr.  Still making me cringe at moments of sexism and fetishisation of women but it is still compelling enough for me to keep reading, especially since discovering the Brighton municipal library has the whole series!
29. Started, abandoned... Black Hole - Charles Burns. Tried and tried, but the content made me feel physically sick at times and I increasingly got the impression it would end misogynistically so I bailed out. First time in a very long time I've done that.

Books I've Read This Year.

January - February:
1. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
2. Making Money - Terry Pratchett
3. Nation - Terry Pratchett
4. Once Upon a Time in the North - Philip Pullman; my absolute favourite character throughout the Northern Lights trilogy was Lee and Hester, I cried more for their death than anyone else.  This book was a delight as a result.
5. Lyra's Oxford - Philip Pullman
6. The Road - Cormac McCarthy; fascinating narrative technique.  Absolutely immersive

March:
7. Looking Backwards 1887-2000 - Edward Bellamy; utopia/dystopia fiction from the Victorian period will never cease to fascinate me.

April:
8. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess; A fascinating exploration in the readers own tolerance of 'ultra-violence' and how quickly your loyalty can be gained by the self confessed and well established villain of the piece. Wonderfully written, my narrative theory inclinations were aroused.
9. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi; Better than the film
10. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic - Alison Bechdel; oh god it's ike academic graphic novel (autobiography) porn! Describing your own life events in terms of narrative theory? YES. 

May - July (inclusive):
11. Moby Dick - Herman Melville; Without a doubt, now one of my favourite Romantic novels.  Fascinating to see the Romantic impulse directed to descriptions of 'the Levianthan' (Sperm whales) and the 'iron soul' of man; "Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the first time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron soul"

July:
12. Snakes & Earrings - Hitomi Kanehara (perhaps in need of a better translation? Very clumpy)
13. Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein Brilliant. Much better than expected. Made me reconsider my thoughts about capital punishment and military endeavour which is no small feat.

August:
14. Phonogram: Rue Britannia - Jamie Mckelvie & Kieron Gillen Phenomenal. A leaving gift from a friend in Brighton and all about being a(n obsessive) music fan and, in particular, a Manics fan.

September
15. Phonogram: The Singles Club - Jamie Mckelvie & Kieron Gillen Different in music content than Rue Britannia but I felt the characters were better drawn (narratively speaking, not artistically!)
16. The Outsider - Albert Camus Was still thinking about those 118 pages long after I finished it.  Awesome.

October-November
17. The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry Everything I hate about autobiographies, endlessly ego masturbation, lists of 'celebrity' names and uninspiring 448 pages covering just 9 years? In no detail? 9 years in which NOTHING HAPPENS? Never read a book in such serious need of editing.

December
18. Sherlock Holmes; A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle  Finally reading the glorious tome I was given last Christmas and enjoying it ever bit as much as I anticipated.  So far it is only the first story I can tick off, but yes, glorious. 
19. Y: The Last Man. Vol 1. Unmanned - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra Not brilliant, but certainly very engaging. The dialogue lags in places, but on the whole it works; I'll be buying volume 2, so that says it all really.