So, in the spirit of not-having-any-original-ideas-for-blog-content, I'm ganking the post I made about this time last year about my recent reading. This year I've been keeping a running note about which books I've read; I thought it'd be interesting both for the sake of working out how much I actually get through in a year (and comparing this total with the number of still-unread books on my shelves, and comparing it *again* with the number of new books I've bought... *coffs*), and out of curiosity about how many of these books I can actually remember six months or so later.

Titles in bold are ones for which I can actually remember the plot (or, in the cast of non-fiction books, the point...); titles which have an asterisk against them are ones I would particularly recommend.

1. Maurice LeBlanc - Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar
2. Maurice LeBlanc - Arsene Lupin
3. Erle Stanley Gardner - The case of the velvet claws
4. Erle Stanley Gardner - The case of the sulky girl
5. Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of the Apes
6. Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Return of Tarzan
7. Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Beasts of Tarzan
8. Maurice LeBlanc - The Hollow Needle
9. Dick Francis - Proof
10. George Macdonald Fraser - Flashman
11. H.A. Vachell - The Hill * (NOTE: I read this simply because the samples of dialogue I had heard from it were the epitome of public school romantic friendship, and I was writing Raffles-fic at the time; but it actually turned out to be a charmingly well-written book with a melancholy ending I didn't see coming.)
12. Friedrich von Schiller - The man who sees ghosts
13. Antal Szerb - Oliver VII
14. Arthur Conan Doyle - The Lost World etc.
15. Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow (NOTE: Blah, this is why I should stop buying thrillers with nice covers on spec in 3 for 2s.)
16. T E Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom
17. EDA20 - Justin Richards - Demontage
18. Miklos Banffy - Transylvanian Trilogy I - They Were Counted *
19. Italo Calvino - Adam, One Afternoon
20. EDA21 - Paul Leonard - Revolution Man
21. Doctor Who Short Trips 11 - Paul Cornell - A Christmas Treasury
22. George Orwell - 1984 (reread)
23. EDA22 - Nick Walters - Dominion
24. Robert Heinlein - Friday (NOTE: I hate you, Tasha >_<)
25. C.S. Forester - Mr Midshipman Hornblower (NOTE: The fact that I can't remember the plots of this or most of the other Hornblower books is not to say that they weren't very entertaining and enjoyable, because they were. I just read them in a rush, so I can't assign specific incidents to specific books.)
26. C.S. Forester - Lieutenant Hornblower * (NOTE: Yay, Lt. Bush POV FTW.)
27. C.S. Forester - Hornblower and the Hotspur
28. C.S. Forester - Hornblower and the Atropos
29. C.S. Forester - The Happy Return
30. C.S. Forester - A Ship of the Line
31. Anthony Burgess - Mozart and the Wolf Gang
32. Oscar Wilde - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and other stories
33. Oscar Wilde - The Happy Prince and other stories
34. Oscar Wilde - Complete Plays
35. Gyles Brandreth - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
36. Oscar Wilde - Intentions
37. C.S. Forester - Flying Colours
38. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray *
39. Oscar Wilde - A House of Pomegranates
40. Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who - The Dalek Invasion of Earth
41. John Peel - Doctor Who - The Chase
42. Italo Calvino - Marcovaldo
43. C.S. Forester - The Commodore
44. Bernard Cornwall - Sharpe's Tiger
45. Bernard Cornwall - Sharpe's Triumph
46. C.S. Forester - Lord Hornblower
47. Doctor Who VNA01 - John Peel - Timewyrm: Genesis
48. G.K. Chesterton - The [Annotated] Innocence of Father Brown (reread) *
49. EDA? - Paul Leonard - The Turing Test *
50. Doctor Who Short Trips 18 - Simon Guerrier - Time Signature * (NOTE: By far the best Short Trips collection I've read so far. The overarching plot really gives an added dimension to the individual short stories. Also, it's totally co-starring Delia Derbyshire.)
51. Melody Clark - The Last Best Hope / The Long Way Back (B7 fanzines)
52. Lillian Shepherd - The Machiavelli Factor (B7 fanzine)
53. C.S. Forester - Hornblower in the West Indies
54. C.S. Forester - Hornblower and the Crisis
55. Anthony Hope - Prisoner of Zenda (reread)
56. C. Northcote Parkinson - The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower
57. Ellis Peters - A Rare Benedictine (reread)
58. Ellis Peters - A Morbid Taste for Bones (reread)
59. Doctor Who Short Trips 20 - Steven Savile - Destination Prague
60. Robert Smythe Hichens - The Green Carnation
61. Ruth Scurr - Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
62. W.E. Johns - Gimlet Comes Home
63. W.E. Johns - Biggles Flies Again
64. W.E. Johns - Biggles in France (reread)
65. W.E. Johns - Biggles Fails To Return (reread)
66. William Corlett - Now and Then
67. Luis Fernando Verissimo - Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans * (NOTE: Borges and murder-mysteries. What could be better?)
68. Frank Tallis - Fatal Lies
69. Thomas de Quincey - Confessions of an English Opium Eater
70. Miklos Banffy - Transylvania Trilogy II - They Were Found Wanting *
71. EDA04 - Paul Leonard - Genocide
72. W.E. Johns - Gimlet Mops Up *
73. W.E. Johns - Gimlet's Oriental Quest
74. W.E. Johns - Gimlet Lends A Hand *
75. W.E. Johns - Gimlet Bores In
76. Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau
77. EDA? - Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman - Unnatural History *
78. Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book *
79. E.C. Bentley - Trent's Last Case (NOTE: I spotted the twist in advance :( Woe.)
80. W.E. Johns - Spitfire Parade * (NOTE: YAY BERTIE.)
81. G. Manville Fenn - Fix Bay'nets!
82. VNA22 - Steve Lyons - Conundrum
83. Donald Cotton - Doctor Who - The Myth-Makers
84. M.R. James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
85. Adalbert Stifter - The Bachelors
86. Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm (reread) *
87. Stella Gibbons - Conference at Cold Comfort
88. Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
89. Raymond Chandler - Farewell, My Lovely *
90. Raymond Chandler - Trouble is my business
91. Raymond Chandler - The Simple Art of Murder
92. Patrick Leigh Fermour - A Time of Gifts
93. Miklos Banffy - Transylvania Trilogy III - They Were Divided *
94. John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (?reread?)
95. John Buchan - Greenmantle


So, that's about 90-odd books read this year (I think there may have been one or two I forgot to add to my scrappy little Notepad file as I went along); by way of comparison, I also went through and totted up the number of unread books there are on my shelves. I make it about 150. So...if I stop buying new books altogether, and carry on reading at my current rate, I should be in a position to justifying new books by about next September. >_<

Best author(s) you discovered this year:
It's a toss-up between Patrick Leigh Fermor and Miklos Banffy; I first ran across Leigh Fermor in the introduction to the Transylvanian Trilogy, and the two writers do rather complement one another. I adore Leigh Fermor's prose, for all that it might be considered somewhat overwrought for modern tastes; I love the world he shows us, his fascination with people and places, and the almost reckless boldness with which he launched himself off across Europe with a few pounds a month, a little German, and a volume of Horace. With Banffy, it's the whole sweep of the world which he depicts that's the seductive part - the Transylvania Trilogy is a great sprawling sweep of novel, with a cast of hundreds and a sense of place and time that's marvellous; I badly want to go to Transylvania now, the author loves it so much and describes it so magically. I also find it fascinating that he is, essentially, one of the protagonists - his hero, a Transylvanian aristocrat and politician who attempts to balance his love for an unattainable mistress with his responsibilities to his family, his peasant farmers, and his country both internally and on the world stage, has many of Banffy's own ideas and ideals, and is even given one of Banffy's own political speeches to deliver. Count Miklos Banffy was a politician of some note, and intimately familiar with the world he describes; but like Leigh Fermor, he writes from the outside, looking back on the world which has now passed away. Both are highly recommended.

Best new book you read this year: top 3

The Writing On The Wall (The Transylvanian Trilogy), Miklos Banffy - see above.
A Time Of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor - see above.
Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans, Luis Fernando Verissimo - this is a teeny tiny little book which I picked up at the Fiction In Translation table in Waterstones; I assumed that anything with that title had to be good, and I was quite right. What I particularly loved was that it was a murder mystery which I didn't guess - indeed, I didn't even *try* to guess it. I was so lulled off my guard by the Borgesian tone that I didn't even begin to consider that I could work out who the murderer was, even though it turned out in the end to a neat little semi-traditional murder mystery. Marvellous stuff.

Book you wish you’d skipped

The Poe Shadow, Matthew Pearl. Blah. Maybe I'd have disliked this less if I didn't suspect Poe of being quite such a waste of space as I do.

Reading goals for next year

Well, since I didn't actually get round to it last year, it's going on the list again - moar Perry Mason. pearbean and I have some serious gleeing to do, and I'm not helping by slacking on my pulp responsibilities. Those Perry/Paul/Della fics won't write themselves. I also want to improve my knowledge of Agatha Christie - I read lots of them years ago, but I really don't remember many, and there are always more to find. I haven't read *any* Tommy and Tuppence, for heaven's sakes! Call myself a murder mystery fan, sheesh. Also this year: War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot. Oh yeah, it's time to work through some door-stops.

Further goal: don't buy more books. Further further goal: attempt to get down my unread books down into double digits.