Second hand books

A propos of this article in the Guardian:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/21/secret-histories-secondhand-books


Alas, most of my books are second hand, and yet I've never found anything as salacious as the commenters (below the fold) have. I usually find train tickets from 2005; occasionally a birthday dedication; often a 'my love, always' sort of comment.


I'll always make a point of writing a dedication in a book - to me, that makes it 'unthrowawayable', but perhaps that isn't the case for everyone.


At home, there's a Chambers dictionary on some shelves above the family computer. Tucked into the front pages there's a pressed flower, the flower my dad gave my mum on their first date: December 31st, one year in the late seventies. The spine on the dictionary broke many years ago. But it's still there, serving its purpose, its newfound purpose. I haven't used that dictionary to look up a word for years.

2011 in books

Right, this isn't going to be an especially interesting one, unless you're a supergeeknerd who quite likes lists and miscellanea and books. So, on second thoughts, that's most of my friends, and hopefully the sort of people who read this blog.


What follows is a list of all the books I read this year. It's fairly eclectic:


January 2011

• Mario de Sa-Carneiro: Lucio's Confession. This is an excellent work by a fascinating bloke. If you like dramatic openings, this is definitely one for you; if you like dramatic ends.....Chekovian guns, did I hear you say?
• Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White. Marvellous. Can't beat Victorians for a bit of scandal!
• Michel Foucault: The History of Sexuality. Required reading for everyone. Fascinating. And don't be put off by this idea that Foucault is really hard. That's bollocks. It all makes perfect sense if you will just try to step outside of your own preconceptions (which is, in a nutshell, what his own work is all about).
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper. An excellent novella about a mad woman in the yellow room. Has this text made it onto the school syllabuses yet? Because it really should - it's not that hard, pretty short (a godsend for time-pressed teachers), and a heartbreaking piece of social history to boot.

February 2011

• Bram Stoker: Dracula. I took a course in Victorian fiction and sexuality, and another about the development of Victorian science and sensation, so I also read
• George Gissing: The Odd Women 
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon Lady Audley's Secret
• Edward Bulwer Lytton A Strange Story
• Henry James A Beast in the Jungle and, finally,
• Henry Harland, A Responsibility. I enjoyed pretty much all these books - the Braddon especially so - and if you're looking for a super-engaging read, I'd definitely recommend most of them. Gissing is an easy read, despite what people might say, but Dracula isn't really worth bothering with. It gets a bit slapstick and ridiculous at the end.

March 2011

• R L Stevenson: Jekyll and Hyde. Wonderful, with or without the anal imagery. Lots of talk of 'back passages' leads to sniggering aplenty.
• D H Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover. Ignore all the 'quivering' and 'throbbing' and so on, and feel Lawrence's passion for the English countryside, for art, for liberty, for the body, for the machine age. This is an outstanding book and little deserves the reductive stereotype it somehow received. Though one of my friends did once suggest, tongue in cheek, that Mellors is a 'sort of sexual super hero, saving the world one shag at a time', and that was pretty funny of her.
• Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies. There aren't many 'classics' that will make you laugh out loud, but this will. ''For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist!''
• James Joyce: Dubliners. If you haven't read this you have no soul and I won't speak to you again. If that's inspired you to take it from the shelf this minute, do start with the final story, 'The Dead' as it a beautifully wintery read (a Christmas party, and snow all across Ireland).
• D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers. This is a bit inconsequential and I didn't enjoy it much.

April 2011

• Jonathan Safran Foer: Eating Animals. I was hoping this book might turn me vegetarian, but it didn't. He analyses the American meat industry, but the work is at its best when he talks about his Jewish grandmother, who, whilst starving to death, rejected an offer of pork (''if nothing is sacred....'') and when he discusses his hopes and fears for his toddler son.
• Graham Swift: Shuttlecock. Swift is one of the finest writers of this century, and there's little else I can say about him without gushing. He comes up again later, don't worry! [EDIT: actually he doesn't. Have I really only read the one book by him this year? Gush, must sort that, etc]

May 2011

• Susie Orbach: Fat is a Feminist Issue. It's always important to understand the key arguments of a discipline, even if you don't agree with them. As it is, I thought this was a pretty good read. One of the main things she wrote that stuck with me, is that women eat to control their anger. Where society won't let them be angry, women will eat instead - the mouth is, quite literally, too occupied with food to be able to articulate an emotion that will be negatively received by society. I thought this was a pretty canny point and is something I sympathise with. 
• Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road. I chose this because it had been looking down on me from my shelf for far too long. It was pretty good, if pretty sad too. Suburban America can be so cruel.

June 2011

• A S Byatt: The Children's Book unfinished. I really could not stand this at all.
• J G Ballard Crash. I hated this too.
• Ali Smith The Accidental. Luckily I had more luck with the final book of the month. She is wonderful, frenetic, unexpected, staccato, joyful, absurd and delightful. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

July 2011

• Ali Smith Hotel World. Again, pretty much perfect.
• George Orwell Books and Cigarettes. Evidently, June was a good month.

August 2011

• Francoise Sagan: Bonjour Tristesse. I wasn't expecting this to be as good as it was. I thought it would be an overrate cult-classic; actually, it's an underrated one. A wrenching story recalled with clarity and finesse.
• James Joyce: Ulysses. In August I wrote many thousands of words about this book - specifically, the role of fashion and clothing within it. I really enjoyed the project and my final marker suggested the work was publishable. I'm now considering turning some of the chapters into journal articles. (Believe me, I write academic work far better than I write this blog.) Throughout June and July and August I read a ton of books about Joyce but I haven't included those because, first, no-one gives a toss and, secondly, they're all very boring with long and silly titles that academics like to give their books.

September 2011

• Vita Sackville-West. All Passion Spent. VSW was chums (more than chums, in fact) with Woolf, and it must have been hard being a novelist and having her as your friend. Sure enough, she's second rate in comparison, but this is still a very enjoyable (and relevant) book about how women can become invisible once they're married.
• Huraki Murami: 1q84. I read this before everyone else and aren't I a jammy cow about it?!
• Barbara Ewing: The Circus of Ghosts. I remember quite enjoying this at the time, but can't remember it now. So I wouldn't bother if I were you.

October 2011

• Andrew Kaufman: The Tiny Wife. This is super and lovely and perfect and well done to Harper Collins for giving me a copy. I have nothing but love and admiration for them, and for AK.
• Evan Manderly: Q. This is a fun little read about love, time travel, and Freud. Really.
• Ali Smith: The Whole Story (and other stories). unfinished. Despite my love of her novels, I just couldn't get into these. There is one especially good story about working in a bookshop though, which tickled some of my funny bones.
• Zadie Smith Changing my Mind. Zadie Smith is a polymath, and I am jealous.
• Sebastian Faulkes: Pistache. A charming collection of literary rip-offs. Highlights include: Kafka trying to book a holiday online; and Joyce giving a best-man speech.

November 2011

• Iain Banks Stonemouth. This is his new novel, coming out in April 2012. It's good, but it's no The Crow Road.
• Nabokov: Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins! 
• Louise Foxcroft: Calories and Counting. This book will be published in January by the lovely Profile books, to coincide with the January detox rubbish. A brilliant look at all the silly things humans have done to their bodies in the name of dieting. 
• Nick Hornby: High Fidelity. Hornby is an excellent writer. I was surprised at just how good though. Lines and scenes from this book are still reverberating in my head. I only just learnt that a film had been made (I KNOW, HOW OUT OF TOUCH AM I?) so must look into that. I bet the book's better!
• Banana Yoshimoto Lizard . Simply beautiful. It's been a very long time since writing moved me to tears (in fact, since Mrs Ramsay died in To the Lighthouse: 'Mr Ramsay stumbling along a passage stretched his arms one dark morning, but, Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, he stretched his arms out. They remained empty.').
• Akira Yoshimura: One Man's Justice unfinished. Nope, I just couldn't get into this.
• Stuart Maconie: Adventures on the High Teas: In search of Middle England. The blurb for this book describes it as a mix of Orwell and Bryson, which is an insult to the both of them. It's fine, but only fine: stick to Notes from a Small Island by Bill instead.

December 2011

• Will Wiles: Care of Wooden Floors. This is an extremely well-constructed novel about a haphazard flat-sitter and an OCD freak.It's pretty funny. Out in February.
• Julian Barnes: A Sense of an Ending. I didn't especially like it, but Booker-prize winning stuff, for sure. I sort of had to read this though.

...and that's it! I'm currently reading On Balance by Adam Phillips, and Room by Emma Donoghue. That'll take me up to 45 (on 43 currently) with only three unfinished. Which isn't bad. I don't think I'll make it 52 books this year, and even a target of 50 is a bit of a push. I told someone the other day that I'd read 47, so I apologise for my poor numeracy/memory.

But, oh, what a year it's been.

[For the above entry you can thank Ellie and Dave who, on January 1st 2011, convinced me that starting a blog about books was a good idea. They were right, as always!]


[EDIT: 19/12/11: Actually I also read Help! by Oliver Burkeman. He writes a column for the grauniad, about self-help, and this is a collection of his essays. Please ignore the 'self-help' tag because it's actually very good. Also I read The Fine Colour of Rust by an Oz writer called P A O'Reilly. It'll be coming out in February, published by the lovely Harper Collins (who supplied several of the above titles). It's very mumsy (lots of middle-aged humour about getting fat and losing sex appeal) but also genuinely affecting in places, as well as laugh out loud. It's an easy, but not patronising, read. Finally, I forgot that I read about half of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus which was the most overrated piece of rubbish to be published this year. Not good at all. I wrote a blog piece about how bad it is [click here to enjoy] and I'm reminded of its terror every time I see the book. Which is currently propping up my CD player.]


[EDIT 2: 19/12/11]: So now let's ''do the math'' because ''math'' is fun. There are 43 books in the list, plus the two I'm reading now, plus the three I forgot = 49. 52 you are so close!]


[EDIT 3: 19/12/11] I forgot Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb too. Hungarian, excellent, dark, hilarious. A must-read for anyone obsessed with death. Current total = 50. These edits are indicative of my having lost my book journal for a couple of months, coupled with a quick scan of my books now.]

Kindle Rant #6617181910101037645

This is a blog post which puts the argument (that is, the argument for 'book books') far better than I could (and there are pictures!):

http://woodgreenbookshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-of-my-bookshelves.html

Book Porn

This is a wonderful site I found earlier.

E-books can never do this:

or this:

There are many more beautiful examples here: http://bookporn.tumblr.com/