booklist 2016

It turns out that having a baby had a very large impact on my reading (and I didn't even manage to write up my annual booklist for 2015 until now!). Apparently I read 63 books in 2015, and 21 in 2016. As someone who thinks of herself as a reader, it was a disorienting year, and one in which I went for large periods of time without even a book on the go. I think not commuting was maybe as big a factor as the actual baby. Whatever the case, 2016 was a lean year for books, and one in which murder mysteries and graphic novels are strongly represented. It wasn't even a strong year in terms of the books themselves, but there were good ones as always.

 Snow by Orhan Pamuk was probably my favourite, it was refreshing to get stuck into it and be reminded of the power of books. It was also transporting and an interesting insight into Turkey and its religious tensions. Although I have to say that maybe three quarters of the way in it started to drag a bit, and lose some direction to my mind. It didn't fully recover by the end, but was still worth finishing and was definitely thought-provoking with some engaging characters.

 Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillop was also very good. She writes this sort of oblique fantasy, for want of a better word, I mean it is straighforwardly fantasy but her stories and their plots alsways feel kind of sideways. It feels refreshing though, and the worlds are beautiful. This story of a kingdom and its shadow world was one of my best reads of the year.

 Lucy Knisley's graphic memoirs are always a fun read, very reflective, very Gen Y I think but I like that (it's my generation after all). I wanted to read her book about getting married recently and her reflections on her relationship and wedding traditions, so first I ended up reading her books about travelling and youth and family, which were also good. 

 Goodwood was a book I picked up on impulse at the library after feeling like I'd seen it around a lot, and it was actually a great choice. It's an Australian mystery/coming of age story set in a small country town, and I think she pulled it off really well. 

 I enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See as well, although I always feel like there can't be any good WWII books left to write. 

 The Robert Galbraith mysteries and Ben Aaronovitch fantasy police procedurals are always good fun.

 So there you have it, I complained about this year but there were a lot of good books after all! Here's the full list:
Career of Evil- Robert Galbraith
Ombria in Shadow- Patricia A. McKillip
How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And other adventures in parenting- Mei-Ling Hopgood
Sweet Danger- Margery Allingham
Slade House- David Mitchell
The Simple Act of Reading- Debra Adelaide (ed.)
Deep Secret- Diana Wynne Jones
Stoner- John Williams
Roadside Picnic- Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
All the Light We Cannot See- Anthony Doerr
Displacement: A Travelogue- Lucy Knisley
An Age of License: A Travelogue- Lucy Knisley
The Case of the Gilded Fly- Edmund Crispin
The Dead in their Vaulted Arches- Alan Bradley
As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust- Alan Bradley
Sea Lovers: Selected stories- Valerie Martin
Snow- Orhan Pamuk
Something New: Tales from a makeshift bride- Lucy Knisley
The Shepherd's Crown- Terry Pratchett
Goodwood- Holly Throsby
The Hanging Tree- Ben Aaronovitch

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

famous first words

Skimming through the internet the other day I came across a reference to a line of startling familiarity, a line that made me realise some first lines stick in your head forever: "Sing Goddess, the rage of Peleus' son Achilles" (funnily enough,  I can never remember the first line proper until I see it, as my friend and I spent much of year 12 Ancient History misquoting it as "rage Achilles, rage on Agamemnon". We were also amused by the fact that 'Xerxes' backwards spelt 'Sexrex'. Yeah, mature I know.) From Homer, The Illiad Ironically, a first line that I find impossible to remember is one of the most recognisable for me. I'm not usually very good at first lines, but there are a few I'd know anywhere... "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" My English classes at university drummed this one into me- the first line of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. I think Chaucer is a genius, but this first line is not quite ...
Read more

To Start With, Quotes

From my little black book. Sign outside Branxton: "Drive carefully, we have two cemetaries, no hospital" Tombstone, Tilba cemetary: "Whiffo gone fishing A free spirited man who is forever in our hearts" "Heinz tomato ketchup makes food taste KETCHUPPY" - tomato sauce bottle "I was just wondering how I ever could have laughed at you" "I hope you'll always laugh at me" The Day Will Dawn, cheesy movie from 1942 "Each man kills the thing he loves" The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde Ad outside Japanese restaurant in Sydney city "Sexy chicken on rice" "I don't own a house or a car, all I have is a borrowed tv, but that's what you get when you take off and travel." Random bus stop conversation “She had a voice with hormones” ‘A Woman’s Secret’, 1949 movie “Oolong Imperial: A work of tea art” Tea rooms in the city “The burdens and the joys of being chosen to be more than a flu...
Read more

on verse

I had alot of time to kill on the bus trip back from Canberra, and so I was reading through my English textbook (The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition, so not too bad at all)for about three hours. This is just so that you understand the cotext in which I came up with the idea for this post. Why do people always associate poetry with rhyme? It doesn't have to be the case. And I think that most people would know that alot of poetry doens't rhyme, or is at least not in rhyming couplets. This is not even a new idea. It's not just these new-fangled poets who dispense with tradition and so rhyme. Old English poetry doesn't rhyme, it alliterates instead. Shakespeare often wrote in blank verse which means NO RHYMING. Robert Browning doesn't always write in rhyme. In short, poetry doesn't necessarily equal rhyme even before the 21st century. Now, I have to confess that I am a bit biased in this as I always thought that rhyming couplets tend to sound silly. And abab...
Read more