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January 02, 2008

2007 Book List

Everyone else is making their lists of books they read in 2007, so here is mine, with some analysis.

A Song Of Stone - Iain Banks
A Spot Of Bother - Mark Haddon
Becoming An Ironman - John Collins
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
Forever Odd - Dean Koontz
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
Notes On A Scandal - Zoe Heller
Number9Dream - David Mitchell
Pilgermann - Russell Hoban
Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austin
Promise Me - Harlan Coban
Pushing Ice - Alistair Reynolds
Schild's Ladder - Greg Egan
Set In Stone - Robert Goddard
Small Steps - Louis Sachar
Space - Stephen Baxter
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Sword In The Storm - David Gemmell
The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
The Husband - Dean Koontz
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Tenderness Of Wolves - Stef Penney
The Testament - John Grisham
The Two Minute Rule - Robert Crais
Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome
Time - Stephen Baxter
Truckers - Terry Pratchett
Unless - Carol Shields
Unnatural Causes - PD James
We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

Of the approximately 30 fiction books, around 1/3 are SF/Fantasy, 1/4 are crime/mystery, 1/4 are by women authors. Only three books are by authors who are not still alive, and nearly half were first published in paperback 2007. So I'm mostly a genre reader, and like picking up new things off the bookshops shelves. Over half the books I liked a lot, and would recommend to friends to read; of the rest, some were averagely good, some passed the time, and four I'd rate as really awful.

Overall I'm pleased with the choices I made. I've discovered some good new authors, cemented my love of hard science fiction, completed all the David Mitchell books, and all the Alistair Reynolds ones currently in paperback.

For 2008, I need to read more back catalog Iain Banks and Terry Pratchet. I want to keep up with Alistair Reynolds and Iain Banks' new SF, avoid quite so much pulp crime fiction, finish off series I'm currently in the middle of from Stephen Baxter and David Gemmell (and maybe even return to the Peter F. Hamilton Night's Dawn trilogy that I abandoned after the first huge volume). Talking of long books, I once read 700 pages of "War and Peace", it might be time this summer to start over and complete it this time. I also need to review my progress through the BBC Big Read list of 100 novels that I promised myself I'd finish one day. And of course, I have to give myself some leeway to pick random new novels from "3 for 2" offers in Books etc. Inevitably, I'll get suckered into some popular bestseller that will turn out to be complete pants (Ukranian tractors anyone? Da Vinci Code?), but even that gives me the curious satisfaction of being able to slag the book off with complete authority.

Reading is great, and my train journey gives me as much as two hours a day to do it during the week, so I'm going to aim higher in 2008 and see if I can get through one book a week this time.

Full 2007 Listing

Posted by se71 at January 2, 2008 11:25 AM

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