One hundred not out

In summary, here's the full century of 2011's books:

January:
1. Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth – Ed Howker and Shiv Malik
2. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thornton Wilder
3. The Broken Bridge – Philip Pullman
4. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
5. The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
6. America Unchained – Dave Gorman
7. The Rats and the Ruling Sea – Robert V.S. Redick
8. The Oxford Murders – Guillermo Martínez
9. The Big Over Easy – Jasper Fforde

February:
10. The Red Wolf Conspiracy – Robert V.S. Redick
11. The Ascent of Rum Doodle – W.E. Bowman
12. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
13. Room – Emma Donoghue
14. The Fourth Bear – Jasper Fforde
15. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
16. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

March:
17. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age – Bohumil Hrabal
18. Reaper Man – Terry Pratchett
19. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo – J.R.R. Tolkien
20. What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America – Thomas Frank
21. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
22. The City and they City – China Miéville
23. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West – Cormac McCarthy
24. What Maisie Knew – Henry James

April:
25. Dear Me – Peter Ustinov
26. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
27. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman – Bruce Robinson
28. Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
29. Caribou Island – David Vann
30. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon

May:
31. Brick Lane – Monica Ali
32. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
33. Cup of Gold – John Steinbeck
34. The Easter Parade – Richard Yates
35. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
36. Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde
37. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
38. The Private Eye Annual 2010 – Ian Hislop (ed.)
39. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
40. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

June:
41. Riders of the Purple Sage – Zane Grey
42. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
43. Ill Fares the Land – Tony Judt
44. Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively
45. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz
46. Fup – Jim Dodge
47. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
48. Domes of Fire – David Eddings
49. Emma – Jane Austen
50. We Need to Talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver

July:
51. The Underground City – Jules Verne
52. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
53. The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred – Carl-Johan Vallgren
54. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
55. A Dance with Dragons – George R.R. Martin
56. The Blasphemer – Nigel Farndale
57. They Came Like Swallows – William Maxwell
58. The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life – Ryszard Kapuściński
59. Beloved – Toni Morrison

August:
60. Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb
61. White Noise – Don DeLillo
62. If on a winter’s night a traveller – Italo Calvino
63. The Order of the Stick: Snips, Snails and Dragon’s Tails – Rich Burlew
64. Affluenza – Oliver James
65. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
66. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
67. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields

September:
68. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt – Nick Hornby
69. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
70. The Beetle – Richard Marsh
71. Maigret and the Idle Burglar – Georges Simenon
72. Lankhmar – Fritz Leiber
73. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
74. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
75. Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

October:
76. The Silver Blade – Sally Gardner
77. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit – Judith Kerr
78. Arrowsmith – Sinclair Lewis
79. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House – Kate Summerscale
80. Ironweed – William Kennedy
81. The Tiger’s Wife – Téa Obreht
82. Twenty Years After – Alexandre Dumas
83. Case Histories – Kate Atkinson
84. The Bride’s Farewell – Meg Rosoff
85. Last Bus to Woodstock – Colin Dexter

November:
86. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
87. The Good Fairies of New York – Martin Millar
88. A Week in December – Sebastian Faulks
89. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
90. Cult Fiction – Ardie Collins

December:
91. The Host – Stephenie Meyer
92. The Affluent Society – John Kenneth Galbraith
93. Moonfleet – J. Meade Falkner
94. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
95. A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
96. A Room With A View – E.M. Forster
97. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
98. Chronicles of Amber – Roger Zelazny
99. The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
100. Matilda – Roald Dahl

Post-match analysis

Just to warn you, this is going to start with a post-match interview where I as myself stupid questions and receive banal answers in response. You may wish to skip to the end. Or not, because that might bore even me. But to continue with the football theme I picked up at half-time, we've gone through squeaky bum time, raced into a lead only to get forced back and camped out on the edge of the penalty area in the final ten minutes. Or to put it another way, it was all going so well until December became an endless string of social engagements. But fortunately I was able to hold on to claim all three points with a last-ditch tackle in the final minute.

Ok, enough of that. Looking back, I can't really say that my opinions have changed on the first four point I made six months ago: it remained a challenge, it was not a problem finding things I wanted to read, I definitely read some things I probably wouldn't have otherwise, and that the blog is a good record for Poisterity (whoever he is).

And I feel pretty much the same about the categories too. I loved the non-fiction and some of it definitely ended up in other categories. I cracked crime and discovered not just classic stuff, plenty of which I want to read more of, but also how broad the genre could be. Still hit and miss on the pre-20th century stuff, but, like the Pulitzer winners, the quality is largely obvious, even if it wasn't always my cup of tea (and as I'm sure y'all know, I might make a lot of tea, but my cup of tea is one without any teabags in). Furthermore, I got excuses to read things I'd been intending to for ages from my bookshelf and got another year of interesting debates from book club (thank you everyone). The colours was an interesting choice, the unknown authors threw up some excellent new discoveries and I have to concede (I say concede, I knew this anyway) that Charlie has fantastic taste and knows what I like. And I used my category for the odds and sods that wouldn't fit anywhere else, usually on the random whims that took me at certain times. I continued to make use of the libraries (yes, cutting and closing them is cultural vandalism) and I still ended up buying more books than I intended to. The more things change...

A few thank yous then, mostly to my readers, whoever you may be and however sporadically you may have looked in on this. So that's you, Mum, Dad, Phil (the only person who commented), Porker, Em, Vik, Rhi, Tim, Cat, Kirsty, Tim, Gareth (the only person who subscribed), Sarah, Jan, anyone else I may have forgotten, and, obviously, Charlie (thank you for telling me not to give up, even if I may have wanted to). So yeah, things change but the world keeps going and so, I suppose do I. I'm still a sentimental at heart though and that's not gonna change any time soon.

Some random shout outs for books that didn't make the top ten (coming up), but that had an influence in some way:
Affluenza – Oliver James: reading the right thing at the right time can be great but also not always helpful.
The Good Fairies of New York – Martin Millar: best random find.
Cult Fiction – Ardie Collins: best book by someone I had a pint with (and a very nice chap he is too).
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy: one of the toughest, bleakest things I've ever picked up, yet still found hard to put down.
Room – Emma Donoghue: probably surprised me the most in that I enjoyed it having not really expected to.
Beloved – Toni Morrison: on the flipside, perhaps the biggest disappointment.
The Blasphemer – Nigel Farndale: most unintentionally hilarious.
A Dance with Dragons – George R.R. Martin: the only hardback I've bought in some time, who was I kidding when I thought I could wait? High expectations and a huge wait aside, it definitely wasn't the best in the series, but here's hoping the final two get back on track.
The Host – Stephenie Meyer: the one I might have been embarrased to be seen reading in public (or private, for that matter).
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë: the classic that I'd never read, had somehow managed to acquire no knowledge of the plot of, and really enjoyed.

And on to the top ten then. Once more, in no particular order, here we go:
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald: pretty much flawless.
The Easter Parade – Richard Yates: depressing but wonderfully captures the lives of ordinary people and the hell that can be their lives.
The Big Over Easy – Jasper Fforde: laugh out loud funny, inventive and held together with a superb plot.
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides: dazzlingly good writing, a tale of youth.
Fup – Jim Dodge: a perfectly formed modern fairy tale.
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafón: a page turner in the best sense of the term.
Matilda – Roald Dahl: I still love it.
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson: much like Nick Hornby, he can make anything he chooses to write about interesting and it kept me entertained while I also had good company, good music and good beer to attend to.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Ramond Carver: short and to the point, I liked it as much as I expected to.
A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan: funny, wise and touching, it broke my heart and put it back together several times during its course.

And that, friends, I believe might be the sound of a fat lady warming up her vocal chords. Smoke me a kipper...

Saving the best

And so it came to pass, that verily did Chris read 100 books in 2011. And lo! he did himself proud. The last book was always likely to be one of my choices purely for sentimental reasons and so I could (hopefully) make sure it was something extra special. Obviously this isn't always easy when you've not read a book before, but it was never my intention to deliberately pick something I'd previously read. As it turned out, having been on the subject of children's favourites recently, I plumped for what was probably my favourite book as a child.

It also turns out that it's still just a bit good. Roald Dahl's Matilda, then, was my final read of the year, finished on New Year's Eve and bringing up my ton. And if I was saving one of my best till last, I hadn't realised Dahl was too – Matilda was the last of what I would classify as his major children's books to be written. If you don't know the story, you probably shouldn't be reading this – not only should you be reading the aforementioned title instead, but I might also disown you.

Anyway, it's classic Dahl – wonderfully grotesque characters, brilliant yet downtrodden heroes in waiting, moral comeuppance, and a perfect happy ending. His understanding of what children want from a story, what they enjoy, how their minds work and what keeps things interesting is pretty much unsurpassed. He doesn't speak down to them and he engages right from the beginning. So many could learn so much from this master craftsman. But ultimately it's the story that captures the imagination and while I may have failed to be the child prodigy reading genius, I can still dream can't I?

Book number: 100
Title: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Category: Chris' choice

99 problems

Again with the length, Chris. A book in a day is doable, regardless of length (within reason), but even so, 500 pages of literary fiction wasn't on paper the quickest read, even factoring in three hours or so of travelling to get to grips with it. But having been recently recommended it very strongly, the fact I'd been meaning to read it for ages anyway, and finally with it having been chosen for a forthcoming book club, it must have been fate. Or something.

And so my penultimate book of the year was Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. It even has the distinction of being a Booker winner, so that's another one I can tick off on that count too. It was also a very good one and it's certainly much easier to read a book in a day if it's good and you're enjoying it and this definitely succeeded on both counts. Set in the Thatcherite heydays of the 1980s, it has everything you would expect from that decade – money, class, politics, homosexuality, sex, drugs, AIDS, snobbery, prejudice and hypocrisy by the shed load.

For the most part a celebration of the decade, at least as far as most of the characters are concerned, for they live lives apart from the masses. Yet throughout there are portents and shadows of things to come and in the third part of the book, things come crashing down as, to mix my metaphors, the dark underbelly of the decade rears its ugly head. The savagery and hypocrisy with which this happens, the limits to the tolerance shown throughout, the destruction of relationships and friendships, leads one to as whether they were really there or if simply it was convenience or the classic fair-weather friend scenario as the protagonist gets hung out to dry.

Throughout it, the lives of the people involved are woven together with skill and the writing is, like much of the subject matter, at least to the characters and possibly the author, a thing of beauty. The imagery and idea of lines is referenced throughout, but whether these things are natural or artificial (superficial?) varies depending on the observer. A coming of age story, a family affair and definitely a moral tale too, this book superbly captures many facets of a decade much maligned, ruled by greed and strife, and does so with a streak of dark humour throughout.

Book number: 99
Title: The Line of Beauty
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Category: Books that have been sat on my bookshelf for too long

Don't look back in amber

With three books left to read and the date rapidly approaching Christmas Eve, it would probably make sense to stick to something short and sweet. Three helpings of Spot the Dog, for example. However, these cursed categories meant that such a plan wasn't really a possibility. And while I like Spot, I also wanted to read what I wanted to read. Which would probably explain why I decided it would be a good idea to get stuck into an 800 page behemoth. In actual fact it was a quintet (or pentad, if you prefer) collected together, but either way it was a bit of a beast.

It was also Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, one of a set of classic fantasy stories that I have now collected all of and read at least half of. And it seemed like a good idea to tackle it at the time. Combining snippets of a modern setting with the true city world, Amber, and the infinite number of reflections, or Shadows, it deals with the royal family, a classic example of blood being thicker than the proverbial. All centuries old, they have many rivalries and friendships as they all play what could happily be called a game of thrones.

Through deceit, lies, memory and skill with arms and words, the reader follows Corwin, Crown Prince of Amber as he tries to pick his way through a series of challenges in order to gain and then protect the throne from not only his siblings, but also a series of outside influences from the Court of Chaos. A masterwork for a reason, the mysteries are unravelled amidst the politicking and the nature of power and those who seek it is brought into question. One thing I will comment on though is the copyediting (or the typesetting), as the book was riddled with so many errors it was ridiculous. I'm aware of how easy it is to make mistakes and I'm sure there are numerous typos throughout the blog, never mind my day job, but the number that slipped through the net in this case was rather silly.

Book number: 98
Title: Chronicles of Amber
Author: Roger Zelazny
Category: Books with colours in the title

The people's princess

Well, ok, not the People's Princess – I get enough of her from the Little Fat One, including a bizarre reenactment of a famous car crash in Paris during a family game, though that's a different story – but rather a princess for the people. Which is perhaps the kind of thing that only happens in fairy stories. And now I have the Monkees stuck in my head. Hmm. You may, quite rightly, wonder what the hell I'm rambling on about this time, but it all kind of makes sense, in my head at least. And in some ways this kind of vaguely anecdotal riffing is quite fitting for a fairy story that is both wonderful in and of itself, as well as holding up a mirror to the genre as a whole.

I refer, of course, to William Goldman's The Princess Bride. Which was right up my street really, and finally made sense of one of those quotes that infiltrate your consciousness somewhere along the lines, yet you have no idea from whence it came. If you know the book or, more likely, the film, you probably know which one. Anyway, it was a name I knew, but knew nothing about and as it turned out, I can only really say I wish I'd known about it sooner.

I've always been a sucker for the fantastic, for a happy ending, and for a well-told tale – this gave me all three. The "author's" narrative interwoven with the story itself added an extra layer to the story, giving it a different perspective and peering closely at the nature of fairies stories and of the nature of storytelling itself – how we deal with tragedy, what we tell people to protect them, and life's hardest lesson, that no, it is very much not fair. Throw in an entertaining cast, full of seemingly archetypal characters, but who all have rather more going for them, a classic adventure yarn, and a narrator of no small skill and you have all the ingredients for a fine novel. Even better, they were blended together successfully in order to create a book worthy of them.

Book number: 97
Title: The Princess Bride
Author: William Goldman
Category: Charlotte's choice

Changing rooms

And so earlier this week, the final book club session of the year was held. Still going strong into its third year now, I'm still enjoying it and every time the mix of people, the range of opinions and the chance to chat with good company and share ideas make it a great experience. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the concept, but I really like it. Even if I feel pretty stupid at times compared to some of the fantastic minds brought to bear on the subject at hand. And I still like the fact it throws up things that I'd not usually choose for myself.

Such as E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. Never read any Forster before now but did rather like it. It was short (a bonus for both book club and this challenge) and amusing, being a satire on English pretensions and values, a social comedy if you will and definitely reminded me of Evelyn Waugh. Which is a good thing, by the way. It did take me a while to get into and I preferred the second part in England more than the opening in Italy, but it was wittily observed and cleverly written. Indeed, stylistically, I'd not have guessed it's now over a century old. Which is also intended as a compliment.

And with a lot of chat about the film adaptation, a viewing of which occurred straight after the discussion, it was certainly very faithful to the book. I liked the way it was put together, even if some of the characters weren't quite how I imagined them and it kept the humour of the story very well. My companion felt it lacked the energy of the book and was, I sense, slightly disappointed by it, but perhaps the more so because she really liked the book. Some cast though and I was glad to have seen it.

Book number: 96
Title: A Room with a View
Author: E.M. Forster
Category: Book club/recommendations