Books read up to August 2011

1. Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian
2. Love and Freindship and other early works by Jane Austen
3. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
4. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
5. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
6. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
7. Glass Houses by Rachel Caine
8. The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine
9. Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
10. Camille/La Dame aux Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils
11. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
12. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
13. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
14. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
15. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
16. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
17. Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine
18. Feast of Fools by Rachel Caine
19. Lord of Misrule by Rachel Caine
20. Carpe Corpus by Rachel Caine
21. Fade Out by Rachel Caine
22. Kiss of Death by Rachel Caine
23. The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter
24. Checkout Girl by Tazeen Ahmad
25. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
26. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
27. The End of Alice by AM Homes
28. The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham
29. The Sexual Life of Catherine M by Catherine Millet
30. The Fermata by Nicholson Baker
31. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
32. Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer
33. The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
34. Changeover by Diana Wynne Jones
35. Wilkins' Tooth by Diana Wynne Jones
36. The Ogre Downstairs by Diana Wynne Jones
37. Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones
38. Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones
39. Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
40. Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones
41. Frost in May by Antonia White
42. How Fiction Works by James Woods
43. A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
44. Selections from The Left Bank by Jean Rhys
45. Quartet by Jean Rhys
46. Kiss Chase by Fiona Walker
47. After Leaving Mr McKenzie by Jean Rhys
48. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
49. Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys

And there I finally sickened of Goodreads and logging what I was reading, and giving everything 3, 4 or 5 stars even though some of it was the utterest crap but had kept me turning the pages. 

But I still have the impulse to log what I'm reading, so I've started a tumblr where all I need do is post the name and cover of the book I've just finished, then I can always add a review (or thoughts) here or there if I feel I want to.

Books Read 2010

1. Henry VI Part II (Arden edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Ronald Knowles
2. Henry VI Part III (Arden edition) – William Shakespeare, ed John D Cox & Eric Rasmussen
3. Swordspoint – Ellen Kushner
4. A Memoir – Tim Pat Coogan
5. Titus Andronicus (Arden edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Jonathan Bate
6. King Edward III (New Cambridge edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Giorgio Melchiori
7. Shakespeare in Performance: The Henry VI Plays – Stuart Hampton-Reeves & Carol Chillington Rutter
8. Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today – Carol Chillington Rutter & Faith Evans
9. Richard III (Oxford edition) – William Shakespeare, ed John Jowett
10. Frederica – Georgette Heyer
11. The Evening of the Holiday – Shirley Hazzard
12. The White Castle – Orhan Pamuk
13. Enchanted Glass – Diana Wynne Jones
14. Actors on Shakespeare: Henry VI Part I – David Oyelowo
15. Venus and Adonis – William Shakespeare
16. The Rape of Lucrece – William Shakespeare
17. Claymore vol 1 – Norihiro Yagi
18. Fullmetal Alchemist vol 1 – Hiromu Arakawa
19. 20^th Century Boys vol 1 – Naoki Urasawa
20. The Demon's Lexicon – Sarah Rees Brennan
21. The Comedy of Errors (Oxford edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Charles Whitworth
22. Year of the King – Antony Sher
23. Love's Labour's Lost (Arden edition) – William Shakespeare, ed H R Woudhuysen
24. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – NK Jemisin
25. Kushiel's Dart – Jacqueline Carey
26. At the Bottom of the River – Jamaica Kincaid
27. Polyglot: How I Learn Languages – Kato Lomb
28. The Pendragon Legend – Antal Szerb
29. A Civil Contract – Georgette Heyer
30. Soulless – Gail Carriger
31. Ash – Malinda Lo
32. Claymore vol 2 – Norihiro Yagi
33. Claymore vol 3 – Norihiro Yagi
34. Fullmetal Alchemist vol 2 – Hiromu Arakawa
35. African Psycho – Alain Mabanckou
36. The Time of the Dark – Barbara Hambly
37. The Walls of Air – Barbara Hambly
38. The Bay of Noon – Shirley Hazzard
39. The Armies of Daylight – Barbara Hambly
40. Stories vol 1 (Everyman) – Anton Chekhov
41. Private Arrangements – Sherry Thomas
42. Howl's Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones
43. Changeless – Gail Carriger
44. Skyscraper – Faith Baldwin
45. In the Garden of Iden – Kage Baker
46. Sky Coyote – Kage Baker
47. Doppelganger – Marie Brennan
48. Mendoza in Hollywood – Kage Baker
49. The Graveyard Game – Kage Baker
50. Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers – Kage Baker
51. The Life of the World to Come – Kage Baker
52. The Children of the Company – Kage Baker
53. The Machine's Child – Kage Baker
54. Lara – Bernardine Evaristo
55. Gods and Pawns – Kage Baker
56. The Sons of Heaven – Kage Baker
57. The Curse of Chalion – Lois McMaster Bujold
58. Castle in the Air – Diana Wynne Jones
59. Ship of Fools – Fintan O'Toole
60. Witch – Marie Brennan
61. Tickling the English – Dara O Briain
62. More Pricks Than Kicks – Samuel Beckett
63. The Scar – China Mieville
64. A Shadow in Summer – Daniel Abraham
65. Alice Adams – Booth Tarkington
66. Booklife – Jeff VanderMeer
67. The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot – Charles Baxter
68. Alanna: The First Adventure – Tamora Pierce
69. In the Hand of the Goddess – Tamora Pierce
70. The Woman Who Rides Like A Man – Tamora Pierce
71. Lioness Rampant – Tamora Pierce
72. Wild Magic – Tamora Pierce
73. Wolf-Speaker – Tamora Pierce
74. The Emperor Mage – Tamora Pierce
75. Realms of the Gods – Tamora Pierce
76. The Unstrung Harp – Edward Gorey
77. Whose Body? – Dorothy L Sayers
78. Clouds of Witness – Dorothy L Sayers
79. Unnatural Death – Dorothy L Sayers
80. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy L Sayers
81. Teaching Black Literature – Suzanne Scafe
82. Lord Peter Views the Body – Dorothy L Sayers
83. Strong Poison – Dorothy L Sayers
84. Blameless – Gail Carriger
85. The Man in the Brown Suit – Agatha Christie
86. The Documents in the Case – Dorothy L Sayers
87. The Spirit Thief – Rachel Aaron
88. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
89. The Poison Throne – Celine Kiernan
90. The Crowded Shadows – Celine Kiernan
91. The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
92. Five Red Herrings – Dorothy L Sayers
93. The Big Four – Agatha Christie
94. Have His Carcase – Dorothy L Sayers
95. The Rebel Prince – Celine Kiernan
96. Vanity Fair - WM Thackeray

Books Read 2009

1. Silas Marner – George Eliot
2. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld – Patricia McKillip
3. Walking on Glass – Iain Banks
4. Burmese Days – George Orwell
5. Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
6. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
7. Victory of Eagles – Naomi Novik
8. Food and Nutrition: Customs and Culture – Paul Fieldhouse
9. The Vendetta – Honore de Balzac
10. In the Ditch – Buchi Emecheta
11. Second-Class Citizen – Buchi Emecheta
12. Sarrasine – Honore de Balzac
13. A Passion in the Desert – Honore de Balzac
14. A Clergyman's Daughter – George Orwell
15. Pride Against Prejudice: A Personal Politics of Disability – Jenny Morris
16. White Boots – Noel Streatfeild
17. The Icarus Girl – Helen Oyeyemi
18. The Secret of Chimneys – Agatha Christie
19. The Street – Ann Petry
20. The Modern World – Steph Swainston
21. Romola – George Eliot
22. Baby-Led Weaning – Gill Rapley & Tracey Murkett
23. Talk to the Snail – Stephen Clarke
24. The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
25. Gabriel's Story – David Anthony Durham
26. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
27. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
28. Continent – Jim Crace
29. First Love, Last Rites – Ian McEwan
30. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
31. The Ministry of Pain – Dubravka Ugresic
32. Leaf Storm – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. Cliffs of Fall – Shirley Hazzard
34. Only Half of Me – Rageh Omaar
35. The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros
36. The Portable Rabelais – Francois Rabelais (tr. Samuel Putnam)
37. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favourite Books – ed. J Peder Zane
38. Some Tame Gazelle – Barbara Pym
39. Weep Not, Child – Ngugi wa Thiong'o
40. Bury My Heart at WH Smith's – Brian Aldiss
41. Dubliners – James Joyce
42. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire – Amanda Foreman
43. Lord of Scoundrels – Loretta Chase
44. How to Write a Novel – John Braine
45. Excellent Women – Barbara Pym
46. Bloodchild & other stories – Octavia E Butler
47. Every Light in the House Burnin' – Andrea Levy
48. The Thief's Gamble – Juliet E McKenna
49. Good Behaviour – Molly Keane
50. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
51. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
52. The Paris Review Interviews, vol 1
53. The Paris Review Interviews, vol 2
54. Not Quite A Lady – Loretta Chase
55. People in Glass Houses – Shirley Hazzard
56. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
57. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
58. The Gift of Stones – Jim Crace
59. Paris on a Plate: A Gastronomic Diary – Stephen Downes
60. Affinity – Sarah Waters
61. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
62. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
63. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
64. The Fat Man in History – Peter Carey
65. The Robber Bridegroom – Eudora Welty
66. The Convenient Marriage – Georgette Heyer
67. Simply Perfect – Mary Balogh
68. Jane and Prudence – Barbara Pym
69. Almayer's Folly – Joseph Conrad
70. The Touchstone – Edith Wharton
71. In Between the Sheets – Ian McEwan
72. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think – Brian Wansink
73. The Spymaster's Lady – Joanna Bourne
74. Shakespeare is Hard, But So is Life – Fintan O'Toole
75. The Taming of the Shrew (New Cambridge edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Ann Thompson
76. Henry VI Part I (Arden edition) – William Shakespeare, ed Edward Burns
77. A Natural History of Latin – Tore Janson
78. The Normans and their Myth – RHC Davis
79. Poison Study – Maria V Snyder
80. Magic Study – Maria V Snyder
81. Fire Study – Maria V Snyder

Books Read 2008

1. The Secret Adversary – Agatha Christie
2. The Tain – tr. Thomas Kinsella
3. Northern Lights – Philip Pullman
4. The Subtle Knife – Philip Pullman
5. The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman
6. The Murder on the Links – Agatha Christie
7. Lyra's Oxford – Philip Pullman
8. Luck in the Shadows – Lynn Flewelling
9. Stalking Darkness – Lynn Flewelling
10. Falling Free – Lois McMaster Bujold
11. Shards of Honor – Lois McMaster Bujold
12. Barrayar – Lois McMaster Bujold
13. Cotillion – Georgette Heyer
14. The Warrior's Apprentice – Lois McMaster Bujold
15. The Vor Game – Lois McMaster Bujold
16. Cetaganda – Lois McMaster Bujold
17. Ethan of Athos – Lois McMaster Bujold
18. Borders of Infinity – Lois McMaster Bujold
19. Brothers in Arms – Lois McMaster Bujold
20. Mirror Dance – Lois McMaster Bujold
21. Memory – Lois McMaster Bujold
22. Komarr – Lois McMaster Bujold
23. Intellectual Impostures – Jean Bricmont & Alan Sokal
24. A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold
25. The Theory & Practice of Gamesmanship; or, The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating – Stephen Potter
26. Margaret Thatcher, Vol 1: The Grocer's Daughter – John Campbell
27. Master & Commander – Patrick O'Brian
28. Chart Throb – Ben Elton
29. The Year of Our War – Steph Swainston
30. These Old Shades – Georgette Heyer
31. Reading Comics – Douglas Wolk
32. Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
33. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
34. Vox – Nicholson Baker
35. In the Garden of Iden – Kage Baker
36. Eugenie Grandet – Honore de Balzac
37. The Professor – Charlotte Bronte
38. On Writing – Stephen King
39. The Jewels of Aptor – Samuel R Delany
40. My 'Dam Life: Three Years in Holland – Sean Condon
41. How Novels Work – John Mullan
42. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
43. Heat – Bill Buford
44. Temeraire – Naomi Novik
45. Throne of Jade – Naomi Novik
46. The Hounds of the Morrigan – Pat O'Shea
47. Wideacre – Philippa Gregory
48. The Family Trade – Charles Stross
49. The Hidden Family – Charles Stross
50. Poirot Investigates – Agatha Christie
51. Brass – Helen Walsh
52. Cold Water – Gwendoline Riley
53. The Dying of Delight – Clare Sudbery
54. A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers – Hugh Kenner
55. 1916: The Easter Rising – Tim Pat Coogan
56. Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion – Charles Townshend
57. Empire in Black and Gold – Adrian Tchaikovsky
58. No Present Like Time – Steph Swainston
59. Black Powder War – Naomi Novik
60. Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch
61. Ghostwritten – David Mitchell
62. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
63. Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
64. Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
65. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
66. Empire of Ivory – Naomi Novik
67. The Grand Sophy – Georgette Heyer
68. Desperate Remedies – Thomas Hardy
69. Under the Greenwood Tree – Thomas Hardy
70. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement – I A Richards
71. A Pair of Blue Eyes – Thomas Hardy
72. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
73. The Lifted Veil – George Eliot
74. Brother Jacob – George Eliot
75. Piano Notes – Charles Rosen
76. Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell
77. Daisy Miller – Henry James

Fail Again, Try Again

Well, I've never been good at sticking to structured plans, whether for reading, eating, exercising or any of the other ways I try to "improve" myself. I knew this when I chose the sidebar quote. 

So let's try being descriptive rather than prescriptive, just for one post. Here is a list of the books currently piled beside my bed, in the order they are piled in, which is partly based on size and partly on reading order. The bottom half of pile 2 (from Steve Jones down) is from the local library and the bottom two books of pile 3 are from the university library:

Pile 1, from top to bottom

Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity (about to re-read)

Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine (unread)

Jo Walton, Farthing (unread)

Mike Carey, The Devil You Know (unread)

Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun Vol 1: Shadow and Claw (partially read, need to re-read from beginning)

Arthur C Clarke, Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! (for dipping in and out of)

Ian McEwan, Atonement (unread)

Kage Baker, In The Garden of Iden (unread)

Samuel R Delany, The Motion of Light on Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing 1960-1965 (unread)

Samuel R Delany, The Jewels of Aptor (unread)

Junot Diaz, Drown (unread)

Nicholson Baker, Vox (unread)

Pile 2, from top to bottom

Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory (currently reading)

Saki, The Complete Short Stories (currently reading)

Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing (unread)

The Paris Review Interviews Vol 1 (dipping in and out of)

Steve Jones, The Language of the Genes (unread)

The Enthusiast Field Guide to Poetry (dipping in and out of)

Steph Swainston, The Year of Our War (read)

Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades (read)

Nigel Groom, The Perfume Companion: A Connoisseur's Guide (unread)

Marge Piercy, So You Want To Write? (read)

John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher Vol 2: The Iron Lady (unread)

Pile 3, from top to bottom

Steven Rose, The Chemistry of Life (dipping in and out of)

Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (read)

Carol Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (unread)

So, I wonder how long it will take me to get through that lot?! At the moment I truly want to read all of those books. By the time I get around to some of them, my enthusiasm will have waned and there will be other things I'm more in the mood for reading. I'm wondering whether I should be more lenient with myself about putting certain books on ice and getting on with the books that are seizing my attention in the here and now. 

A case in point: I bought The Wasp Factory a couple of weeks ago on impulse at a train station. I've never read it, even though it was a popular book in my friendship group when we were around 15 years old. When I bought it I was eager to read it, and I think if I'd started reading it straight away I probably would have sped through it in a couple of days. But I put off reading it because a) there were library books I felt I needed to read and return, b) there was a book belonging to a friend I felt I needed to read and return, and c) I think I was subconsciously punishing myself for being so impatient/impulsive as to buy a shiny new, expensive copy rather than waiting for a much cheaper second-hand copy (three of which I found for a fraction of the price the following day). Finally I started to read The Wasp Factory. Now I'm about a third of the way through and haven't picked it up for about a week. My enthusiasm has dissipated. But out of some notion of trying to discipline myself, I'm not allowing myself to read any other fiction until I've finished it. I'm starting to think this may be wrong, as the energy built up around the books in the pile will also have dissipated by then, and the whole cycle will keep going on (and costing me money as I keep buying new books I can get excited about... in fact this explains the bulging shelves of unread books in my room!)

So, I think I need to be easier on myself about putting books aside. I think what I'm scared of is my tendency to skim through or surf over huge quantities of information/narrative at a very superficial level, and that the pile of books put aside will become a tottering tower and I'll never finish a book again. But I'm in charge here (it strikes me, re-reading what I've read above, that I'm talking about myself as if I were a separate person... if you catch my drift) and I don't have to let it go that far.

The plan: tonight I will have another crack at The Wasp Factory and if I don't make substantial headway then I will lay it aside, without stressing about it, and take up the book which is calling to me the most!

List: Jane Smiley's 101 Books

From Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I will periodically update this post and strike through books as I read them. This isn't part of a particular challenge, though I suppose I could adopt it as my list if I tackle the 101 Books in 1001 days challenge.

1. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

2. Author unknown, The Saga of the People of Laxardal

3. Snorri Sturluson, Egil's Saga

4. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

5. Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron

6. Anonymous, Lazarillo de Tormes

7. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, vols 1 & 2

8. Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves

9. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

10. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Roxana

11. Samuel Richardson, Pamela

12. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

13. Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote

14. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

15. Voltaire, Candide

16. Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

17. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

18. The Marquis de Sade, Justine

19. Sir Walter Scott, The Tale of Old Mortality, The Bride of Lammermoor

20. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

21. Jane Austen, Persuasion

22. James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

23. Stendahl, The Red and the Black

24. Nicolai Gogol, Taras Bulba

25. Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

26. Honore de Balzac, Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette

27. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

28. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

29. William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

30. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

31. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or the Whale

32. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

33. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

34. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

35. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, The Moonstone

36. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

37. Emile Zola, Therese Raquin

38. Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset, The Eustace Diamonds

39. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

40. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

41. George Eliot, Middlemarch

42. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

43. Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, The Awkward Age

44. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

45. Bram Stoker, Dracula

46. Kate Chopin, The Awakening

47. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

48. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

49. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

50. Max Beerbohm, The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford Love Story

51. Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

52. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

53. Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter, volume I, The Wreath

54. James Joyce, Ulysses

55. Italo Svevo, Zeno's Conscience

56. E M Forster, A Passage to India

57. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

58. Franz Kafka, The Trial

59. Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers

60. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

61. D H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

62. Virginia Woolf, Orlando

63. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

64. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, volume 1

65. Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don

66. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

67. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

68. P G Wodehouse, The Return of Jeeves, Bertie Wooster Sees It Through, Spring Fever, The Butler Did It

69. T H White, The Once and Future King

70. Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children

71. Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters

72. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

73. Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows

74. Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, Don't Tell Alfred

75. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

76. Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine

77. Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

78. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

79. John Gardner, Grendel

80. Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women

81. Naguib Mahfouz, The Harafish

82. Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

83. David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?

84. Muriel Spark, Loitering With Intent

85. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

86. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

87. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John

88. J M Coetzee, Foe

89. Toni Morrison, Beloved

90. A S Byatt, Possession

91. Nicholson Baker, Vox

92. Garrison Keillor, WLT: A Radio Romance

93. Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

94. Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

95. Francine Prose, Guided Tours of Hell

96. Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life

97. Arnost Lustig, Lovely Green Eyes

98. Zadie Smith, White Teeth

99. John Updike, The Complete Henry Bech

100. Ian McEwan, Atonement

101. Jennifer Egan, Look at Me

Reading the Author Challenge: Jane Austen

So, I had no idea (though I should have guessed) that there was this whole internet subculture of reading challenge blogs, but seeing as I am the queen of (mostly unfinished) reading lists and challenges, count me in!

This month, pretty much all of my reading for pleasure has been an attempt at Jane Austen's novels (and major fragments) in sequence, so I was really pleased to find this challenge to join. The "in sequence" bit has been a bit of a pain, actually, as Austen's books were not published in the sequence they were written, and some were published posthumously. Also, some of the novels were revised many years after they were written, but before publication, and scholars don't always agree as to the sequence of this work. What I really wanted was to get a sense of the development in Austen's style and thematic concerns, but because of the factors mentioned above, it's a more complicated question than I thought at first. I think if I were to do another Austen re-read (!) in the future, I would read the books in a slightly different sequence to the one I've read them in this month.

This month's order:

Lady Susan

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice

Northanger Abbey

The Watsons

Mansfield Park

Emma

Persuasion

Sanditon 

Revised order:

Lady Susan

Northanger Abbey

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice

The Watsons

Mansfield Park

Emma

Persuasion

Sanditon

The reason for the revised order is what I found to be the dramatic change in tone between the earlier books and the later books. After reading Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, which are very upbeat, sparky books, I was really struck, when I read The Watsons and Mansfield Park, with how much more complex and downbeat they were. When I did some research and found out that there was pretty much a decade where Austen didn't write (apart from the unfinished fragment of The Watsons) or publish any fiction, probably due to her uncertain family circumstances, and then the first book after this hiatus was Mansfield Park, it all became clear. I think it was more of a shock to go from the youthful sarcasm and high spirits of Northanger Abbey to The Watsons and Mansfield Park than it would have been to go from the more sedate perfection of Pride and Prejudice to the later books, and so that's why, if I had my time over again, I'd read Northanger Abbey earlier in the list. I've placed it before Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice as, whether or not it was started before them, it probably didn't get revised before publication, whereas S&S and P&P both went through considerable rewriting before attaining their final form.

So, at the moment I'm nearly finished Emma, with Persuasion and Sanditon to go. More Jane Austen thoughts soon!