A Year's Worth of Reading: 2009

The beginning of a new year of reading is also, for many people, a time to look back over what was read last year. And so, inspired by my friend Linda I think I’ll try to use some of her categories in addition to a few of my own to look back on what I read in 2009. But first, a few observations about reading (from Ruined by Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz)

“I can vacillate lengthily, and foolishly, over whether to read at random or in some programmed way. I cling to the principle that if randomness determines the universe it might as well determine my reading too.”

“When every so often I have a spasm of needing to get organized, I make lists of books to read. In between reading the books on the list I am sidetracked by the books pressed on me by friends, or the shelved books demanding loudly, after much postponement, to be read right away. . .if only they knew the convoluted agonies of choice.”

Bookworm, Carl Spitzweg

Books read in 2009 : 36

Books started and abandoned: 6
Because I’ve finally caught on to the fact that life is just too short to mess around with books I can’t “get into”, I’m happy to report that I felt no remorse in tossing aside the following books before I’d finished (but not before I wasted too much of my valuable reading time trying to give them a chance.)

• Oh Play that Thing by Roddy Doyle(I don’t like the way he writes and the fact that it’s too damn hard figuring out who’s talking to whom since he doesn’t use quotation marks)

• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (a long, ponderous and silly attempt at writing a page turner a la Dan King)

• That they may Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern (the descriptions of the Irish countryside and the peope who lived there were lovely but I kept falling asleep)

• Bard by Morgan Llewellyn (I should never have let myself be suckered in by the title and the fact that the author is Welsh)

• Land Circle by Linda Hasselstrom (just about made it through this one because some of her essays about women ranchers in Montana kept me reading.)

• Here there be Dragons by James Owen (I have to admit I picked this out solely because of the title. Perhaps I was expecting another Wizard of Earthsea but this definitely was not it. Although I loved the cover illustration )

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio: 21/15

Male/Female authors ratio: 16/15

Books by the same author: 7

• Good evening Mrs Craven, and One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
• A Long, Long Way, and the Secret Scriptures by Sebastian Barry
• Deadman’s Ransom, Monk’s Hood, and St. Peter’s Fair by Ellis Peters

Re-Reads: 2

• One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
• Mysticism for Modern Times, Willigis Jaeger

Oldest: Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (published between 1939 and 1944)

Newest: The Secret Scriptures,Sebastian Barry (2008)

Best Title: Ruined by Reading by Lynn Sharon Schwartz

In Translation: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson

Set in Great Britain - 11

Favorite: A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry

I was captivated by this book and kept marveling at how such a grim subject (World War I) could be written about in such a beautiful way. Willie Dunne, a young Irish boy barely 18 years old goes off to fight in WWI - fighting for the English - while back at home in his native Dublin the fight for independence is causing him to confront political issues he had never thought about before...especially as the devoted son of a loving father who has been a policeman, loyal to king and country, all his life. The book gives us a poignant look into Willie's heart as he struggles with his feelings for his family, the girl he hopes to marry, his country and his fellow soldiers in his regiment, while all the while facing the horror and violence of trench warfare. All of this would be gripping enough, but in the hands of a writer like Sebastian Barry it becomes the kind of book that is hard to put down if for no other reason than the way its written. Here's an example:

"They stood there two feet apart in all that vale of tears, one man was asking another how he was, the other asking how the other was, the one not knowing truly what the world was, the other not knowing either. One nodded to the other now in an expression of understanding without understanding, of saying without breathing a word. And the other nodded back to the other, knowing nothing. Not this new world of terminality and astonishing dismay, of extremity of ruin and exaggeration of misery. And Father Buckley did not know anything but grief, and Willie Dunne on that black day likewise."

Shortest and Sweetest: Lights on a Ground of Darkness by Ted Kooser
Only 60 pages, but every bit of it was beautifully written and meant to be savored (and what else would you expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate of the U.S.?) It’s a gentle tribute to his family, written in the form of a reminiscence of a summer visit to his maternal grandparents who lived in Guttenberg, a sleepy little Iowa Mississippi River town:

"But for now it is summer, 1949, and I am a little boy. Our time with our grandparents is over. My father has come to drive us home. Before we leave, he fills his arms with tiger lilies picked beside the house, and we start out walking up the gravel road to the cemetery. It is now too late for irises. They have shriveled to rags. My sister and I walk on either side of him. I look back and see my grandmother is stooped in her garden, picking a few vegetables for us to take home. My uncle shuffles across the yard toward the filling station..."

Best Spiritual Reading: From Sand to Solid Ground by Michael Morewood,
and Radical Optimism by Beatrice Brueau.

And finally...

• Books from the library: 5
• Books from Paperbackswap: 16
• Books purchased from Alibris.com:10
• Books purchased in a bookstore: 3
• Books found on my bookshelves: 2