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Notes -
Like you, my new year's resolution was to read at least 26 books this year from start to finish*. It's not quite the end of the year and I'm fairly confident I'll add Cryptonomicon to the list before January 1st, but seeing as we're all doing it, here's my list. At the time of writing I've read 28 books from start to finish this year (16 by male writers, 12 by female), in chronological order:
Rejection (#4 fiction) – in spite of certain reservations, I can't deny that this was one of the most entertaining books I read this year, primarily on the strength of its first three stories. It is a terminally online brainrot novel: it's also pretty good.
Katalin Street – a solid novel which offered me some insight into the experiences of Hungarian Jews during and after the second world war, which I'll never read again.
Boy Parts (#3 fiction) – wonderfully nasty. Wears its influences on its sleeve (it's basically "what if, instead of an American male stockbroker, Patrick Bateman was a female British fetish photographer?") but puts enough of a spin on it to carve out its own identity. Its protagonist (as a friend of mine put it, a "female fuckboy") is vicious and awful, but never to the point of feeling like a caricature, and it made me empathise with one of her victims a great deal. The only thing that will date this book to the early 2020s is the insincere woke window dressing: no one is fooled by the token trans man character. It doesn't matter what you "identify" as: the message of the book, to me, was that there are men and there are women, and sometimes men are awful to women but women can also be awful to men, and there's nothing remotely "empowering" about the latter.
The Trial – Dull as dishwater and a chore to get through. I loved Metamorphosis, so I don't know what kind of off-day Kafka was having when he wrote this. Numerous artistic works have induced the "Kafkaesque" sensation far better than the work widely credited with introducing it.
Montaillou – I read this extremely dry academic work for research, and it was extremely difficult to get through but occasionally interesting.
Orbán: Europe's New Strongman (#2 non-fiction) – I read this for research, but found it eminently readable and informative. Highly recommended if you're interested in the modern far-right and democratic backsliding.
Kiki de Montparnasse – a biography of some French woman who appeared in photos in the 1920s, in the form of a graphic novel. It was fine.
The Garden of Forking Paths – a short collection of several of Borges's stories, including the one of the same name. Thought-provoking and prescient.
The Door – also by Magda Szabo, author of Katalin Street above. Longer, slower-paced and not as good.
The Disaster Artist (#3 non-fiction) – OH HAI MARK. The most purely entertaining work of non-fiction I've read all year. I imagine even someone who's never seen The Room would find it interesting, particularly in its examination of life at the bottom of the Hollywood ladder. Virtually all Hollywood memoirs are by people who've succeeded there and hence chock-full of survivorship bias-laden advice about the importance of working hard and never giving up on your dreams: it's still refreshing (and quite sad) to be reminded that you can be strikingly handsome, a decent actor, have the relevant contacts, be hard-working, determined – and still not make it. Also vastly superior to its workmanlike film adaptation.
Mina's Matchbox – fine, but some of these modern Japanese novels feel a bit formulaic.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – pretty cool, I love anything Lovecraft-adjacent.
Spoilt Rotten (#5 non-fiction) – who doesn't like a phlegmatic, digressive rant about how England sucks because of woke?
The Man in the High Castle – interesting and provocative, but doesn't really work as a novel (unlike my beloved A Scanner Darkly). Constantly jumps between a diverse collection of characters whose plotlines barely intersect and few of which have any kind of escalation or payoff. A "slice of life" alternate history novel, if such a thing exists.
The Perfect Heresy – like Montaillou, I read this extremely dry academic work for research, and like Montaillou it was extremely difficult to get through but occasionally interesting.
Unsong – technically my second read, although Scott edited it quite significantly from the web serial version. As I said a few months ago, a mixed bag. Scott is nowhere near as good at writing fiction as he is at writing blog posts – but his blog posts are among the best in the world, so he shouldn't feel too bad about that.
It Starts with the Egg – I read (skimmed, really) this one for research. Very informative.
The Secret of our Success (#1 non-fiction) – fascinating, one of those tremendous works of pop science that makes you go "ohhhhh that makes so much sense" every other page.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (#5 fiction) – tore through it in three days. When Christie's on form, you can't beat her. Best if you go into it blind. Going to see The Mousetrap tomorrow night, can't wait.
Free – comparisons with Elena Ferrante are apt. An interesting and informative eyewitness memoir of Albania's difficult transition from socialism to a market economy.
Speaker for the Dead – I loved Ender's Game, but alas can't say the same about the sequel. Found it quite dull, honestly.
Stories of Your Life – I loved it almost as much as Chiang's other collection, Exhalation. Highly recommended.
The Year of Magical Thinking (#4 non-fiction) – the only work of non-fiction that made me tear up this year. Essential reading for anyone who's lost a spouse, and anyone who doesn't want to.
The Remains of the Day – I didn't like it as much as Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, but it was still really good. Further thoughts.
Doxology (worst book of the year) – I hated this book so much I ranted about it for several hundred words here. The most consistently annoyed I've felt reading a book all year – indeed, perhaps for the last decade. I find it hard to imagine a person who would enjoy reading this book, even if (unlike me) they agreed with its politics or had a particular interest in the subject matter (New York's punk and indie rock scene in the 80s and 90s). Irredeemable trash. Please don't let Zink publish another book again. This isn't just a question of a plot development that didn't pass the smell test or a single unlikeable character: on a stylistic level, her writing is fundamentally, irretrievably bad.
The Outsiders – the best book I've ever read that was written by a 16-year-old, not that that's saying much.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (#1 fiction) – I had a feeling halfway through that this would top my list for the year's fiction. Granted that I've only read one book from start to finish since, but nothing is yet to dethrone it, even after reflecting on the other books I read this year. A lot of you disagreed with my gushing, but misgivings about its politics aside, I simply cannot deny the emotional impact this book had on me. Any novel that can make me feel like I know its characters personally and desperately want them to get what's best for them is doing something right. Heartbreaking and moving.
The Story of a New Name – as I said, I can really admire what Ferrante is doing on an intellectual level, and yet her novels for the most part leave me cold. The impact would have been heightened were her books not so frightfully slow.
Cryptonomicon (#2 fiction) – what can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? The silly parts (elaborate descriptions of the mechanics of eating Cap'n Crunch cereal; the process by which a family of mathematicians divvy up their mother's legacy; some hackers cracking into their partner's computer, only to find that he's using it tocompose a Penthouse letter about he and his wife's sexual fantasies ) are among the silliest of any book I've ever read. In the hands of a lesser writer (say, Stephen King) I'd say they're fluff which should be trimmed for pacing's sake – but it's hard to care that these narrative digressions have nothing really to do with any of the four main plot threads when I'm literally laughing out loud, which few books can make me do. On the other hand, the descriptions of the brutality of Imperial Japan's southeast Asian campaign are hauntingly gut-wrenching, and Stephenson succeeded in making me care about his characters to the point that I wanted the best for them by the end. It must be in the top five longest books I've ever read, but the page count felt entirely earned and at no point did I feel the pace dragging (which is more than can be said of Atlas Shrugged and Gone with the Wind – still good books, to be clear). A staggering achievement.
*Thereby excluding The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I started reading last December and which probably would have made my top 5 for fiction had it been included.
Interesting, in my accounting I put books in the year I finished them. Probably because the point of the exercise for me is actually finishing books, rather than being in the middle of so many books that Mrs. FiveHour yells at me because they're all over the place in our bedroom.
I really do need to read the Outsiders at some point.
The edition of The Outsiders I read was a mere 216 pages, you could comfortably read it in a few hours if you were so inclined.
I'll have to pick up a copy next time I take a weekend trip.
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