Reading

Because I’m a nerd, I like to keep track of all the fun books I read each year, partly to prove to myself that my life isn’t entirely devoted to analysing Icelandic literature, partly to remember what I was reading when (not least to prevent me from buying the same book twice. Which I’ve done. More than once.)

Now, If I was a real nerd, I’d also list the short stories and magazines I’ve devoured — but seriously. Books are enough. (Loophole: collections of short stories make the list, just because.)

Now reading: Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore; Lycanthia; or the children of wolves by Tanith Lee, Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint — and basically not moving quickly on anything but reference books (for the novel) because lately I’m reading much less and writing much more. C’est la vie.

But for the curious or desperately bored, here are Les Listes:

Read in 2012

1. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
2. Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan
3. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
4. Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin
5. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
6. Bloodstock and Other Stories by Margaret Irwin
7. Galore by Michael Crummey

Read in 2011

1. The Rebel Prince by Celine Kiernan
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
3. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
4. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
5. The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar
6. When Fox is a Thousand by Larissa Lai
7. [This lull in the list brought to you by the completion of my PhD. Regularly scheduled reading will resume shortly.]
8. The Library of Forgotten Books by Rjurik Davidson
9. Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts
10. Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy
11. The Door to Lost Things by Claude Lalumière
12. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
13. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
14. Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts
15. By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
16. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
17. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
18. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
19. By the Light of My Father’s Smile by Alice Walker
20. The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
21. Tha Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
22. In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
23. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
24. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
25. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
26. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
27. Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
28. Debris, by Jo Anderton
29. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
30. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
31. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf
32. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
33. Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
34. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
35. The Water-Method Man by John Irving
36. The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman
37. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
38. These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

Read in 2010

1. Wonders of a Godless World by Andrew McGahan
2. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
3. The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan
4. The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
5. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
6. The Crowded Shadows by Celine Kiernan
7. Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter
8. Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey
9. De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
10. Dracula by Bram Stoker
11. Dry by Augusten Burroughs
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13. Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
14. Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth
15. Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas
16. The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
17. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
18. Joe Cinque’s Consolation by Helen Garner
19. The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales by Angela Slatter
20. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
21. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
22. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
23. Rosa and the Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins
24. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
25. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
26. Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
27. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
28. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
29. Galore by Michael Crummey
30. The Grifters by Jim Thompson
31. Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott
32. Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson
33. Blackout by Connie Willis
34. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
35. Bleed by Peter M. Ball
36. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
37. Spiel by David Sornig
38. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
39. Blood Countess by Tara Moss
40. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg
41. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
42. Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham
43. Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
44. The City and The City by China Mieville

Read in 2009

1. Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
2. Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman
3. Willful Creatures. Stories by Aimee Bender
4. Kissing the Witch. Old Stories in New Skins by Emma Donoghue
5. The Complete Stories by David Malouf
6. Dogboy by Eva Hornung
7. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
8. Ransom by David Malouf
9. Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman
10. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
11. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr
13. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
14. St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
15. The Wood Wife by Terry Windling
16. Horn by Peter M. Ball
17. Icelandic Journals 1871 & 1873 by William Morris
18. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
19. Superbia by Philip Hui
20. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
21. The Seance by John Harwood
22. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
23. White Noise by Don Delillo
24. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
25. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
26. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
27. Spiel by David Sornig
28. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
29. The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
30. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
31. A Free Man of Colour by Barbara Hambly
32. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
33. Fevre Dream by George RR Martin
34. The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
35. The Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham
36. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
37. The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
38. Disgrace by JM Coetzee
39. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
40. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
41. The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner
42. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
43. Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
44. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Lists are so satisfying: neat, tidy, complete. Unlike my PhD. WOOT! THE PHD IS DONE!!