The English People - George Orwell

This lovely essay was published in 1947, with a bunch of interesting illustrations. As always, Orwell is clear-eyed, realistic and expresses himself beautifully. Here he is on how a foreign visitor is likely to view the natives:

Almost certainly he would find the salient characteristics of the English people to be artistic insensibility, gentleness, respect for legality, suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and an obsession with sport.

There’s also a great pub argument factoid. Apparently “ain’t” is not a corruption of aren’t but the original form - “Queen Victoria would have said ain’t”.

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

I really liked Sputnik Sweetheart, but this earlier Murakami was something of a let-down. Structured around a male student and the 2 women in his life (plus a whole bunch of less important but equally sexually available women) I couldn’t summon up interest in any of them.

The distancing was exacerbated by the strangely dislocated sense of time in the novel. Set around student riots in 1968, I kept finding myself wondering why nobody had mobile phones.

The Reader - Bernard Schlink

It’s always tricky trying to tackle a book on its own merits when you’ve seen the movie adaptation. I unavoidably had Kate, Ralph et al in my mind’s eye as I read this, and the crucial character revelations were known to me.

Nevertheless, the novel retains much of its power, with due acknowledgement of an excellent translation.

Just One More Thing - Peter Falk

What an idiosyncratic, amusing and interesting memoir this is. I wasn’t so interested in the Colombo stuff but the Cassavetes material is fascinating, and there are a few laugh-out-loud anecdotes.

Greenmantle - John Buchan

The second Hannay novel (after The 39 Steps) takes our hero on an adventure across Europe to combat the perfidious Hun. It’s screamingly imperialist, with old-fashioned notions of honour and the superiority of the English race, but this is leavened by a great sense of fun and a rip-roaring pace.

2010 Review

I've read 133 books this year, but that number is vastly inflated by the 33 books of the bible in there, many of which are barely more than poems. Once I'd set the precedent of Genesis, Exodus et al counting I was stuck with it. 100 is good, though.

Best Book: Revolutionary Road, with honourable mentions to Cannery Row, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, The Woodlanders, Brooklyn, Bad Science

Worst Book: I'll go with The Slap because it's been so highly praised

Longest Book: The Last Chronicle of Barset

Shortest Book: One of those poems from the Apocrypha

Non-Fiction Books: 20

Australian Authors: 8

Female Authors: 12 (oh dear, oh dear)


The Complete List

The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons - Bill Watterson
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
My Name Escapes Me - Alec Guinness
Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov
Traffic - Tom Vanderbilt
The Sign of the Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
Changing Places - David Lodge
The Small House at Allington - Anthony Trollope
What Is History? - E.H. Carr
Another Country - James Baldwin
The Sound of One Hand Clapping - Richard Flanagan
Helena - Evelyn Waugh
Parrot and Olivier in America - Peter Carey
The Spare Room - Helen Garner
The Small Back Room - Nigel Balchin
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Why Evolution Is True - Jerry Coyne
Solar - Ian McEwan
Flatland - Edwin Abbott Abbott
The Leopard - Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Asterix and the Soothsayer - Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and six other stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens
Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Preacher: Gone To Texas - Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Unweaving The Rainbow - Richard Dawkins
King Solomon’s Mines - H.Rider Haggard
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Psalms
The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes - Angus Wilson
The Shortest History of Europe - John Hirst
Rites of Passage - William Golding
Preacher: until the end of the world - Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Isaiah
Staying On - Paul Scott
Chocky - John Wyndham
Hitch 22 - Christopher Hitchens
Jeremiah
Anvil! The Story of Anvil - Lips & Robb Reiner
Lamentations
Last Chronicle of Barset - Anthony Trollope
Deaf Sentence - David Lodge
Voodoo Histories - David Aaranovitch
A Positively Final Appearance - Alec Guiness
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
The Night Watch - Sarah Waters
Amos
Obadiah
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habbakuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Dry Store Room No.1; the secret life of the Natural History Museum - Richard Fortey
Breath - Tim Winton
Preacher: proud Americans - Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Small World - David Lodge
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
Zechariah
Malachi
Black Mischief - Evelyn Waugh
1 Esdras
City Secrets: books, the essential insider’s guide - Mark Strand (ed.)
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Metamorphoses - Ovid
2 Esdras
The Book of Evidence - John Banville
The Brothers Rico - Georges Simenon
Tobit
Judith
Additions to Esther
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
The Idea of Perfection - Kate Grenville
Diary of a Provincial Lady - EM Delafield
Prayer of Mannaseh
Wisdom of Solomon
How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman
The Secret of Father Brown - GK Chesterton
Trouble With Lichen - John Wyndham
We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
The Iron Staircase - Georges Simenon
The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
Wisdom of Sirach
Darkness At Noon - Arthur Koestler
Baruch
Prayer of Azarias and Hymn of the Three Children
A Mathematician’s Apology - GH Hardy
Chess - Stefan Zweig
Susanna
Bel and the Dragon
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Tommy Cooper; always leave them laughing - John Fisher
The Razor’s Edge - W. Somerset Maugham
The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
The Scandal of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
The Hard Shoulder - Chris Petit
Trick or Treatment?: alternative medicine on trial - Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst
Travels With My Aunt - Graham Greene
The Heather Blazing - Colm Toibin
The Ginger Man - J.P. Donleavy
The Age of Revolution; Europe 1789-1848 - E.J. Hobsbawm
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Appointment in Samarra - John O’Hara
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Violins of Saint-Jacques: A tale of the Antilles - Patrick Leigh Fermor
Greenmantle - John Buchan
Just One More Thing - Peter Falk
The Reader - Bernard Schlink
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
The English People - George Orwell
The Conversations at Curlow Creek - David Malouf
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates