Normally I do this a bit further into December, but I have been advised by a party as close to this blog as it's possible to be without being me that people could be influenced in their Christmas shopping, which they'll want to be getting on with. Influenced? Really? Whatever. Titles aren't ranked; they're in alphabetical order
The cream of my reading during this year:
Top 10
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin
The Patrick Melrose series by Edward St Aubyn
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Solace by Belinda McKeon
Two Lives by William Trevor
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Books I did not enjoy (though I am a great fan of the work of the two of these writers who aren't Don DeLillo):
Bottom 3
A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
Highly recommended:
10 'really good reads'
The Evolution of Inanimate Objects by Harry Karlinsky
Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel
Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor
Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer
Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz
The Serious Game by Hjalmar Söderberg
