reeling and writhing

goodbye noughties, then

It can't possibly be almost the end of the year, can it? Christmas shopping is in progress.In that spirit there's a list of top reads from the past year after the jump, in no particular order other than abecedarian, arranged by type.

If you're still hungry for selections and suggestions after trawling through mine, there are other lists, by other people, covering all five (six?) Readings stores and beyond. And there's a very comprehensive US/international roundup at The Millions, of course. I might not be back for a little while, as there's plenty of good book news around - follow the blogs here (scroll down for the feeds) and you won't be bored.

What I want for Christmas: Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, botanical prints I've had framed, which will be ready to pick up next Friday, a bottle of brandy and a month's supply of Zero lemonade.

AND...safe holidays for everyone.

you can love the life you're living

This meme requires me to attempt to describe my life, by title, in the books I've read so far in 2009. (Via Gwenda Bond.)

Strikes me as something best attempted in the last quarter of the year. For sure.

Describe yourself:
The Night Parrot
How do you feel?
Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy?
Describe where you currently live:
The World Beneath
If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Brooklyn
Your favorite form of transport:
The Pages
Your best friend is . . . ?
The TV President
You and your friends are . . .?
The Ghost Poetry Project (or The Content Makers, depending on who you talk to).
What’s the weather like?
(A) Disgrace

Favourite time of day?
The Time We Have Taken
What is life to you?
A House Of Air

Your fear?
The Hunter ( in another year this would be Oblomov)
What is the best advice you have to give?
An Imaginary Life
Thought for the Day?
Indignation
How I would like to die:
Things We Didn't See Coming
My soul’s present condition?
Look Who's Morphing

highlights of 2008

So, yep, it is that time of year again. And I will keep it simple.

I'm off to the beach, then having Christmas, as we do, then trying to catch up on Web and book reading - among which I will include this find on The Elegant Variation, some interviews Californian writer Jim Ruland did with Benjamin Black (that's John Banville to the rest of us) recently.

I read a lot of Australian books this year. There seem to be a lot more Oz titles to read next year, and Angela Meyer has a good roundup of potential candidates in the latest Bookseller and Publisher if you can't wait for the holiday newspapers. I do hope I get some European titles under the belt, though - a new book from Colm Toibin is certainly not going to pass me by.

The standout, then, is a poetry/non fiction combo.

Racing this time:

Robert Gray's The Land I Walked Through Last (and all his poetry, just all of it) by a nose from David Malouf's 1990 novel, The Great World.

Coming clustered tightly after that

Hanif Kureishi's richly entertaining Something To Talk About and his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, back to front (should one say, tail to tail? quite hard to organise deliberately)

Edward St Aubyn's acidic and brilliantly skewed Mothers' Milk

Gerald Murnane's reissued classic,Tamarisk Row and his essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap

Anne Enright's The Gathering 

Robert Adamson's The Golden Bird: New and Selected Poems (arranged by the poet, thematically, which makes for a good change).

 

and making a dash down the strait for the finishing line

Julienne van Loon's Road Story

Sara Knox's The Orphan Gunner

Jessica Anderson's classic, Tirra Lirra By The River

Alex Miller's Journey to the Stone Country

Helen Garner's The Spare Room

and Matt Condon's Trout Opera, of course

Toni Jordan's fine comic-mathematical romance, Addition

Susan Johnson's Gold Coast Barton saga, Life In Seven Mistakes

Fiona Capp's fine historical Daylesford romance, Musk and Byrne

Sophie Cunningham's tri-continental Bird.

Really, this race analogy is tacky. As if Mr Gray Australian writers need to race anybody anywhere, at any time.

I've decided not to publish the year's reads - some of it feels like it's so long ago, I'm beginning to wonder if it's not a corrupted file. May all future reads end up corrupted by memories and crosscurrents from the past, so that I end up rereading more often.

I do want to let you all know, though, that today, having rescued the latest GoingDownSwinging from the carport where an uncharacteristically cranky postie hurled it (fortunately not on the side I park on and a mere four minutes before my son came back in from buying new tyres), I have particularly enjoyed the following:

Stories: 'Pearl of Mercy', by Libby Angel
            'Flame Game', by S.J. Finn
            'Turnin',' by Eric Stoveken (which is drily fantastic)
Poems: 'Anything Precious', Sean M. Whelan
           'Brace', Andy Jackson
           'Black Rook in Stormy Weather', Lorin Ford.
And if you are fortunate enough to have your son improvising on guitar to his backing tracks in the next room, 'Net Weight of Intention' by Jillian Patterson reads rather well too.

See you all sometime in the middle of January, and as my favourite mother-in-law would say, go safely.

Carpentaria is 'simply the best' and coming to the UK soon

While I'm really not crazy about the whole BEST BEST BEST thing, I would like to share some news I picked up at a recent book launch, from no less a person than Miles Franklin winner Alexis Wright herself. It's official - Constable and Robinson will publish Carpentaria in the UK next year. Here's my earlier review of my Book of the Year.

Others of note, cheerfully disregarding dates of publication, were (including non-fiction):

Adamson, Robert. The Goldfinches of Baghdad

Cheever, John. The World of Apples

Farmer, Beverley. Body Of Water  (writer's journal and stories, my review notes here)

Goldsworthy, Kerryn. North of the Moonlight Sonata

Jach, Antoni. Napoleon's Double

Lofthouse, Jacqui. Bluethroat Morning

Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (HA! Finished.)

Stow, Randolph. Visitants

(here's the non-fiction, now:)

Farmer, Beverley. The Bone House

Garner, Helen. The Feel of Steel.

Glendinning, Victoria. Leonard Woolf: A Life.

Koch, C.J. Crossing The Gap: A Novelist's Essays.

Knowlson, James and Elizabeth (Eds.) Beckett Remembering:Remembering Beckett

Moretti, Franco (ed.) The Novel (vol 2.)

Nehamas, Alexander, Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty In A World of Art.

Ryan, Marie-Laure (ed.) Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling

I did read a bunch of other stuff, some quite new, and all listed here, if it interests you. Also if it interests you, I have just subscribed to Publisher's Lunch, where I followed my nose to this news regarding Helen Garner's latest (due 2008). Apologies if you already knew, but it is news to me.

If you're more interested in what the English think about the French, however, then over at Figaro, Bruno Corty is keeping an eye on the TLS's review of best books for 2007 and noting that French writers are on the Brit critics' lists.
And if you're still greedy for lists, (you absolute glutton, you), there's an exhaustive list of best US books (and others) of 2007, over at the Millions book blog.

2007 - Fiction, poetry, non-fiction of interest

Fiction, poetry

*According to this list, I read no fiction in 2007 by an author whose surname starts with 'M'. I guess that means Rhyll McMaster's Feather Man is definitely next.

Adamson, Robert. The Goldfinches of Baghdad

Auster, Paul. The Brooklyn Follies

Carey, Peter. Theft: A Love Story

Cheever, John. The World of Apples

Cheever, John. The Wapshot Chronicle

Cunningham, Sophie. Geography

Drewe, Robert (ed.) Best Australian Stories 2006.

Falconer, Delia. The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers

Farmer, Beverley. Body Of Water

Farmer, Beverley. The Bone House

Ford, Richard. A Piece Of My Heart

Goldsworthy, Kerryn. North of the Moonlight Sonata

Hill, Barry. Necessity: Poems 1996-2006

Jach, Antoni. Napoleon's Double

Jones, Gail. Sorry

Jose, Nicholas. The Red Thread

Lethem, Jonathan. The Fortress of Solitude

Lofthouse, Jacqui. Bluethroat Morning

Page, Geoffrey (ed.) 80 Poems

Prater, David.  We Will Disappear

Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (HA! Finished.)

Stow, Randolph. Visitants

Swinn, Louise and Zoe Dattner (eds.) The Sleepers' Almanac 2007: The Family Affair

Witting, Amy. Maria's War

Wright, Alexis. Carpentaria

Non-fiction of interest

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory

Eagleton, Terry. After Literary Theory

Garner, Helen. The Feel of Steel.

Glendinning, Victoria. Leonard Woolf: A Life.

Koch, C.J. Crossing The Gap: A Novelist's Essays.

Knowlson, James and Elizabeth (Eds.) Beckett Remembering:Remembering Beckett

Modjeska, Drusilla (ed.) Best Australian Essays 2006.

Moretti, Franco (ed.) The Novel (vol 2.)

Nehamas, Alexander, Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty In A World of Art.

Ryan, Marie-Laure (ed.) Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling

Attempted: Smiley, Jane. Thirteen Ways of Looking At The Novel. (Bland and annoying.)

2006 - Fiction and poetry

Read this year:

Banville, John, The Sea
Berger, John, Here is where we meet
Borges, Jorge Luis, Labyrinths
Bradley, James, Wrack
Castro, Brian, The Garden Book
Dattner, Zoe and Louise Swinn (eds), The Sleepers' Almanac 2006
Elliot, Will, The Pilo Family Circus
Ford, Richard, Independence Day
___________ The Lay Of The Land
Gould, Alan, The Past Completes Me: Collected Poems
Hollinghurst, Alan, The Line of Beauty
Hyland, M.J., Carry Me Down
Kundera, Milan, Immortality
Maguire, Emily, Taming The Beast
__________ The Gospel According To Luke
Mitchell, David, Number9 Dream
Miller, Alex, Conditions of Faith
Murakami, Haruki, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
______________Sputnik Sweetheart
O'Connor, Andrew, Tuvalu
Kadare, Ismail, The General's Army
James, Wendy, Out of the Silence
Jones, Peter (ed.), Imagist Poems
Moore, Lisa, Alligator
Nemirovsky, Irene, Suite Francaise
Niedecker, Lorine, Collected Works
McLeod, Alistair, No Great Mischief
Rose, Peter, A Case of Knives
Sparnon, Karen, Madonna of the Eucalypts
Tiffany, Carrie, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
Wood, Danielle, The Alphabet of Light and Dark
____________ Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls
Wilder, Laura Ingalls, The Long Winter (re-read)
Witting, Amy, Collected Poems