Books Read in 2007

Monday July 16, 2007

I’ll be updating this regularly as the year marches on. When I see similar lists on other sites I’m humbled by the amount of books that other people have read this year, although I’m secure in the knowledge that I’ve read 41 more books in 2007 than Victoria Beckham.

Novels

  1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (Twice Told Tales)
  2. Winterwood by Patrick McCabe (not reviewed)
  3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (Under the Ice)
  4. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales and Madness)
  5. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (Beginning Titus Groan, Dizzy Heights and Finishing Titus Groan)
  6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
  7. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (A Spot of Bother)
  8. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (The Great Escape)
  9. Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake (After the Storm)
  10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (Crime and Punishment)
  11. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (The Tenderness of Wolves)
  12. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach)
  13. The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson (Revish review)
  14. Restless by William Boyd (Revish review)
  15. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (Murder In Mind)
  16. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut: 1922-2007)
  17. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (The Bleak Book Group)
  18. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
  19. Everyman by Philip Roth (American Greats)
  20. Unless by Carol Shields (not reviewed)
  21. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (Back to the Old House)
  22. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (Hard Talk)
  23. Tunnel Visions by Christopher Ross (not reviewed)
  24. Falling Man by Don DeLillo (The Invisible Novel)
  25. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men)
  26. A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward (A Curious Earth)
  27. In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu (The Haunted)
  28. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
  29. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses)
  30. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
  31. Life Class by Pat Barker (Life Class)
  32. Gathering the Water by Robert Edric
  33. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (Going Greene: The Power and the Glory)
  34. The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene
  35. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (Engleby)
  36. The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
  37. If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work by Irvine Welsh (If You Like Irvine Welsh, You’ll Love This)
  38. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (23 Years and Iain Banks)
  39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (Death by Chocolate)
  40. Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Dark Matter)
  41. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

Short Stories

  1. Random Quest by John Wyndham (Quest for Wyndham)
  2. Running Wolf by Algernon Blackwood (Simply Chilling)
  3. The Haunted and the Haunters by Lord Lytton (Simply Chilling)
  4. His Brother’s Keeper by W.W.Jacobs (October Ghosts)
  5. The Seventh Man by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (October Ghosts)
  6. The Inexperienced Ghost by H.G.Wells (More Ghostly Goings On)
  7. The Toll House by W.W.Jacobs (More Ghostly Goings On)
  8. The Squaw by Bram Stoker (More Ghostly Goings On)

And David Beckham as well altough you can probably include his LA Galaxy contract as a book with his favourite chapter being the one about how much he gets paid per week.

simon    16 July, 04:19 PM   

There are so many books on your list that I can’t wait to read – On Chesil Beach for starters and Unless….so little time!

verbivore    16 July, 04:30 PM   

I’m a slow reader and don’t get through all that many books each year—but it’s the quality of your reading that counts, right?

Dorothy W.    16 July, 05:21 PM   

I think you can also rest safe in the knowledge that you’ve read a far better selection that Mrs. Beckham. I’m a fan of so many of these. A Clockwork Orange, Mervyn Peake’s brilliant trilogy (I love the way he utilizes the architecture of the building itself as the structure for his story), McCarthy, Waugh, and Roth. But my personal favorite, I suppose for sentimental reasons, is the Vonnegut. I think a lot of us have gone back to him this year to remind ourselves of what we lost. I do have a theory about Vonnegut, though, that your review went some way to verifying. In my experience, it’s always the first Vonnegut work one picks up that becomes one’s favorite. For most people it’s Slaughterhouse Five, since that’s the one most often taught in classrooms. For me, though – and it happened when I was 15 too – it was Deadeye Dick. I have never recovered, and that single work probably has more to do with the fact that I am now an English professor than any other influence.

cheap mobiles    17 July, 07:07 PM   

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