The Book Tower

As 2007 fizzles out, here’s my complete reading list for the year. I don’t think it’s a bad list, although it could have been a touch longer (especially non fiction!) Links to reviews are in brackets. Here’s to happy reading for all in 2008.

Novels

1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (Twice Told Tales)
2. Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
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
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
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)
42. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)
43. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (Blood and Chambers)
44. The October Country by Ray Bradbury (Bradbury Country)
45. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors)
46. The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe (The Rain Before It Falls)
47. The Outsider by Albert Camus (My Weekend With Albert Camus)
48. Mr B. Gone by Clive Barker (Mister B.Gone)
49. The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis (coming next)

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)
9. The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M.R.James (Christmas Ghosts: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas)

Non Fiction

1. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (Merry Christmas, Mr Dawkins)

Comment

My copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins boasts the subtitle “the alternative Christmas gift”. Borders took the joke one stage further by sticking a card inside the cover which reads “oh come all ye unfaithful”. I’m sure Mr Dawkins won’t mind the joke. Reading him, it’s obvious he does have a sense of humour, although my approach to the book isn’t really to seek an alternative Christmas gift or message, or to declare myself unfaithful or not. I like a well written, intelligent book and I like a good argument. Richard Dawkins provides all of this for me.

What surprised me is that The God Delusion isn’t just the anti-God polemic that I’d been suspecting, the book that its critics have been ranting about. Dawkins prints some of the abusive letters he has received since its publication, damning him in no uncertain terms, and letters no doubt from people who haven’t bothered to read The God Delusion. The same mentality that led people to burn copies of The Satanic Verses. Dawkins certainly knows his theology, I would say more so than many of his critics, but his well considered book touches on science in discussing how the universe came to be, Darwinism in how we came to be, gene theory in how we came to be like we are and meme theory in how we came to think and act like we do. Yes, you meme-loving bloggers out there, Richard Dawkins is the one who originally coined the phrase meme in 1976.

So at times, and what I found very rewarding, is that The God Delusion serves as a kind of Richard Dawkins Greatest Hits, covering many of the topics he has written about at length in his other books. But be warned. Although he does cover themes such as natural selection (one of his favourites), he expects you to have some prior grasp of them. This book isn’t another A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (although that’s a book that serves its purpose well), and if it was it would be four times as large. This is a writer who respects the intelligence of his reader, and Dawkins supplies a rich resource of references to follow if you should see fit, from texts similar to his own (there are several books specifically about meme theory) and links to websites. He even quotes a comment to a blog post that he’s found insightful.

The God Delusion isn’t a book that will change my life because I don’t need to be converted to Dawkins’ argument, but it isn’t a book that will only succeed in preaching to the converted either; it is a clever, extremely well researched book that should be read by any intelligent person. And anyone who condemns it unfairly without a good counter argument deserves to be labelled ignorant. And ignorance is one of the things that really annoys Richard Dawkins.

Comment