Your Humble Blogger has now been logging books for six years, which is one more than last year’s total. Things are looking up. Alas, the other trends are not: I read exactly 100 books in 2009, which is not quite the lowest total, but very close. On the other hand, it makes percentages easy. 36 were re-reads, which is not out of line as a proportion or as a number. 64 were new reads, and the breakdown of those is interesting (to me), because unlike in other years where one or two categories dominated, there was a fairly even split, with 14 Young Adult/Specfic books, 12 plays, 12 non-genre novels (my catch-all category) and 11 specfic books that are not marketed to teens and tweens. The rest were more or less the usual: six non-fiction books (three memoirs and two sort of pop lit-crit books plus the JPS book), four children’s or YA books that are not specfic, three graphic novels and two mysteries. Those are all fairly low but not enough to be outliers.
No, the real outlier is the number of new plays I read—and I should make it clear that I am talking about plays I have not read before, rather than plays that are new; only one of the plays I read could be called a New Play, really. I have enjoyed reading a bunch of plays, though. I hope, with one thing and another, that I will keep reading them at more or less that clip, although of course I will be busy reading the same play over and over .
Another thing I found interesting was that among the rereads, the percentages change enormously. I reread six mysteries, which means that 17% of the rereads fit that category, as opposed to 3% of the new books. Those were three Dick Francis books, two Dorothy Sayers and a Dashiell Hammett; the two new mysteries were a Margery Allingham and an art theft comic thriller. Clearly, I am not reading mysteries for the mysteries. And I reread as many non-YA specfic novels as I read new ones but only re-read four YA/SF, two of which were Bedtime Books for my Perfect Non-Reader. I am reading the YA stuff from the library, clearly, and when I want a specfic reread at night, I don’t have my favorites here at the house—or, I suppose, if I do, they are either in my Perfect Non-Reader’s room or all the way in the basement playroom, and not readily accessible. Hm. But then, I also like to re-read Mary Renault, Robertson Davies and (this year) P.G. Wodehouse, but I am not going out and finding any other stuff like those. So perhaps I’m really looking for something different in a re-read than in a new book, and vice versa.
Well. That’s enough numbers. Let’s get on to the purpose of the post, my annual list of Ten or Eleven Books I Enjoyed Reading for the First Time Last Year.
- Romantic Comedies, specifically Arthur. A collection of plays by Ferenc Molnar (Arthur is a P.G. Wodehouse translation). I am still vaguely hoping to get this staged at some point, with me in it, of course.
- Beyond the Boundary, a book about cricket and life by C.L.R. James, a Barbadian Marxist. I know, y’all are Not Into Cricket, but that is your problem, Gentle Reader, particularly if it keeps you from reading this book.
- Children of the Ghetto, by Israel Zangwill. Technically, this is a Victorian Novel, although I hadn’t really thought of it that way. One of the great things about becoming increasingly interested in reading Victorian Novels is that when I do eventually wind up owning an e-book reader, I will be able to immediately load about a million free pages that I actually want to read, and likely reread.
- Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George. This was a new author for me, and I have now read three books by her and am happy with all of them. The sequel to this one was a little disappointing, to be honest, but the Twelve Dancing Princesses one, which I read only a couple of weeks ago and have not yet blogged, was terrifiwondertastic.
- The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. Not much to be added to the various huzzahs and encomia already out there. Encomia? Yes, that does mean what I think it means, and doesn’t require anybody to be dead.
- The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton. I’m not altogether sure this belongs on the list. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. On the other hand, I did enjoy reading it, which is what the list is called, right?
- Rumo and The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers. I was going back and forth on these two and decided to include them both, because they are both really good. If you are thinking of starting to read Mr. Moers’ stuff, though, I would suggest starting with City; it has, you know, books. On the other hand, Rumo has more swordplay.
- Tingleberries, Tuckertubs and Telephones, by Margaret Mahy. I adore Margaret Mahy, and this is a fantastic book.
- Whales on Stilts, by M.T. Anderson. After going to some effort to get my hands on the sequel, my Best Reader and Perfect Non-Reader were sufficiently unimpressed that I didn’t bother with it. Still, whales on stilts.
- Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell. Loved it. Marvelous. If you like Jane Austen, go for this one. If you like other Victorians more than Jane Austen, definitely go for this one. If you don’t like Victorian novels at all, then you probably want to give it a miss, although it’s still possible you would like it.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.