cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2010-01-22 07:35 pm
cyphomandra) wrote2010-01-22 07:35 pm
Entry tags:
2009 Reading
Total for the year was 127 books and somewhere over 100 volumes of manga (erratic list-keeping, but have definitely read all of those - 104 - listed plus probable others). 18 for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
50books_poc community, 6 others in translation (books, not manga), 23 re-reads, 10 non-fiction, 4 by people whose fanfic I've read, and 2 unpublished novels for critique.
The most impressive thing I've read all year is Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish, which was just brilliant – amazing, inventive, unpredictable but deeply satisfactory plotting, great characters, art which definitely grew on me (I agree the first few volumes are a bit wooden) and just an all-round fantastic experience. Highly detailed recaps for my own obsessive purposes at this tag (all contain massive spoilers) – have not yet done the last volume. Less spoilerish description here at Shaenon Garrity's Overlooked Manga Festival post.
None of the books I read were as good as either this or other books from previous years (e.g. Robert Graves' Goodbye to all that, Jan Morris' Last letters from Hav). Close, but just quite not there, were Queen of the South and The Count of Monte Cristo, When the Hipchicks Went to War, Native Speaker and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, which all serve to reinforce my intention to read more books in translation.
In manga, after Banana Fish there are a number of consistently excellent ongoing series - Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys (brilliant use of multiple time-lines, great characters, strangely reminiscent of Stephen King's It while being about world destruction and giant robots) and Pluto (Atom/Astro Boy rewritte), for starters, but also Real (wheelchair basketball) and the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (slackers with psychic powers). I also finished After School Nightmare and Monster (also Urasawa), and both have a lot of very good stuff in them but wobble - After School Nightmare in resolving its central premise but undermining its characters, and Monster just doesn't really pull off the ending. Hikaru no Go is only not on here because I have read it about three times already in previous years. And, for manga once-offs, A Drifting Life (autobiography of a manga artist who started working post-WWII, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and was behind gekiga) was absolutely fascinating and I could have kept reading it for another 840 pages.
1. Arturo Perez-Reverte, The queen of the south
2. Ian Mackersey, The Wright brothers
3. PG Wodehouse, Psmith, journalist
4. Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
5. Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, lovers, chocolate
6. Leighton Houghton, Heron's quest
7. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
8. Sandra Glover, The nowhere boy
9. Kate de Goldi, The 10pm question
10. Johanna Spyri, Heidi (re-read)
11. PG Wodehouse, Jill the reckless
12. PG Wodehouse, Mike at Wrykyn (re-read)
13. Elizabeth Enright, The four-storey mistake (re-read)
14. Alison Bechdel, Invasion of the dykes to watch out for
15. KJ Parker, The company
16. Mary Treadgold, No ponies (re-read)
17. Alan Bennett, The uncommon reader
18. Robert Fisk, The age of the warrior
19. Joanna Canaan, A pony for Jean
20. Vikas Swarup, Slumdog millionaire
21. PG Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally
22. Fleur Beale, Juno of Taris
23. Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the apple orchard
24. AS Byatt, The children's book
25. Pamela Frankau, The slaves of the lamp
26. Elinor Lyon, The house in hiding
27. EM Channon, The honour of the house (re-read)
28. Winifred Mantle, The penderel puzzle
29. Noel Streatfeild, Apple bough
30. Doreen Swinburne Jean's new junior
31. John M Ford, How much for just the planet
32. Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, Motherland
33. Jackie Kay, Trumpet,
34. Jackie Kay, Wish I was here
35. Barbara Hambly, Ishmael (re-read)
36. William Sleator, Tests
37. William Sleator The last universe
38. William Sleator, Parasite pig
39. Pamela Rushby, When the Hipchicks went to war
40. Pamela Rushby, Circles of stone
41. Amy Bronwen Zemse, Dear Julia
42. Claudia Gray, Evernight
43. RF Delderfield, To serve them all my days
44. Diane Duane, The wounded sky (re-read)
45. Janet Kagan, Uhura's song (re-read)
46. Walter Dean Myers, The beast
47. Manying Ip, Being Māori-Chinese
48. Helen Lowe, Thornspell
49. Shirley Jackson, Life among the savages (re-read)
50. Victoria M Azaro, Saffron
51. Gillian Bradshaw, The sun’s bride
52. Tulia Thompson, Josefa and the Vu
53. James and Deborah Howe, Bunnicula (re-read)
54. Cynthia Voigt, Tell me if the lovers are losers
55. Maurice Gee, Gool
56. Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta chromosome
57. Tananarive Due, My soul to keep
58. Justine Larbalestier, How to ditch your fairy
59. Benjamin Zephaniah, Refugee boy
60. Constance White, Girls in flight (re-read)
61. Phillis Garrard, Hilda at school
62. Phillis Garrard, The doings of Hilda
63. Phillis Garrard, Hilda’s adventures
64. Rumer Godden, Five for sorrow, ten for joy
65. Jamila Gavin, The blood stone
66. Elizabeth George, Careless in red
67. Doreen Tovey, Making the horse laugh
68. [unpublished novel #1]
69. [unpublished novel #2]
70. Markus Zusak, The book thief
71. Gene Luen Yang, American-born Chinese
72. Kamila Shansie, Broken verses
73. Kate Granville, The secret river
74. Jasper Fforde, Something rotten
75. David Almond, The savage
76. Naomi Wolfe, Misconceptions
77. Merryn Williams, The Chalet girls grow up (re-read)
78. Helen Dore Boylston, Sue Barton – Superintendent nurse (re-read)
79. Pauline Cartwright, Meg’s last springtime
80. Margaret Biggs, The Blakes come to Melling (re-read)
81. Margaret Biggs, The new prefect at Melling( (re-read)
82. Margaret Biggs, Last term for Helen (re-read)
83. Margaret Biggs, The head girl at Melling (re-read)
84. Margaret Biggs, Summer term at Melling (re-read)
85. Margaret Biggs, Susan in the sixth (re-read)
86. Mo Zhi Hong, The year of the Shanghai Shark
87. James George, Hummingbird
88. Jasper Fforde, First among sequels
89. Eva Ibbotson, The dragonfly pool
90. Jennifer Sey, Chalked up
91. Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix
92. Douglas Kennedy, A special relationship (re-read)
93. Dorothea Moore, Tenth at Trinders
94. Chang-Rae Lee, Native speaker
95. Rachel Manija Brown, All the fishes come home to roost
96. Morris Gleitzman, Grace
97. RJ Anderson, Knife
98. Sarah Rees Brennan, The demon’s lexicon
99. Marian Keyes, The brightest star in the sky
100. Kathleen Duey, Skin hunger
101. Suzanne Collins, Hunger games
102. TT Garland, Judy carries on
103. Witi Ihimaera (ed), Where’s Waari?
104. Stieg Larsson, The girl with the dragon tattoo
105. Stieg Larsson, The girl who played with fire
106. Stieg Larsson, The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest
107. Jon Krakauer, Into thin air
108. Matthew Reilly, The five greatest warriors
109. Anne Enright, Making babies: stumbling into motherhood
110. Carolyn Bernstein & Elaine McArdle, The migraine brain
111. Angela Brazil, The youngest girl in the Fifth
112. Marc Acito, How I paid for college
113. Angela Brazil, Monitoress Merle
114. Connie Willis, To say nothing of the dog (re-read)
115. Greg Williams, The accidental father
116. Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The runaways
117. Jack London, People of the abyss
118. Connie Willis, Uncharted territory (re-read)
119. Christina Hardyment, Dream babies
120. China Mieville, The city and the city
121. Margaret Biggs, Changes at Melling
122. Jennifer Crusie, Getting rid of Bradley
123. Neil Gaiman, The graveyard book
124. Helen Barber, A Chalet School Headmistress (re-read)
125. Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Janie Steps In
126. Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood
127. Richard Morgan, Black man
After school nightmare, 1-10 [complete]
Banana Fish, 1-19 [complete]
Monster, v1-18 [complete]
20th Century Boys, 1-5
A distant neighbourhood, 1
A drifting life
Astral process, 1
Dororo, 1-3
Flower of life, 1,3,4
From Eroica with love, 1-3
Hikaru no Go, 14-16
Ikigami, 1,2
Kaze Hikaru, 1,2
Kurosagi Corpse delivery service, 8,9
Mushishi, 6
Oishinbo, 3-5
Old boy, 1-3
Ooku, 1
Pluto, 1-6
Real, 3-5
Seduce me after the show
Silver Diamond, 1-4
The walking man
Walkin' butterfly, 1
With the light: raising an autistic child, 1-4
No volume number indicates self-contained. Epic descriptions of appalling customer service lurk behind why I started Oishinbo with v3, but given that the English publication involves assorted themed stories from over 100 volumes it's not actually all that annoying. And now I'm having things shipped from Australia.
50books_poc community, 6 others in translation (books, not manga), 23 re-reads, 10 non-fiction, 4 by people whose fanfic I've read, and 2 unpublished novels for critique. The most impressive thing I've read all year is Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish, which was just brilliant – amazing, inventive, unpredictable but deeply satisfactory plotting, great characters, art which definitely grew on me (I agree the first few volumes are a bit wooden) and just an all-round fantastic experience. Highly detailed recaps for my own obsessive purposes at this tag (all contain massive spoilers) – have not yet done the last volume. Less spoilerish description here at Shaenon Garrity's Overlooked Manga Festival post.
None of the books I read were as good as either this or other books from previous years (e.g. Robert Graves' Goodbye to all that, Jan Morris' Last letters from Hav). Close, but just quite not there, were Queen of the South and The Count of Monte Cristo, When the Hipchicks Went to War, Native Speaker and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, which all serve to reinforce my intention to read more books in translation.
In manga, after Banana Fish there are a number of consistently excellent ongoing series - Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys (brilliant use of multiple time-lines, great characters, strangely reminiscent of Stephen King's It while being about world destruction and giant robots) and Pluto (Atom/Astro Boy rewritte), for starters, but also Real (wheelchair basketball) and the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (slackers with psychic powers). I also finished After School Nightmare and Monster (also Urasawa), and both have a lot of very good stuff in them but wobble - After School Nightmare in resolving its central premise but undermining its characters, and Monster just doesn't really pull off the ending. Hikaru no Go is only not on here because I have read it about three times already in previous years. And, for manga once-offs, A Drifting Life (autobiography of a manga artist who started working post-WWII, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and was behind gekiga) was absolutely fascinating and I could have kept reading it for another 840 pages.
1. Arturo Perez-Reverte, The queen of the south
2. Ian Mackersey, The Wright brothers
3. PG Wodehouse, Psmith, journalist
4. Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
5. Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, lovers, chocolate
6. Leighton Houghton, Heron's quest
7. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
8. Sandra Glover, The nowhere boy
9. Kate de Goldi, The 10pm question
10. Johanna Spyri, Heidi (re-read)
11. PG Wodehouse, Jill the reckless
12. PG Wodehouse, Mike at Wrykyn (re-read)
13. Elizabeth Enright, The four-storey mistake (re-read)
14. Alison Bechdel, Invasion of the dykes to watch out for
15. KJ Parker, The company
16. Mary Treadgold, No ponies (re-read)
17. Alan Bennett, The uncommon reader
18. Robert Fisk, The age of the warrior
19. Joanna Canaan, A pony for Jean
20. Vikas Swarup, Slumdog millionaire
21. PG Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally
22. Fleur Beale, Juno of Taris
23. Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the apple orchard
24. AS Byatt, The children's book
25. Pamela Frankau, The slaves of the lamp
26. Elinor Lyon, The house in hiding
27. EM Channon, The honour of the house (re-read)
28. Winifred Mantle, The penderel puzzle
29. Noel Streatfeild, Apple bough
30. Doreen Swinburne Jean's new junior
31. John M Ford, How much for just the planet
32. Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, Motherland
33. Jackie Kay, Trumpet,
34. Jackie Kay, Wish I was here
35. Barbara Hambly, Ishmael (re-read)
36. William Sleator, Tests
37. William Sleator The last universe
38. William Sleator, Parasite pig
39. Pamela Rushby, When the Hipchicks went to war
40. Pamela Rushby, Circles of stone
41. Amy Bronwen Zemse, Dear Julia
42. Claudia Gray, Evernight
43. RF Delderfield, To serve them all my days
44. Diane Duane, The wounded sky (re-read)
45. Janet Kagan, Uhura's song (re-read)
46. Walter Dean Myers, The beast
47. Manying Ip, Being Māori-Chinese
48. Helen Lowe, Thornspell
49. Shirley Jackson, Life among the savages (re-read)
50. Victoria M Azaro, Saffron
51. Gillian Bradshaw, The sun’s bride
52. Tulia Thompson, Josefa and the Vu
53. James and Deborah Howe, Bunnicula (re-read)
54. Cynthia Voigt, Tell me if the lovers are losers
55. Maurice Gee, Gool
56. Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta chromosome
57. Tananarive Due, My soul to keep
58. Justine Larbalestier, How to ditch your fairy
59. Benjamin Zephaniah, Refugee boy
60. Constance White, Girls in flight (re-read)
61. Phillis Garrard, Hilda at school
62. Phillis Garrard, The doings of Hilda
63. Phillis Garrard, Hilda’s adventures
64. Rumer Godden, Five for sorrow, ten for joy
65. Jamila Gavin, The blood stone
66. Elizabeth George, Careless in red
67. Doreen Tovey, Making the horse laugh
68. [unpublished novel #1]
69. [unpublished novel #2]
70. Markus Zusak, The book thief
71. Gene Luen Yang, American-born Chinese
72. Kamila Shansie, Broken verses
73. Kate Granville, The secret river
74. Jasper Fforde, Something rotten
75. David Almond, The savage
76. Naomi Wolfe, Misconceptions
77. Merryn Williams, The Chalet girls grow up (re-read)
78. Helen Dore Boylston, Sue Barton – Superintendent nurse (re-read)
79. Pauline Cartwright, Meg’s last springtime
80. Margaret Biggs, The Blakes come to Melling (re-read)
81. Margaret Biggs, The new prefect at Melling( (re-read)
82. Margaret Biggs, Last term for Helen (re-read)
83. Margaret Biggs, The head girl at Melling (re-read)
84. Margaret Biggs, Summer term at Melling (re-read)
85. Margaret Biggs, Susan in the sixth (re-read)
86. Mo Zhi Hong, The year of the Shanghai Shark
87. James George, Hummingbird
88. Jasper Fforde, First among sequels
89. Eva Ibbotson, The dragonfly pool
90. Jennifer Sey, Chalked up
91. Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix
92. Douglas Kennedy, A special relationship (re-read)
93. Dorothea Moore, Tenth at Trinders
94. Chang-Rae Lee, Native speaker
95. Rachel Manija Brown, All the fishes come home to roost
96. Morris Gleitzman, Grace
97. RJ Anderson, Knife
98. Sarah Rees Brennan, The demon’s lexicon
99. Marian Keyes, The brightest star in the sky
100. Kathleen Duey, Skin hunger
101. Suzanne Collins, Hunger games
102. TT Garland, Judy carries on
103. Witi Ihimaera (ed), Where’s Waari?
104. Stieg Larsson, The girl with the dragon tattoo
105. Stieg Larsson, The girl who played with fire
106. Stieg Larsson, The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest
107. Jon Krakauer, Into thin air
108. Matthew Reilly, The five greatest warriors
109. Anne Enright, Making babies: stumbling into motherhood
110. Carolyn Bernstein & Elaine McArdle, The migraine brain
111. Angela Brazil, The youngest girl in the Fifth
112. Marc Acito, How I paid for college
113. Angela Brazil, Monitoress Merle
114. Connie Willis, To say nothing of the dog (re-read)
115. Greg Williams, The accidental father
116. Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The runaways
117. Jack London, People of the abyss
118. Connie Willis, Uncharted territory (re-read)
119. Christina Hardyment, Dream babies
120. China Mieville, The city and the city
121. Margaret Biggs, Changes at Melling
122. Jennifer Crusie, Getting rid of Bradley
123. Neil Gaiman, The graveyard book
124. Helen Barber, A Chalet School Headmistress (re-read)
125. Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Janie Steps In
126. Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood
127. Richard Morgan, Black man
After school nightmare, 1-10 [complete]
Banana Fish, 1-19 [complete]
Monster, v1-18 [complete]
20th Century Boys, 1-5
A distant neighbourhood, 1
A drifting life
Astral process, 1
Dororo, 1-3
Flower of life, 1,3,4
From Eroica with love, 1-3
Hikaru no Go, 14-16
Ikigami, 1,2
Kaze Hikaru, 1,2
Kurosagi Corpse delivery service, 8,9
Mushishi, 6
Oishinbo, 3-5
Old boy, 1-3
Ooku, 1
Pluto, 1-6
Real, 3-5
Seduce me after the show
Silver Diamond, 1-4
The walking man
Walkin' butterfly, 1
With the light: raising an autistic child, 1-4
No volume number indicates self-contained. Epic descriptions of appalling customer service lurk behind why I started Oishinbo with v3, but given that the English publication involves assorted themed stories from over 100 volumes it's not actually all that annoying. And now I'm having things shipped from Australia.