Reflections on the puddle of life

It’s been another busy reading year, and an interesting one as they generally are. I had two reading goals this year: to read more books written by women, and to read more non-fiction. The first goal I have met with ease, with 65% of my reading by female writers. My second goal has proven more of a challenge and though I have read a few non-fiction books, not nearly as many as I had planned. It is a goal I will carry forward into my next reading year. Of course I have been doing a lot of factual reading for my studies, but those aren’t included in the list here.

There have been some stand-out writers in 2013. Helen DeWitt was a real discovery; she has written only 2 books – The Last Samurai and the controversial (but brilliant) Lightning Rods. Her writing is intelligent, broad in scope, wacky and witty. If I could recommend only one writer from 2013, it would definitely be her. I hope she writes more. The Booker nominee list provided an interesting crop (no pun intended). Harvest by Jim Crace, the odds-on favourite, largely left me cold but there were compensations with A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, which was marvellous, the fresh-voiced We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulaweyo and a worth winner in Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. Another brilliant discovery was A M Homes’s This Book Will Save Your Life, which truly I think it could. It is a sweet, funny, sad and magical book which leaves you with a rare feeling of goodwill. I’m looking forward to reading more of Homes’s work in 2014.

I spent a goodly part of my reading time exploring mythologies, mainly the reworking of myths through the Canongate myths series. I found myself falling in love with the Norse mythology and I highly recommend Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Book of Norse myths which give a wonderful overview of this world. I am still reading the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda and somehow I think it is a world I will return to often. Hopefully I will find time to pick up the Icelandic sagas again next year.

I was very pleased to discover some up-and-coming future great writers to watch out for including:
Nicola Barker: so far I have read only one of her books – Darkmans – an odd, kind of harsh but strangely compelling book which really stuck in my head. She won’t be to everyone’s taste, but she is definitely innovative and different.
Deborah Levy: Levy’s writing is compact and diamond-sharp. I highly recommend Swimming Home.
Helen Oyeyemi: Mr Fox is a book I will attempt to re-read in 2014. It is punchy, odd and intensely creative. I am not sure I entirely understood it, but it fascinated me. A definite talent, clever and engaging.

And I also discovered, or perhaps reminded myself of, some lesser-known greats:
Tove Jansson: really everyone should read Jansson, she was marvellous. For children there are the Moomintrolls (okay, and for adults to) and for adults wonderful books like The Summer Book, Fair Play and The True Deceiver. Jansson writes directly and with economy and a sense of marvel and wonder in the world that is inspirational.
Marlen Haushofer: I doubt many people have heard of Marlen Haushofer. I came across her by an accident of Twitter and was very happy to have done so. So far I have read only one of her books, The Wall, but it is a great one. Simultaneously terrifying, sad and yet life-affirming, The Wall tells of a women who is trapped in a valley behind an invisible wall. All the world outside appears to be dead. A survival story, but also an exploration of identity.
Marilynne Robinson: can this women write a bad word? She has written few books but there’s not a dud amongst them. This year I read Gilead, a love letter from a dying man to his son. I am not a Christian, but if Christianity was practiced with the kind of wonder, open-heartedness, non-judgementalism and reverence as conveyed in this book I would be. Who wouldn’t? I am hoping to re-read Housekeeping next year, just to remind myself how marvellous the written word can be.

Right now I’m a bit exhausted with reading (perhaps not too surprisingly, I read 69 books in 2013), but despite this I do already have a few reading goals for 2014. I want to continue to include more non-fiction in my reading. Actually I read a lot of non-fiction but rarely entire books and often with a specific learning need in mind, which is why they rarely make the list. That I will seek to change, if only by a little, in 2014. I will continue to read more books written by female writers. There are many amazing female writers out there and it is a matter of intense intellectual laziness that more people do not read them. There are so many things I can say on this subject, but that is perhaps for another day, though I would ask all the readers here to ask of themselves honestly this question: do you read safely or do you read broadly? I think I am moving away from the former to the latter, and my life is enriched immeasurably by it. Perhaps if only one person makes a similar move, then my work here will be done.

My key reading goal for 2014 is re-reading. Rarely do I have time in my reading schedule to go back to a book I’ve read before, and I feel that I am missing a richness of experience by not doing so. That is something I will rectify in 2014.

So, without any further delay, here is my reading list for 2013 (in order of rating).

Fiction
The Last Samurai - Helen DeWitt 10/5
Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt - 8/5
Gilead - Marilynn Robinson 5/5
The Wall - Marlen Haushofer 5/5
A Tale For The Time Being - Ruth Ozeki 5/5
This Book Will Save Your Life - A M Homes 5/5
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt 5/5
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse (rr) 5/5
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green 5/5
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton 4.75/5
Fair Play - Tove Jansson 4.5/5
The Comforters - Muriel Spark 4.5/5
The Good Terrorist - Doris Lessing 4.5/5
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4.5/5
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark 4.5/5
Weight - Jeanette Winterson. 4.5/5
The Woman Upstairs - Claire Messud 4.5/5
Mr Fox - Helen Oyeyemi 4.5/5
Mao II - Don DeLillo 4.5/5
The Childhood of Jesus - J M Coetzee 4.5/5
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller 4.5/5
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Colleen McCullers 4.5/5
We Need New Names - Noviolet Bulaweyo 4.5/5
Swimming Home - Deborah Levy 4.5/5
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston 4.5/5
The Goddess Chronicle - Natsuo Kirino 4.5/5
Almost Innocent - Sheila Bosworth 4.5/5
Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan 4.5/5
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper 4.5/5
Youth - J M Coetzee 4.25/5
The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood 4.25/5
Darkmans - Nicola Barker 4/5
Uzumaki (graphic novel) - Junji Ito 4/5
State of Wonder - Ann Patchett 4/5
The Fire Gospel - Michael Faber 4/5
Beasts - Joyce Carol Oates 4/5
Ragnarok The End of the Gods - A S Byatt 4/5
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg - Dubravka Ugrešić 4/5
Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum 4/5
The Forgotten Waltz - Anne Enright 4/5
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon 4/5
Cutter and Bone - Newton Thornburg 4/5
White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
Harvest - Jim Crace 4/5
The Testament of Mary - Colm Toíbín 4/5
The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri 4/5
Dracula - Bram Stoker 4/5
A Novel Bookstore - Lawrence Cossé 3.75/5
Bonjour Tristesse - Françoise Sagan 3.75/5
Where Three Roads Meet - Salley Vickers 3.75/5
Binu and the Great Wall - Su Tong 3.75/5
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark 3.75/5
The Purple Shroud - Stella Duffy 3.75/5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 3.5/5
Silence - Shusaku Endo 3.5/5
American Gods - Neil Gaiman 3.5/5
Beautiful Mutants - Deborah Levy 3.5/5
Chéri - Colette 3.5/5
The Helmet of Horror - Victor Pelevin 3.5/5
The Monk - Matthew Lewis 3.5/5
Strange Weather in Tokyo - Hiromi Kawakami 3.5/5
The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J. K. Rowling 3.5/5
Swann's Way - Marcel Proust 3/5
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman 3/5

Non-fiction
The Penguin Book of Norse Myths - Kevin Crossley-Holland 5/5
Gorillas in the Mist - Dian Fossey 4.75/5
Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg 4.5/5
A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong 4.5/5
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson 4/5

Books I abandoned
Snowball Earth – Gabrielle Walker
The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov