Last Christmas I resolved to read more books. This is the list, dominated by novels in the first half of the year, and comics in the second. In alphabetic order the best baker's dozen were:
Warren Ellis and John Cassady: Planetary (2000-4) - Archaeologico-multiverse allows Ellis to remix the history of comics. Nicely done though very occasionally feels like it takes too long to tie the vignettes together.
Max Ernst: Une Semaine de Bonte (1934) - Wordless, dialogueless, surreal, nightmarish, and inspiring collage comic.
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
- Beautiful and haunting morality/humanity story. The Guardian's review
suggested that his writing approaches that of Conrad. At times it's
like Conrad rewrote Ursula Le Guin. His short story collection Some Rain Must Fall was also great (and better than the recent Fahrenheit Twins I feel).
Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go (2005) - Desolate, clever but detached story of er... society, bodies and health (to avoid spoiling the story).
Ursula Le Guin: The Dispossessed (1974) - Great stuff. Starts as a
comparison of a pastoral/communist/collective society and its
capitalist/individualist mirror, then folds them back on themselves to
reveal the political patterns and similarities. (Also her City of
Illusions).
Andrew Losowsky et al: Le Cool changed my life: A weird and wonderful
guide to Barcelona (2006) - A weird tourist guide, entertaining whilst
being very useful.
Toby Litt: Deadkidsongs (2001)
- Literate and entertaining Home counties/Lord of the Flies style mystery. Was interesting to compare this to both Smith's The Accidental.
David Macaulay: The Motel of the Mysteries (1979)
- Funny illustrated story of future archaeologists trying to make sense
of the rediscovered USA. Cf: Dore's The Zealander, Christopher
Woodward's In Ruins, JGB's Hello America, Eco and semiological cargo
cults, and catastrophe fiction passim. His Unbuilding was also good.
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Encased stories, with small connections between whose rhythm works a bit like Markson. In each, the (same, reincarnated?) characters struggle for freedom from larger, oppressive groups and situations. I was probably the last Mitchell reader to get to Cloud Atlas (and still haven't got to Black Swan Green yet), and had read Ghostwritten earlier in the year, which, with the benefit of more time, I now think every bit as good as Cloud Atlas.
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely: We3 (2005) - Extraordinary pacing. Gud buk.
Alice Munro: Runaway (2005)
- Stories/novellas of the everyday, of how everday life works, of
looking forward and back. There's nothing to them, and yet they've
stayed in the memory.
Ali Smith, The Accidental (2004)
- This was my comment -- I couldn't think start capturing it in
delicious' 256 characters: What a brilliant, lurching, thinking,
confusing novel.
Kurt Vonnegut: Bluebeard (1987) - Funny/poignant memoir of a man looking over his time in the army and as an Abstract Expressionist. (Vonnegut is conflicted over the AE movement and modern art generally.)
The ones I want to re-read are Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonte, Michel Faber's Under the Skin, Smith's The Accidental and Vonnegut's Bluebeard. These and Alice Munro and Ursula Le Guin (generally) are the ones I've most often recommended to other people this year. Honourable mentions: Not many of the graphic novels made it onto the top 13 list, but as a bridge from novels to comics, Andrew Kaufman's All My Friends Are Superheroes was interesting. (Liked least: Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante and Douglas Coupland's J-Pod.) What did you read this year?
In 2007: the current plan is to read a bit less, and write a bit more. But it looks like Edgar Allan Poe, Duchamp's Green and White box notes, and some Christmas presents are already on the list. What do you recommend?
(Previously: Books read in 2006H1 and here's the full list. 2007's list will be here.)