I've slowed down a lot since August 2019, when I last checked in. I'd read around 70 by then, so by that reckoning my rate has roughly halved. Reasons for this - I've watched a bit more TV and film, I've found it harder to find short novels and have read more long and complex works (still nothing above 400 pages though ...); also, I suppose my reading fervour has subsided somewhat.
Still, having said that, when I look at the updated "favourites" list below, several of those at the top are from the last few months. Perhaps the extra time has meant I've savoured them more. Who knows?
After I'd read about 10 books or so, I looked at it and saw that they were mainly by men, and so, thought, I'd try not to make them all by men. With me, as soon as a thought like that enters my head, it usually ends up being quite strict, so I've generally tried to make it 50/50. Just in the last few, I've actually read more by women, so now it's 53/47, though looking at what's on my shelf for future reading, that will likely be evened up soon.
That has not just been a worthy task, but actually a reflection of the fact I've found, probably, and without being sure, that I'm more likely to prefer books by women - or rather I'm less likely to find them slightly annoyingly hard work. It may be a thing that 'great' male authors are slightly more determined to put their writerly stamp on a book and impress you with their cleverness. That may be a thing.
Here's the list then in order of preference. I realise this is a heathen act and hope will be taken in the spirit intended. Not as judgement, more simply, the order in which I'd recommend reading them to a person who I knew to have the exact same taste as me.
There are vanishly few I actively disliked - I just don't see the point of that. There may've been times I thought "get on with it", "all right, chill out" or "why can't all novels have uniformly 10-15 page chapters, be 200 pages long and laid out in a nice medium size font", but I have liked nearly all of the books listed.
Some of those lower on the list are harshly placed - I remember enjoying them at the time, but they just haven't stayed with me quite as much as some others.
So please don't take the order seriously.
- The Green Road - Anne Enright
- Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
- Normal People – Sally Rooney
- Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill
- The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
- Autumn - Ali Smith
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
- Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
- Days Without End - Sebastian Barry
- Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie
- The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
- I Heard the Owl Call My Name - Margaret Craven
- An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
- Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
- A Month in the Country – JL Carr
- Sula – Toni Morrison
- Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
- The Vegetarian - Han Kang
- Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
- Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
- Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Wall - John Lanchester
- Winter - Ali Smith
- Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
- I Who Have Never Known Men- Jacqueline Harpman
- Swimming Home - Deborah Levy
- Actress - Anne Enright
- Spring - Ali Smith
- Quartet in Autumn - Barbara Pym
- The Quiet American – Graham Greene
- The Gathering – Anne Enright
- Regeneration - Pat Barker
- Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
- Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner
- Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney
- Nutshell – Ian McEwan
- Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh
- The Beginning of Spring – Penelope Fitzgerald
- The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
- Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh
- A Room With a View - EM Forster
- A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch
- The Noise of Time – Julian Barnes
- The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler
- Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
- Everything Under - Daisy Johnson
- History of Wolves - Emily Fridlund
- Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
- Hot Milk – Deborah Levy
- An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
- Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
- From a Calm and Narrow Sea – Donal Ryan
- The Ghost Road - Pat Barker
- Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively
- Seize the Day - Saul Bellow
- The End We Start From - Megan Hunter
- Songdogs - Colum McCann
- Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
- The Man Who Saw Everything - Deborah Levy
- The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain
- 13 Ways of Looking - Colum McCann
- Stay With Me - Ayobami Adebayo
- How to be Both - Ali Smith
- Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
- In Our Mad and Furious City - Guy Gunaratne
- Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
- My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite
- The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
- Midwinter Break – Bernard MacLaverty
- Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
- The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
- Tin Man - Sarah Winman
- The Italian Girl - Iris Murdoch
- Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
- So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
- Heatwave - Penelope Lively
- The Forgotten Waltz – Anne Enright
- The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
- The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka
- In a Free State - VS Naipaul
- Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- Girl - Edna O'Brien
- Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams
- The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
- Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
- Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
- Home - Toni Morrison
- Heartburn - Nora Ephron
- Weather - Jenny Offill
- Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
- Grief is a Thing with Feathers - Max Porter
- The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
- Rabbit, Run - John Updike
- Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
- The Awakening - Kate Chopin
- The Fall - Albert Camus
- The Order of the Day - Eric Vuillard
- A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- ness - Robert MacFarlane and Stanley Donwood
- The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
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