The goal every year is to read 120 books. This year I blew way past that, finishing at 140 books reviewed. I was sort of pushed into retirement (yay!!), and life at home consequently got much better as a result (yay!!), leading to peace of mind and a rather impressive reading list. My only regret was not as many titles about China, my focus for the past 10 years.
Books of the year: well, anything rated "A+" can sensibly be recommended as the gold standard. You know what you're getting when you read Jim Cain, or The Exorcist, or O'Hara, or Vonnegut; fame and familiarity haven't dimmed their luster. The pleasures are the same on the 10th go-round as on the first. So I'll mention some discoveries: Julien Green's psychological crazefest Avarice House; two political masterpieces in The Leopard and All The King's Men; Robert Harris's riveting Dreyfus novel; Pat Barker's jaw-dropping WWI fugue, Regeneration; Lagerkvist's meditation on evil, The Dwarf; Liu Cunxin's Mao's Last Dancer, about his harrowing escape from Communist China, Roald Dahl topping all of the above.
I'm not an easy grader, as you'll see. For some reason, a lot of the books were just great. Or, not great.
China
- Edward Slingerland: Trying Not To Try (C+)
- Liu Cunxin: Mao's Last Dancer (A+)
The Nobelists
- Heinrich Böll: Irish Journal (A-)
- Günter Grass: The Tin Drum (B)
- William Faulkner: Uncollected Stories (B)
- Pär Lagerkvist: The Dwarf (A+)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: Love And Exile (B+)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: Scum (B+)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: Meshugah (A-)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Certificate (A-)
- Patrick Modiano: Missing Person (B-)
- S. Y. Agnon: A Book That Was Lost (D)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: Gimpel The Fool (A+)
- Hermann Hesse: Narcissus And Goldmund (A-)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Death Of Methusaleh (A+)
- Dario Fo: The Pope's Daughter (B)
Novelists Of My Youth
- Norman Mailer: Advertisements For Myself (B)
- William Peter Blatty: The Exorcist (A+)
- Norman Mailer: Cannibals And Christians (B)
- Philip Roth: Portnoy's Complaint (C+)
- John O'Hara: Appointment In Samarra (A+)
- Anthony Burgess: Nothing Like The Sun (D)
- Philip Roth: My Life As A Man (B)
- Anthony Burgess: Honey For The Bears (D+)
- Gilbert Sorrentino: Mulligan Stew (C+)
- Frederick Forsyth: The Odessa File (D+)
- Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (B)
- Peter Benchley: Q Clearance (C)
- Thomas Rogers: The Pursuit Of Happiness (B)
- John O'Hara: The Cape Cod Lighter (A+)
- Barry Hannah: Ray (C+)
- Richard Condon: The Final Addiction (B+)
- John O'Hara: The Big Laugh (A+)
- Raymond Kennedy: The Flower Of The Republic (B)
- Barry Hannah: Boomerang (B+)
- Barry Hannah: Never Die (C+)
- (David Jasen, ed.): The Uncollected Wodehouse (A+)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Deadeye Dick (A+)
- E. L. Doctorow: World's Fair (A+)
- Thomas Berger: The Feud (A-)
Lady Writers
- Barbara Pym: Excellent Women (B)
- Vita Sackville-West: All Passion Spent (B+)
- Anaïs Nin: The Four-Chambered Heart (D)
- Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived In The Castle (A-)
- Zoë Wicomb: You Can't Get Lost In Cape Town (C)
- Henry Handel Richardson: Maurice Guest (B-)
- Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall (C+)
- Pat Barker: Regeneration (A+)
- Jane Kramer: The Last Cowboy (D)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (B)
Politics
- Henry Adams: Novels And Memoirs (Library of America) (C-)
- Julian Barnes: The Noise Of Time (B+)
- Aleksander Wat: My Century (C-)
- Jeff Pearlman: Football For A Buck (A-)
- Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn: The Complete Yes Minister (A+)
- Robert Harris: An Officer And A Spy (A+)
- Thomas Mallon: Watergate (B-)
- Giuseppi di Lampedusa: The Leopard (A+)
- Henry Bromell: Little America (C+)
- William F. Buckley, Jr.: Nuremberg (B)
- Montesquieu: Persian Letters (C-)
- Robert Penn Warren: All The King's Men (A+)
Mem-wahs, Belles-Lettres, Other Non-Fiction, Drama
- Lawrence Durrell: Reflections On A Marine Venus (B+)
- H. G. Wells: A Short History Of The World (C)
- Amos Oz: In The Land Of Israel (A-)
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations (A)
- Eugène Ionesco: The Bald Soprano & Other Plays (A+)
- Christopher Plummer: In Spite Of Myself (A-)
- D. H. Lawrence: Selected Poetry (A+)
- Stephen Jay Gould: An Urchin In The Storm (A)
- Roald Dahl: Going Solo (A+)
- James Spada: More Than A Woman (A-)
- Jerry Lewis: Dean & Me (A-)
- Marguerite Duras: India Song (D+)
- Patrick McGilligan: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life In Darkness And Light (A)
- John Kenneth Galbraith: The Great Crash 1929 (C)
- Harlan Ellison: The Glass Teat (A-)
- Gertrude Stein: Lectures In America (A+)
- Stephen Davis: Hammer Of The Gods (C)
- Three Plays About Crime And Criminals (A+)
- Michael Palin: New Europe (C)
- Noël Coward: Three Plays (A-)
- The Paris Review 196 (Spring 2011) (B)
- J. Randy Taraborrelli: Sinatra-Behind The Legend (A)
- John Gunther: Death Be Not Proud (A)
- Edmond Rostand: Cyrano De Bergerac (B)
- John Kaag: American Philosophy (C-)
More Fiction
- Amos Oz: Unto Death (B)
- Kingsley Amis: The Folks That Live On The Hill (B-)
- Cees Nooteboom: In The Dutch Mountains (B-)
- Cees Nooteboom: Rituals (C)
- Sholom Aleichem: Marienbad (C)
- Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities (A)
- Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son (A)
- Sebastian Barry: A Long Long Way (B+)
- Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie (C-)
- André Schwarz-Bart: The Last Of The Just (A)
- George Saunders: Tenth Of December (A-)
- Jack London: The Sea Wolf (A-)
- George Orwell: Coming Up For Air (B)
- Chaim Potok: My Name Is Asher Lev (B+)
- Nevil Shute: On The Beach (A+)
- William Maxwell: The Folded Leaf (B)
- Julien Green: Avarice House (A+)
Baseball
- Jane Leavy: The Big Fella (A+)
- Art Shamsky and Erik Sherman: After The Miracle (A+)
- Pat Jordan: The Suitors Of Spring (A+)
- Jim Bouton with Neil Offen: "I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad" (A)
- Fay Vincent: It's What's Inside The Lines That Counts (B-)
- Peter Golenbock: Red Sox Nation (A-)
Mysteries
- Adrian Conan Doyle & John Dickson Carr: The Exploits Of Sherlock Holmes (B-)
- James Ellroy: Clandestine (B+)
- Raymond Chandler: The Lady In The Lake (B)
- Dave Thompson: Sherlock Holmes FAQ (A)
- Georges Simenon: Maigret And The Killer (B)
- Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (eds.): Hard-Boiled (B)
- James Crumley: The Last Good Kiss (B-)
- S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case (B+)
- S. S. Van Dine: The Winter Murder Case (B+)
- Charles Drazin: (On) Blue Velvet (F)
- Boris Akunin: The Winter Queen (B-)
- John Le Carré: Our Kind Of Traitor (B-)
- James M. Cain: Double Indemnity (A+)
- Josephine Tey: The Man In The Queue (C)
- Georges Simenon: Pietr The Latvian (B)
- Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn (B-)
- James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice (A+)
- Brian Moore: The Statement (A+)
- Barry Reed: The Verdict (A-)
- Agatha Christie: Murder On The Orient Express (A-)
- Aaron Elkins: Fellowship Of Fear (C-)
- Dennis Lehane: The Drop (A)
Excretement
- Jean-Patrick Manchette: Fatale (D)
- Jimmy Breslin: I Don't Want To Go To Jail (D-)
- Roy Blount, Jr.: Crackers (F)
- Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (F)
- Parker Tyler: Chaplin: Last Of The Clowns (F)
- Bob Woodward: Fear (F)
- David Sedaris: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk (D)
- Peter Ustinov: Add A Dash Of Pity (D+)