End-of-year reading meme

Happy New Year one and all!

I did this a year ago and I’m doing it again. Enjoy (if you want).

How many books read in 2012?
73

Fiction/Non-Fiction?
57/16

Male/Female authors?
57/16 (more equal than last year, but still something that may require attending to)

Favourite book read?
Let’s say Gulliver’s Travels, for argument’s sake

Least favourite?
There have been a few duds but no absolute stinkers this year. In terms of effort expended and awards recouped, though, I’m afraid I must name Wolf Hall as my biggest struggle. Not the worst book I read this year, but just not for me. Perhaps I’m simply out of sympathy with the Booker judges, as The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson was also very much in the running. A disappointment, particularly given how much I’ve loved his other novels, but it had the mercy of being less long-winded than the Mantel.

Oldest book read?
Twelfth Night beats Macbeth by a year or two.

Newest book read?
I read David Mitchell’s (comedian) memoir Back Story as soon as it came out. Lovely, it was.

Longest book title?
Martin Ashley’s How High Should Boys Sing? Gender, Authenticity and Credibility in the Young Male Voice beats Douglas Snauffer’s The Show Must Go On: How the Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television Series by five letters.

Shortest book title?
Robin (Catherine Storr), Flute (Richard Adeney) and Spent (Joe Matt) are tied on five letters each. A disparate trio.

How many re-reads?
Last year, two; this year, nine: Macbeth and Twelfth Night, old favourites The Great Gatsby, Le Grand Meaulnes, Young Törless, Pride and Prejudice and Death in Venice, and school books revisited Golden Girls (Louise Page) and A Fox Under My Jacket (Harriet Graham).

Most books read by a single author?
5 (Armistead Maupin), 4 (Alexander McCall Smith), 3 (Muriel Spark, P.G. Wodehouse).

Any in translation?
3. Oh dear. And nothing I hadn’t read before, although one of them was a new translation. Alain-Fournier, Mann and Musil.

How many books were borrowed from the library?
25

Best blog recommendation?
I’m sure it was reading about the book on blogs that prompted me to try Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall, which I found beautiful.

I had no clue what was going on:
Take a bow, Wolf Hall.

Favourite character encountered this year:
Captain Cuttle! HOOROAR!!

End-of-year reading meme

Another meme (the last for a while), this one pilfered from Stuck in a Book. I’ve used the outline of the one I did last year, incorporating some of this year’s innovations.

How many books read in 2011?
86

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
74.5/11.5 (the split book being Days and Nights in W12 by Jack Robinson, which I couldn’t make my mind up about)

Male/Female authors?
69.5/16.5 (a marginally wider disparity than last year – oops)

Favourite book read?
Buddenbrooks, without a doubt

Least favourite?
Perhaps Ted Hughes’ lame children’s poetry collection Meet My Folks!

Oldest book read?
I almost wrote King Lear (or was that Shakespeare?), but then remembered that last year I also read Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (early 13th century).

Newest book read?
I read Alan Partridge’s autobiography, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan, immediately on publication. Back of the net.

Longest book title?
Probably Ilana Gershon’s The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, though it’s a close call

Shortest book title?
Ubik (Philip K. Dick)

How many re-reads?
Only two (Tolkien’s disappointing Smith of Wootton Major and Erich Kästner’s enchanting Emil and the Detectives)

Most books read by a single author?
14 (Alexander McCall Smith). His distant retinue is composed of Armistead Maupin (3), and Jane Austen, Susan Tomes, Raymond Chandler, Robert Graves, Stephen King, Philip K. Dick and Joanne Limburg (2 each).

Any in translation?
8, which seems a meagre return. Four German, one Swedish, one French, one Belgian and one Russian. And nothing in a foreign language, which is bad. This year I will at least make an effort to read something in French, which I failed to do in 2011.

How many books were borrowed from the library?
50

Best blog recommendation?
Skippy Dies, which I first read about on the pages of Asylum.

I had no clue what was going on:
The late Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and the even later Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds stand out in this category.

Favourite character encountered this year:
Such a hard call to make, this. I think I have to say Hanno Buddenbrook, but I give the highest commendations to McCall Smith’s Bertie Pollock, Paul Murray’s Ruprecht Van Doren (Skippy Dies), Philip K. Dick’s Mr Tagomi (The Man in the High Castle) and Jane Gardam’s Bilgewater.

If the title fits…

If you’ve been here before, you won’t have escaped my weakness for silly book-related memes. Here’s another, courtesy of Stuck in a Book.

The idea is to answer with the titles of books you’ve read this year. Obviously if you’ve only read a couple of books your range of responses will be limited and you may prefer not to participate, but otherwise I’d be delighted if you’d join me.

One time on holiday:
Misery (Stephen King) [A holiday in Berwick. I do not recommend this town. It's the kind of place where you sprain your ankle getting out of the bath.]

Weekends at my house are:
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)

My neighbour is:
Le Petit Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) [I've never met him, but let's be optimistic.]

My boss is:
Lady Susan (Jane Austen)

My superhero secret identity is:
Peter Pears (Christopher Headington)

I get changed in a phone box

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry because:
Blacklands (Belinda Bauer)

I’d win a gold medal in:
Smut (Alan Bennett)

I’d pay good money for:
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Heinrich Böll)

If I were Prime Minister I would:
Love Over Scotland (Alexander McCall Smith)

When I don’t have good books, I:
Meet My Folks! (Ted Hughes)

Loud talkers at the cinema should be:
A Handful of Dust (Evelyn Waugh)

End-of-year reading meme

It’s quite shameless, the extent to which I have taken to stealing from Stuck in a Book, but I suppose these things are meant to attract imitators. Soon there will be fewer lists on this blog.

But for the time being, here’s a rundown of what I read last year. It’s horribly skewed by my having had to read for academic purposes practically everything Roald Dahl wrote for children, but there we are.

How many books read in 2010?
101, which I’m sure is a personal best and one I expect never to surpass. About 50 is more my standard.

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
79/22, I make it.

Male/Female authors?
79/20, which included a run of 41 consecutive books written by men in the middle of the year. 1 book written by a man and a woman in collaboration, 1 edited by a woman but containing multiple contributions from both sexes. I do read more books by men than by women, guilty, but this isn’t exactly representative of the normal balance because of all the Dahl. Let’s do this again next year and see what happens.

Favourite book read?
I’d be happier choosing a handful, but I thought a great deal of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run.

Least favourite?
I suppose Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which is quite abysmally bad, but at least it didn’t take long to read. More frustrating was Carol Mavor’s Reading Boyishly, which I got through about 400 pages of before deciding I couldn’t take any more. Beautifully presented, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. My problem, I expect.

Oldest book read?
I thought this would be Jane Austen’s Sanditon, but a glance down the list reminds me I read As You Like It (c. 1599).

Newest book read?
I read The Fry Chronicles as soon as it came out.

Longest book title?
Excluding subtitles, it must be Tim Key’s marvellous and imaginative Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions, Other Suggestions and Examples etc.

Shortest book title?
Boy. Though it has a subtitle, so Gigi is also a contender.

How many re-reads?
21, almost all Dahls.

Most books read by one author this year?
Roald Dahl (24) – could have sworn it was more. Followed by Henry de Montherlant and Terence Rattigan (3 each), and Muriel Spark, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip K. Dick, James M. Cain and Edward Gorey (2 each).

Any in translation?
3 from French, 1 each from Russian, Italian, Czech and German. And 1 read in French, though it was only a play. I’ll do some more reading in French this year, but it would be good to keep the German up too. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for Mann in the original, so maybe I should just take the plunge now.

How many books were borrowed from the library?
47, which is more than I’d expected. Three of them I liked so much I bought my own copy afterwards.

Name a book you’ve read this year which was recommended by a blogger?
There are many, but eight at least were prescribed on account of my vow to read four each from the ‘top’ books lists of The Argumentative Old Git and Occasional Scribe published here in 2009. I ended up reading books like James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and William Golding’s The Inheritors as a result.