Omega-3 isolation: reading resolutions for the New Year

Before I launch into omega-3 isolation, or rather my self prescribed reading list for 2011, I've set out a few of my favourite book-related news stories for the week. Why? Why not! Everyone else seems to be making lists (Waterstones, the US National Book Critics Circle) I want a piece of the action. So, my top six book stories/sites for the week that (nearly) was are: 

1. Forget O: A Presidential Novel, which of these gift horses will Obama read first?
2. National Book Circle (US) finalists named: note to self must read Skippy Dies, great title... let's judge more books by their titles
3. Sacha Baron Cohen to star in adaptation of Saddam Hussein's Romance Novel... nuff said
4. New Yorker cartoon response to Tiger Mother book uproar
5. Bookgami? Oribooks?
6. Watch out Stephanie Meyer: Twilight publicist writes own teen novels

Onto another list, one more self-centered still. As the diary of my bookish self or my bookshelf, this blog is much about my aspirations, my reading future, the books I hope will lie dog-eared and devoured on my bookshelf in the months to come, as it is about the books I've already read. And the New Year is the perfect excuse to pop some of those aspirations into... hurrah, a list (I'm standing on the very top of the list-making bandwagon with a megaphone). The books, and case for each, are: 

The book: Good-bye to All That

The case: I like Robert Graves’ novels. I Claudius is up there with Peter Pan and The Count of Monte Cristo in my read-them-again-and-again favourites. A large part of Good-bye to All That deals with Graves’ time in the trenches – it’s an anti-war memoir and while I find books about war difficult, I’m approaching Good-bye to All That in the same way I approach fish oils. The unpleasant way it might repeat on me (in the book’s case with pop-up visions of bullet-riddled young men) will surely be far outweighed by the good it’ll do me.

The book: How to be Alone

The case: it’s been on my bookshelf (unread) since I bought it in 2002. It’s a collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen. Surely I should read these before I allow myself to buy his latest novel Freedom (this week named a US National Book Circle finalist) don’t you think? Besides, the blurb tells me as a body of work these essays reflect on ‘being alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture’. I think I could do with some of that.

The book: American Psycho

The case: it seems everyone else read American Psycho yonks ago and that I missed out. I hate missing out. Plus The Guardian’s banking in literature quiz has led me to understand that Bret Easton Ellis has his murderous main character work at Pierce & Pierce, an investment firm that bears the same name as Sherman McCoy’s firm in Bonfire of the Vanities – I loved Bonfire of the Vanities. And who doesn’t want to read a book about a mad, murderous investment banker?

The book: Dune

The case: it’ll bring a nice sci-fi geekiness to my year of reading and it’s got longevity on its side (Dune was first published in 1965). Given there are six books in the original series (with two co-authored spin-off series) if I’m as gripped as the fans seem to be, I’ll get to be gripped for a long time to come.

The book: Mrs Dalloway

The case: I like to use parentheses a lot and so, it seems, does Virginia Woolf. Unfortunately I don’t like to read them nearly so much (they’re annoying) and last time I picked up Mrs Dalloway – after reading Michael Cunningham’s The Hours – I had to put it down in protest. But it’s a classic and usually perseverance reaps reward.

2010: The Road to Middlemarch by way of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I’ve racked my brains to remember what I read last year. Very quickly (it’s not in my nature to be brief), my top 6 (see) books in 2010 were:

The book: The Lacuna

The case: without a doubt, my favourite of the year. The Lacuna is a colourful and graceful novel, intriguing for both its fictional characters and its portrayal of real people – Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Trotsky, that’s right, Trotsky, make more than fleeting appearances. The Lacuna asks what it means, and should mean, to be a public person. A good question, well asked… It also has the most satisfying, yet unexpected, ending I can remember reading since the Bartimaeus Trilogy.

The book: The Secret History

The case: not the story of classics students overstepping the Dionysian mark, ala Donna Tartt, but The Secret History written by Byzantine scholar Procopius about the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (written in secret as the name implies and conflicting with his official and not-at-all secret histories). It’s not the easiest read but If Procopius is to be believed boy did those crazy Byzantine Roman imperial types get up to some tricks.

The book: The Road

The case: uplifting, this is not and there is no way, no how that I will ever, ever see the movie. Ever. That said, Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic father and son road trip squeezed me in all sorts of difficult yet ultimately worthwhile ways.  It’s bleak, bleak but somehow still a little bit hopeful, despite the suicide, cannibalism and never quite spelled out environmental catastrophe.  Something to read on a sunny day when you can step out into the world and see people playing sport in parks and being nice to each other.

The book: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The case: isn’t the title alone enough? Well then how about the unicorns, information pirates and Bob Dylan lyrics? Essentially  a detective story about the search for the main character's mind. Haruki Murakami is master of the surreal and if you like your fiction based in reality, then this probably is not for you… if you don’t mind then this is nothing but delightful in a pleasantly baffling way.

The book: Wolf Hall

The case: this is Henry VIII’s story told from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell. Usually cast as something of a villain (Cromwell was a strong advocate of the English church's break with Rome and instrumental in Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon), he has been re-imagined by Hilary Mantel as a sympathetic, clever and practical man, someone who rose from humble beginnings, got things done but still held onto his own beliefs. It’s gripping, elegantly told and I had to constantly remind myself that it is a work of fiction.

The book: Middlemarch

The case: would I have read this, were it not for family pressure (pressure, not from my in-laws who claim George Eliot/Mary Anne Evans as a distant relation, but from my father who read Middlemarch recently and, quite rightly considers it excellent)? Who can say. Am I glad I did? You betcha. It’s funny, well-observed and many of its observations, in particular those on marriage, feel very modern. It's also crammed with excellent character names: Tertius Lydgate, Dorothea Brooke, Humphrey Cadwallader... and I can't help thinking that if I were to get a pet in the near future, I'd be turning back to Middlemarch for inspiration. 

Bookselfish begins

Book Selfish begins. It’s a new year, I’ve moved to a new city, I’m no longer in a book group but I want to talk about the books I’ve read. So I’m joining the masses and starting a blog. This is the selfish diary of my reading past, present and hopeful future.