What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books this year. I was drawn to the difficult. (Well, for me, they were difficult). I felt I needed the mental stimulation. Not much fiction this year. I couldn’t really deal with fiction. I also flew by the seat of my pants. There was no plan here, although it’s clear I suddenly started reading a lot of memoirs about living under a totalitarian or fascist government. Hm. Wonder why. Many of these books came on my radar because of Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia, one of the best reading experiences I had this year. Most of the links to books below are from McNally Jackson, a bookstore I have been supporting as much as I can through this pandemic.
1. Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust
I started this in 2019 and finished it up early this year. I’m finally reading this book. My main response is: Why didn’t anyone tell me how FUNNY it is?
2. Wallflower at the Orgy, by Nora Ephron
Squinting back through the fog of 2020, I am fairly certain I picked this up after reading Michelle Dean’s Sharp.
3. Women in Dark Times, by Jacqueline Rose
Essential.
4. Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
A re-read. She’s so much fun.
5. Best Poems of the English Language, edited by Harold Bloom
This is a gigantic door-stop of a book, with Bloom’s mostly minimal commentary about each poet. I decided to read a lot of poetry this year, even stuff I’m familiar with – and most of these poems I’m familiar with. But whatever, you can’t really read “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” too many times. Like, you’re not DONE with it.
6. End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound, by H.D.
This was part of my capacious preparation for the huge piece I wrote for Film Comment about H.D. This memoir of her relationship with Ezra Pound dating back to when she was a teenager (he was the first person to kiss her, they were briefly engaged, he christened her “H.D.” and etc.) was written the year he was released from St. Elizabeth’s, where he had been locked up for 15 years, following his return to the United States, in chains, accused of treason. She used the opportunity to write beautifully of their relationship, as well as a current-day diary of how she was working out these feelings through psychoanalysis. Very H.D.
7. Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew, by John Oller
I’d read this before, but re-read it because I was writing about Jean Arthur for Film Comment.
8. The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose, by Rebecca West
A collection of her writings, from her letters, to Black Lamb Grey Falcon, to Train of Powder and Meaning of Treason, to her journalism and more. I’ve read all of her stuff, but felt like re-visiting.
9. HERmione, by H.D.
A lesbian roman a clef published after H.D. died. Humorously: this was the first book I read post-shutdown. I had ordered it a month before, for that Film Comment piece, and it arrived in the first waves of panic in re: Covid. The book came from England, and was held at customs for almost a week.
10. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
Nothing like a little true crime to open the window and let in some freezing air. This is a very chilling story.
11. H.D., the Life and Work of an American Poet, by Janice Stevenson Robinson
Published in the 80s, it’s an exhaustive book – and more a work of literary criticism than biography (which can be annoying: an artist isn’t writing biography when they write a poem. Not strictly. However, H.D. was extremely personal. She didn’t invent much.) It’s a really interesting excavation of the powerful relationship between H.D. and D.H. Lawrence – erased from history due to his estate being managed by H.D.’s somewhat jealous ex-husband – you can’t make this shit up – that generation really GOT AROUND. I liked the parallels drawn between H.D.’s and Lawrence’s work, and how they seemed to be talking “to” each other through their poems. Anyway, interesting background. A little out-dated but I needed the firm foundation to even have the confidence to write this damn piece, which for many reasons I struggled with. I’m really proud how it came out, considering.
12. Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, by Clive James
The reading experience of the year for me.
13. Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp, by Józef Czapski
By this point, I had started Volume 2 of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, so I thought this would be a fun one. Czapski was in a Soviet prison camp, and of course didn’t have any books with him, but the prisoners would “entertain” themselves by giving lectures on subjects they knew a lot about. It could be farming, it could be art, it could be mathematics. Czapski gave a series of lectures on Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and this book is put together from the lecture notes he cobbled together, as well as diagrams showing all the thematic elements Proust was working on. An awe-inspiring work, considering the circumstances in which these lectures were given.
14. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
This took me FOREVER to get through. Months on END. I love both of them, they’re both so interesting, and this is a fascinating life-long correspondence, but honestly it was good to finally make it through it.
15. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, by Montesquieu
This was the jumping-off point for Edward Gibbon’s massive The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I have also read (his style is a BEAR to get your head around). This is a slim volume (as opposed to Gibbon) and Montesquieu lays out his theses with clarity and dispatch: the very things that made the Roman empire strong were the things that contributed to its collapse. Recommended.
16. Goodbye Columbus, by Philip Roth
Roth’s first novel, published in 1959. I’ve said before that there are “gaps” in my education and mid-century American novelists – men, anyway – are one of those gaps, and I’ve been trying to rectify it. All those big-wigs – Styron and Bellow and Mailer and Roth – I just missed them, for whatever reason. Roth has been so much fun to catch up on. Over the last couple of years I have read five or six, and they’re always fun. It’s wild to read the first novel because now that I am familiar with him, I can perceive that “it’s all there.” He emerged full-blown, and the rest of his career was just developing what was already there.
17. Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovály
This was one of the books I read because of Cultural Amnesia. It is devastating. One of the most painful and harrowing memoirs I have ever read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
18. Last Waltz in Vienna: The Destruction of a Family, 1842-1942, by George Clare
Another devastating memoir about a vanished world. It’s one of those books where the majority of the writer’s family members die in the same year, as shown in the family tree in the beginning.
19. The Nick Tosches Reader, by Nick Tosches
I miss him. So I re-read this, a little bit at a time .
20. To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface, by Olivia Laing
I got on the Laing train with Trip to Echo Springs. Instant fan. I read Lonely City next and then looped back to read her first To the River. I just love what she’s about and what she’s doing. Haven’t read her novel, or her latest.
21. Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, by Adam Higginbotham
Good read.
22. Emma, by Jane Austen
A re-read inspired by the new film adaptation which I reviewed for Ebert.
23. Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuściński
A re-read. He’s one of my favorite authors.
24. Hitler: The Führer and the People, by J.P. Stern
Such a good book, name-checked in Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia. Published in the 70s, it is still a hugely relevant book, due to its focus on propaganda and the mystifying hold Hitler had over the German people. Wrote about it here.
25. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, by Dubravka Ugrešić
Another book name-checked in Cultural Amnesia. Written by the Yugoslav dissident, forced to live in exile due to her comments on the 1991 war that broke out in the Balkans. Labeled a “public enemy”, she no longer felt safe. This novel – with one of the best titles of a novel ever – is about the disorientation of living in exile. Fantastic.
26. Theatre Street;: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina, by Tamara Karsavina
Karsavina intersected with everyone: the Russian royalty, many of whom were patrons of the ballet, and on to Diaghilev and Nijinsky – whom she danced with – the Russian Imperial ballet and then the Ballets Russes – the terror of the early years of the Bolshevik reign. She had to flee. An amazing snapshot of an incredibly tumultuous world-shaking time.
27. The Trial, by Franz Kafka
Of course I’ve read this before. My ongoing quest to read about propaganda and totalitarian regimes and faceless bureaucracies standing in for The State. This book is terrifying.
28. The Captive Mind, by Czesław Miłosz
Must-read. You can’t “get” or “grok” the 20th century without it.
29. The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert Kaplan
I’ve been reading this man for 20 years now. Sometimes I’m like, “Okay, enough already, WE GET IT” but he’s always thought-provoking. And when he’s wrong, he says so. So I admire that.
30. Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust
Volume 2 COMPLETE. 2021 will be the year for Volume 3. No one told me how funny these books were, first of all, and no one also told me how “easy” they are. Once you let go of the need for plot, they’re really quite simple. It’s hard to let go of the need for plot. And doing so is quite a meditative experience, making this one of the most pleasant reading experiences of the year. Volume 2 takes place during a summer vacation at a seaside resort and every single moment – every breakfast, every walk on the promenade, every person met – however briefly – is laid out in excruciating sensory detail. NOTHING HAPPENS except EVERYTHING happens. He’s dominated by his mother and grandmother. He gets a crush on a girl. There’s one very funny sequence where he and a bunch of girls play a game on the beach and he’s so eager to come off well but then he blunders the ball and gets discombobulated and feels humiliation. That’s about 30 pages. It’s FUNNY. You can just SEE it happening and anyone who’s ever been an adolescent, suffering through gym class, and wanting to look cool to your crush, and FAILING – will recognize instantly all of those feelings. The literary critics have not done a very good job translating this book’s charm and humor! ALSO: because there is no plot, it is very easy to put it down for a couple of days and pick it back up again. The book is a FLOW. Since nothing really happens, you just ease back into the flow and join up with the slow movements of that summer resort.
31. Angry Blonde, by Eminem
Should be obvious why I picked up this old chestnut again. I read it in 20 minutes.
32. The Group, by Mary McCarthy
On the first page “copious menstruation” is mentioned as a character trait.
33. Men in Dark Times, by Hannah Arendt
I had never read this. Inspired by Jacqueline Rose’s extraordinary book read earlier this year. I took so many notes it was practically like I was transcribing the whole book.
34. Surviving Autocracy, by Masha Gessen
You know. Had to do it.
35. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe
Practically everybody I know was urging me to read this book and now I see why. The second half is dominated by two good friends of mine, whom I stayed with when I was in Belfast. They’re the main character in the second half, quoted extensively, central to the aftermath of this terrible and haunting story. And another character is ALSO connected to my life, via my father: my father donated his book collection to the Irish literature collection at Boston College, curated by this man – who was at my dad’s funeral. So, yeah. That was all very strange.
36. Journey Into the Whirlwind, by Eugenia Ginzburg
Ginzberg was arrested during the waves of the Great Terror and spent 18 years in the gulag. She was a True Believer of the Bolshevik Socialist Ideal, and really did not see it coming. A terrifying memoir. Lots of terrifying memoirs this year.
37. A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, by Philip Rucker, Carol D. Leonnig
Had to do it.
38. Good Riddance, by Elinor Lipman
One of my favorite contemporary novelists. I can’t keep up! Still have a couple to read. In this one, an aimless young woman discovers her mother’s high school yearbook and in the process discovers her mother was not at all whom she thought she was. Hijinx ensue.
39. Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte
THIS BOOK MY GOD.
40. The Hangsaman, by Shirley Jackson
THIS BOOK MY GOD. With all my love of Shirley Jackson, I had never read this one. Was inspired to do so by the film Shirley, which I reviewed for Ebert, where Jackson obsesses on the real-life case, and keeps seeing the girl in the red coat everywhere, and works on the novel. This is a very VERY strange book and I can’t say enough good things about it. She NAILS that 18-year-old going-away-to-college thing. Also the PTSD following rape.
41. American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker, edited by Library of America
A gigantic Library of America volume, given to me by my dad. Normally I just go in there and cherry-pick quotes I need for my writing – but this time I decided to go cover to cover. It took me forever. But so worth it and it introduced me to a lot of lesser-known names hidden behind the luminaries. Will do Volume 2 in 2021.
42. Country: The Twisted Roots Of Rock ‘n’ Roll, by Nick Tosches
Glorious.
43. Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I can’t believe I read the whole thing. This, too, took me forever, because of Coleridge’s dense curlicue style, and also those four chapters on the history of philosophy were … HARD, MAN. But in general, this is a book I’ve been meaning to read, since it’s referenced so often. I finally just picked it up one day. There’s at least one GEM on every single page. It helps if you know your Wordsworth, because there are many chapters dissecting his BFF’s work as well as his BFF’s theories on poetry.
44. Halfway Decent Sinners, by Michael Cleary
I can’t remember when I bought this little volume or how Michael Cleary came on my radar. I’m thinking it was probably from Garrison Keillor’s old site (which I still mourn), where he’d post a poem a day, and a couple of little “On This Day” facts. He’s good! Of my parents’ generation, Vatican II Catholics, so all of that was very familiar to me.
45. Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
Pretty sure my friend Charlie turned me onto her. I had never read her stuff before. I loved this! Loved the characters.
46. Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, by Scott Shane
Fantastic. One of my pet topics, but I had never read this one before. Shane was bureau chief in Moscow during the downfall of the Soviet Union, so he had a front-row seat.
47. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – The Major Works, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This includes: letters, notebooks, marginalia, “Table Talk” (transcriptions of his off-the-cuff pontifications), political essays, lectures on Shakespeare, religious essays. Even with his lifelong drug addiction, he got so much done. I need to track down a copy of all of his lectures on Shakespeare. Only the lectures on Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are included here. I went on Amazon and the prices for this book are outrageous so I may have to do some more digging.
48. Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West
I read this in one day. It’s the bleakest shit you can possibly imagine.
49. Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Birth Of Rock In The Wild Years Before Elvis , by Nick Tosches
Absolutely glorious, and it feels as necessary to me as air.
50. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver
He was another one of those “big mid-20th-century male authors” guys I’d never read, or … I’d read a couple of these stories – the title story, and the terrifying one about the two guys who leave their wives at home and track down these two teenage girls in the woods – those were familiar to me. My sister Jean: “One of the problems with Short Cuts is that …” Me: “There was hope in it?” Jean: “Yes.” lol
51. Practical Gods, by Carl Dennis
I love Carl Dennis so much. Had never read this whole collection before. “The Lace Maker” surprised me – I literally burst into tears halfway through and then wept for about 20 minutes. Now THAT’S a poem.
2020 tally
21 books by women (I count co-authors, and I count Words on Air)
31 books by men
13 fiction books
34 non-fiction
4 poetry
Previously
2019 books read
2018 books read
2017 books read
2016 books read
2015 books read
2014 books read
2013 books read
2012 books read
2011 books read
2010 books read
2009 books read
2008 books read
2007 books read
2006 books read
2005 books read
I started 2020 with the intention of checking out some bigger books/series — A Dance to the Music of Time, USA, Parade’s End — but boy did I ever wind up just letting myself be swept along by whatever seemed mood-appropriate. (Mystery Train for the however-many-eth time in the days just before the election, for example.) Very good reading year overall, though. Perhaps a long, isolated, but Trump-free winter will be a good time for the big books.
Re: Olivia Laing, I didn’t love To The River (it was fine, just didn’t destroy me like The Lonely City, and Trip to Echo Spring I thought was fantastic), and the novel wasn’t really my thing, but I absolutely recommend Funny Weather, the recent essay collection. She’s got a(t least one?) new book coming out next year. I’ll read whatever she publishes, and I’m glad she’s apparently quite productive!
Re: Raymond Carver, the later stories in Cathedral are wonderful and somewhat more hopeful. The title story I find especially moving.
Tom – hey – thanks for commenting. I love to hear what people are reading.
// just letting myself be swept along by whatever seemed mood-appropriate. //
Yes! This year especially! Plus re-reads. Those are always fun. Mystery Train is so good.
I, too, didn’t love To the River – but Lonely City/Echo Springs are very hard to live up to! I cannot wait to read Funny Weather! I love the whole idea of it. She has such an original mind – her taste is very specific – and the way she catalogs things is also very specific – I like following along on her explorations. I too am psyched that she’s productive. She’s young, too – so much to look forward too.
and in re: Carver (speaking of Trip to Echo Springs!) – I was planning on moving on to Cathedral next!
Yes, I couldn’t remember if Carver appeared in Echo Springs or not! It’s been a while, and it’s neither the first nor the last book on that theme that I’ve read. (Have you read The Recovering, by Leslie Jamison? Also a WONDERFUL book.)
And honestly, you can’t go wrong with Carver at all — his stories are consistently strong — but there’s a tonal shift with Cathedral that’s pretty noticeable and linked to his recovery.
// there’s a tonal shift with Cathedral that’s pretty noticeable and linked to his recovery. //
Interesting!
I haven’t read The Recovering. Just looked it up – it sounds fascinating.
Interestingly – and coincidentally – I was reading the collected stories of John Cheever (I love him) at around the same time I was reading Echo Springs – and it really made me conscious of how most of his stories are centered around drinking – and yet he never really NAMES it. Like, half of the things in his books wouldn’t happen without copious amounts of alcohol – like The Swimmer, for example – and the drinking is omnipresent – but it’s never really even mentioned. It’s like the Monster is right there and he can’t quite see it. It’s chilling.
and thanks in re: Cathedral – I’ll move on to that one this year.
I finally read “To The River” this year, too! Liked it, didn’t love it–but I kind of found Lonely City and Trip to Echo Springs to be more appealing in theory than in the reading. Also, out of sheer nosiness…how do you read these books? Library? Ebook? Do you buy them all? I seem to recall some posts with lots of bookshelves in your apartment. Do you keep the books for reference? Enquiring minds want to know! I vowed to read my way through my “unread” shelf and made good progress until the libraries here reopened for curbside service! Now the holidays have brought a blissful new crop of books and I must know how every reader in my life keeps from being buried alive (a good way to go)
Reba – hi! yeah, for me, Lonely City is Laing’s best so far – it’s a subject that hasn’t really been covered – as she says I think in the introduction – loneliness is a thing nobody wants to talk about, it’s very very taboo. I loved how she dug into it!
and yeah – I do have this huge library, very unwieldy for an apartment-dweller – but honestly it’s all I spend money on. I don’t have a lot of possessions, lol. I’m not into technology really – or hobbies – certainly not expensive hobbies that require a lot of gear. So when I have a chunk of extra cash I do buy books. Mostly second-hand! And half of my library is made up of stuff I haven’t read yet – I’m weird!! I like to have stuff around – stuff I might get to one day. (Like the Coleridge collected works, for example). and yes – I mostly keep books for reference! It’s why I love anthologies – get a bunch of stuff in one volume, and you never know when it might come in handy! One example: I decided to write that huge piece on H.D. for Film Comment – I know OF her, and have read a couple of her poems, but that’s it – so I ordered the biography and the Ezra Pound memoir, etc. – then the lockdown came, and the libraries closed. Luckily, though, I have this huge anthology of all the Modernist poets – with most of her stuff included. Like, 100 poems or something. So I was all set! I had my own library right here! I love that! (My dad was a librarian and a book collector – so I think this behavior I sort of imbibed as a child.)
Like you, I have a very big “unread” shelf, and do try to make my way through it. Once I decide I like an author I will buy a couple of books to read, whenever I have a mind to. Like Philip Roth. I bought 5 or 6 of his books once I decided I liked him. This is perhaps an expensive way to live – but I try to keep the purchasing under control – luckily, I’m broke – lol – but you can find amazing deals at good second-hand stores, or from third-party sellers on Amazon or elsewhere. I do periodic purges, donating books to a second-hand store I like. I try to do a big purge a year – just to keep the situation under control!
Do you do Ebooks? I have resisted – so far. I guess I don’t want even MORE time with my eyes on a screen! and I love the tactile feeling of a book.
What books did you get for the holidays?
Thanks for your detailed reply. My nosiness is satisfied! I will read ebooks if the library does not have the paper copy easily accessible, but I only buy them as gifts…for people who like ebooks. I am pretty non-discriminatory in the reading (it is the words that matter), but I just can’t seem to accept exchanging money for an ebook as a fair trade. This is not a logical, so I don’t try to justify it. I also like to keep a goodly pile of unread books around–some people worry about “nothing in the fridge I want to eat,” or ” nothing to wear. ” I rarely reread, so I worry about the bookstores closing and the libraries being inaccessible and having nothing to read. (Yes, after this year, I do feel vindicated). Only one *new* book for the holidays this year ( “Trouble the Saints,” by Alaya Dawn Johnson), plus a few old books that I have been missing from my collections ( Ivan Doig, Rebecca Solnit). Here’s to happy reading in the new year!
// so I worry about the bookstores closing and the libraries being inaccessible and having nothing to read. (Yes, after this year, I do feel vindicated). // I feel exactly the same way!
Hey Sheila – I’m a longtime lurker on here (always a bit too shy to comment), and wanted to say that your writing and enthusiasms have been a real beacon for me this year. I’ve struggled to think deeply about anything much, so your depth of research and level of detail has been really impressive. I initially was unable to read (just couldn’t concentrate), but gradually picked up momentum, although I’ve stuck with the familiar rather than expanding my horizons. My top 5 books read this year:
Wintering – Katherine May. I think you might like this. It’s part memoir and part philosophical exploration, it’s about “wintering” as a kind of ‘stowing yourself away’ either from actual winter or metaphorical winters, for recuperation.
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
The Bone Readers – Jacob Ross
Sea Monsters – Chloe Aridjis
Wishing you health, happiness, and close proximity to loved ones in 2021.
Rebecca – sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to this thread. Thanks for de-lurking! especially with such a nice comment!
I am glad this place was a beacon – honestly, writing so much here as I did this year – on subjects I hadn’t written about before – was important in cutting through that brain fog – I, too, had SUCH concentration struggles this year. So much worry and anxiety!! Forcing myself to write here was a good discipline.
Wintering sounds incredible!! I will definitely read it – sounds right up my alley.
I have read Thin Man, and 39 steps – but not the other two – I will look them up!
My best wishes to you for 2021.
Oh my god, what a list, as always you put me to utter shame.
As the Uk moved into lockdown I bought War and Peace for a re-read and after flicking to the bit where Prince Andre lies on the battlefield thinking ‘is that all there is?’ have not picked it up again. it is in the teetering pile of other books bought in the hope of tempting me to read but abandoned at chapter 1.
however, am very much reading and enjoying The Last Samurai which is a book you champion. Although temporarily stalled at Ludo’s second pick for a suitable dad, I am enthralled by it. It was absolute love at the mention of Sib wanting to watch Carling Black Label ads – such a precise cultural reference, so unexpected, so in character. Also for some reason, the chapter heading ‘Trying to feel sorry for Lord Leighton’ made me guffaw for about 5 minutes, particularly as at this point the book has delineated so much of Sibilla’s utter scorn for Lord Leighton and his ilk, sloppy men overflowing with their own self-importance and utterly unaware how shit they are in bed. also it has the line ‘& Sib said she would not hear a word against Mifune’ which touched my very heart because if someone says word against that man (looking at you, bratty Christopher Nolan fan circa 2011) they are dead to me.
Sibilla is an amazing character.
I’d recommend the Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf, and Hanif Abdurraqib’s ‘They can’t kill us until they kill us’.
However, if I’m being completely honest, what I have been mainly reading by the skipload over the latter part of last year and into 2021 is manga, particularly BL manga (just google it) and believe me these are not words I could have predicted writing in January 2020. I am rationalising it as a reward for having been brainwashed into thinking reading gloomy heterosexuals like Thomas Hardy was the passport to adulthood.
Helena – have you read The Mere Wife? It’s Headley’s novel from the pov of Grendel’s mother, here played by a traumatized ME war vet. I started it when stuck in a hotel for a month this summer, then stopped abruptly when we got back into our house even though I was enjoying it an awful lot. Now I’m newly determined to finish it.
Sheila, I don’t know if you read much fantasy, but Piranesi by Susanna Clarke nearly saved my life in the latter part of the year. 2020 was a Year of Weeping and Wailing, but other years will come after it.
hey Jenny, no I haven’t but I definitely will, thank you for the recommendation. Hope you get to finish it! Also Piranesi is on my must read list (that’s two books on it now!) -for some reason when I was reading The Last Samurai I thought of Jonathan Strange etc – and was so pleased to see Susanna Clark has written another book – it sounds quite a book!
Piranesi is wildly different from Jonathan Strange (an absolute comfort book for me) and I was pretty suspicious going into it. I don’t want to spoil it, the weirdness and bewilderment of it is a great experience. But it’s a slow mystery as well a meditation on solitude and life after tragedy. That it came out in the plague year is serendipitous.
Likewise, Rebecca mentioned Wintering above – I’m about halfway through that, loving it, and it also helps place this awful year in perspective.
However, if I’m being completely honest, what I have been mainly reading by the skipload over the latter part of last year and into 2021 is manga, particularly BL manga
High five! My year was unexpectedly given over to fic and I have zero regrets.
Gonna pick up the Last Samurai and Abdurraqib; I trust your taste.
ZERO REGRETS
// the weirdness and bewilderment of it is a great experience. But it’s a slow mystery as well a meditation on solitude and life after tragedy. That it came out in the plague year is serendipitous. // Jenny, this sounds truly amazing.
Jenny – I don’t read much fantasy but I love to hear about books that helped people make it through this year. I will look up Piranesi.
I heard about that Beowulf’s mother’s book.
I am sorry about the weeping and wailing of this year for you – my year was similar – many family losses. Hard year all around for so many. Better times ahead.
“brainwashed into thinking reading gloomy heterosexuals like Thomas Hardy was the passport to adulthood”
This line totally made my day! Even though Thomas Hardy is probably my favorite gloomy heterosexual! On the flipside of that one of my favorite reads of this year was Death in Venice, by perhaps the gloomiest homosexual, Thomas Mann.
Jenna – that’s so cool! And to think I nearly included Thomas Mann, an author I feel had a whole card index running into several cabinets of how to be a gloomy heterosexual. God bless him, love is always a fucking DISEASE with that guy – Death in Venice is literally a beautiful boy (Eros/Thanatos) as pandemic! he makes his main character die of it on a fucking beach! do you actually not like sex, Thomas, or do you just want to make everyone else just feel guilty and miserable because of the Nazis? Can I interest you in some Barbara Pym instead? is Death in Venice the OG BL manga?
All that aside just keep waving the gloomy heterosexual author flag, I’m not here to tear it down, just wanna raise a few other flags alongside ;-)
Whoops, I inadvertently outed Mann here as a gloomy heterosexual – my only excuse is that when I was a student of literature there were only authors who appreciated Classical culture, like, a lot, nothing to see here just move along please.
// do you actually not like sex, Thomas, or do you just want to make everyone else just feel guilty and miserable because of the Nazis? //
hahahahaha
I can’t remember who recommended Barbara Pym to me – maybe you, Helena? – I had never read her before, and so enjoyed reading Excellent Women this year. I love those characters – everyone is so flawed, and deprived, and … concerned about appearances (well, except for the archeologist lady living upstairs). I was fascinated by it, and I could feel the damp chill in all the rooms.
What else should I read of hers?
I love Death in Venice!! One of my 2021 reads – I always have a “let’s tackle this” list – will be Dr. Faustus – which I have never read.
Reading Magic Mountain was one of “the” reading experiences of my life. It OOZES with sickness. It makes me feel a little bit sick, to be honest, reading it – all those muffled-quiet rooms, muffled-quiet snow, the muffled voices, all that MUFFLING … all that ILLNESS …
so I’m really excited for Dr Faustus.
Helena – lol War and Peace. I had a similar experience reading that book – I didn’t finish it – I keep saying I’ll get back to it one day.
// ‘& Sib said she would not hear a word against Mifune’ which touched my very heart because if someone says word against that man (looking at you, bratty Christopher Nolan fan circa 2011) they are dead to me. //
Wait … did Nolan say this? Or just a Nolan fan? I’m outraged.
Thanks for the tip on Beowulf! My last time reading it was the Seamus Heaney translation – although I didn’t really “read” it – I listened to him read it – which was very entertaining.
// am rationalising it as a reward for having been brainwashed into thinking reading gloomy heterosexuals like Thomas Hardy was the passport to adulthood. //
ha! very very gloomy.
As always your intellectual curiosities open new avenues for my own! I love seeing what people have read over the year, especially since I started keeping a list of my books read in 2012! This year I felt torn between good fiction and informative non-fiction. I wanted to be completely overwhelmed by story, so I reread some sure things, Donna Tartt, Michael Crichton, Ann Tyler, but then also dove into some hefty non-fiction reads to try and get a handle on the year, Zinn’s A People’s History of America. You’re lists are so informative in this last area!
Thanks to you I had some great books in my to be read pill at the beginning of quarantine- Paglia’s Sexual Personae, Balkan Ghosts, and I finally picked up Say Nothing in the fall and have found it wonderfully engrossing and troublingly pertinent.
Your mentions of The Group reminded me that I read it as a precocious middle schooler maybe, and of course I remember very little but now I’m like I should probably read that again. I bet it would mean a lot more at this point!
Balkan Ghosts! That book started so much for me. Made me a life-long reader of Kaplan but also got me interested in Croatia – which I finally visited in 2018. No time like the present. The book starts, if I recall, with a beautiful description of him visiting the Cathedral in Zagreb – its gloomy interior – well, not gloomy – just pitch-black, punctuated by candle light – I wasn’t in Zagreb long but we went to that cathedral and I felt all these emotions – because Kaplan had described it so well and I wanted to see it for so long. It’s a beautiful book.
Another good one by him is To the Ends of the Earth – a similar travelogue/history – but this time through the Middle East – and then over to Indonesia. In recent years, he’s become much more a policy wonk and – in my opinion – his opinions have suffered. Sometimes you can feel an agenda behind what he says – I mean, he obviously has feelings and thoughts about what’s going on in the world – but in Balkan Ghosts and To the Ends of the Earth it’s about the people he meets along the way, and what THEY say to him. Another good one is Empire Wilderness, where he drives across the United States – putting his international-journalist eye onto his own country.
anyway, psyched you read it!
I had never read The Group! Silly me. I loved it!
It had been on my to read list for years, since as a teen who ransacked her parents house for every book and movie that might include a sex scene, I saw the film version and was just so mystified. But I’ve only now gotten around to it, b/c I spotted a Norton Critical edition at a second hand shop and just nerded out on the critical essays afterward!
I have not read any Barbara Pym, but I’m open to anything!
It’s been a classical themed year for me, so I am very intrigued by the new Beowulf translation you’ve mentioned. I re-read Crichton’s Beowulf retelling earlier in this plague year and I think it’s time I finally tackle the “real thing” or closest facsimile.
I’m no expert but I’d suggest reading the Heaney first. But you could do a deep dive into the various versions via the Backlisted podcast (it’s on the usual platforms) – the Beowulf episode came out around Halloween, and that’s the one that put me onto the Headley translation. Jenny upthread is also a fan.
It’s a while since I read Barbara Pym and I shouted her name at random, but she is one of those writers who set their work within a seemingly very limited milieu, and is incredibly precise and unsentimental and skewering of pomposity and entitlement, and are just very, very drily funny.
I am loving how much Beowulf is coming up here. I have no idea what translation we read when we had to read it in high school. For me, the Heaney was what made it come alive. I realize I am late to the party. There was a great interview in the Times about why he chose to start it with the word “So.” Conversational. The start of a story.
// is incredibly precise and unsentimental and skewering of pomposity and entitlement, //
I so agree! In Excellent Women, her portrayal of the “church ladies” – the ones who busy themselves with church work and decorating the altar and clustering around the minister (curate? priest?) – all while being … gossiping bitches, frankly – is wonderfully mean and true.
I also loved that there was a romantic … undercurrent … between the lead character and the two men she met … but it didn’t really work out as planned … but the ending satisfied me. It’s not melodramatic. It’s very down to earth. and, like you said, unsentimental. I’m not surprised Philip Larkin loved her – and championed her work.
//Or just a Nolan fan?//
yeah, a Nolan fan – Nolan himself would never, and I hope I did not come across as suggesting he would ever disrespect another director. No, it was just a kitchen conversation with a young ‘un – I think I’d just come back from watching a new print of Rashomon (a glistening, gloriously deep-black-and-silver restoration on the HUGE BFI Theatre 1 screen, OH HAPPY HAPPY DAYS) around the same time Inception was a Thing, (which I also saw in full IMAX glory) and the discussion was along the lines of
me: Inception is a superbly animated Lego set
him: nope
me: whereas Rashomon is a 24 carat mindfuck and Mifune is a GOD
him (brain short-circuiting): nope, what? NO!!!
(My Ted Talk is ‘Inception is an inferior remake of Rashomon – COME AT ME NOW’.)
Anyway, the youngster would not be persuaded of the wonders of Rashomon or Mifune, so it became a very I will not hear a word against Mifune moment, my fists were CLENCHED ready to defend Mifune’s honour, but whatever, I let the boy live another day and here we all are now, older and no wiser.
I doubt it was me who recommended Barbara Pym but god bless whoever did. As for recomendations, while I particularly remember ‘An Unsuitable Attachment’ all her books are worth reading, as are Penelope Fitzgerald’s, a writer she is not at all similar too but yet a kindred outsider spirit. I will in turn read Thomas Mann again in 2021 as it’s only fair to pay an annual obol to the gloomy conflicted heterosexuals.
//I realize I am late to the party. //
We are ALL 1000 years late to this party, and isn’t it just glorious? Did I ever mention that in primary school one of the classes below me got to do ‘Beowulf’ as the school Christmas play, and the theme music for Grendel’s interpretative dance (Grendel, incidentally, played by a 1o year old girl) was Lalo Schifrin’s necro-disco ‘Theme from Jaws’?
Penelope Fitzgerald
who are you I’m starting to get suspicious :o :o :o this is a carefully curated collection of favorites I’ve put together and you’re just spinning your way through the lot of them!!!!! I’m glad you exist.
and the theme music for Grendel’s interpretative dance (Grendel, incidentally, played by a 1o year old girl) was Lalo Schifrin’s necro-disco ‘Theme from Jaws’?
shit
//I’m glad you exist.//
aw, I’m just a spirit summoned by Sheila
//shit//
this was decades ago but my younger sister who was in that class and possibly played a slain Dane, or else the triangle, still remembers the POLITICS
Extraordinary specificity and precision, Ariel.
For a while every one of my email/livejournal/aim/yahoo messenger aliases was taken from some character from The Gate of Angels. She’s so brutally concise! It’s a favorite comfort to tell myself that I can not flower until I’m 65 and then still explode in prolific brilliance, there’s still time, there’s still time.
still remembers the POLITICS
Amazing. My school didn’t cover it until the 10th grade (15/16 yo) and then I don’t think we got any further than the rending of the arm, no underground lakes, no dragons, no wiglaf. And definitely no politics. I had been aching to get to Beowulf and then it was almost immediately over.
“I am a spirit summoned by Sheila.”
I cannot stop laughing.
Jenny –
// It’s a favorite comfort to tell myself that I can not flower until I’m 65 and then still explode in prolific brilliance, there’s still time, there’s still time. //
I take such thrilling comfort from similar stories. It’s never too late.
//For a while every one of my email/livejournal/aim/yahoo messenger aliases was taken from some character from The Gate of Angels.//
Oh wow, just HATS OFF.
// me: Inception is a superbly animated Lego set
him: nope //
LOL! These Nolan fans … they’re really something.
// as it’s only fair to pay an annual obol to the gloomy conflicted heterosexuals. //
hahaha Yes. and I love Penelope Fitzgerald!
// Lalo Schifrin’s necro-disco ‘Theme from Jaws’? //
Oh my God.
Sorry I’m a little late to this. I enjoyed living through your reading year vicariously even more than usual. Some hellish health issues have kept me from finishing (or even starting) a book since July, the longest stretch I’ve gone without reading a book since I was four years old. Hell of a way to turn 60 Just glad I can still see the computer screen.
On a weird note, the last thing I was reading before the catastrophies started was the new Folio Edition of Mystery Train. Total fluke that I bought it because it was hella-expensive. Imagine my surprise when I was sitting the throne one summer night and discovered I had made the Notes and Discographies section! Looking back on it now I[m thinking if that was the last serious reading I ever do it wasn’t a bad way to go out!
Hope the New Year’s treating you well Sheila. This site is still a breath of fresh air ever y day!
I hope you are feeling better! Best luck for healing and recovery!