What I Read in 2015 and My 2016 Reading Challenge

Firstly, I’d like to belatedly wish my readers and fellow bloggers a very happy, healthy, successful and productive New Year!

I read a great post today by Donna at a little bird tweets about reading lists for this year and last; I decided that I need a similar challenge for 2016, so here’s my list of what I did and didn’t read in 2015, and what I want to read in 2016. For me it seems very much to be filling in the gaps in books I know I should read; my list lacks newer works, so please feel free to suggest any you think I might enjoy!

As my last post details, 2015 was the year I started to write-up the draft for my first novel, and was also the year I set up this blog; perhaps for these reasons I didn’t read as much as I would have liked. Tellingly, I also had a series of events occur in 2015 that robbed me of all but one week’s holiday, and holiday binge reading is a big catch up time for my reading, so all in all, not a vintage reading year.
What I read in 2015 (that I hadn’t already read; a lot of my reading is re-reads; is this a good thing?) can be broken down into two sub categories:

• Books I read (semi) annually
• First time reads

Books I Read Annually

As I noted above, 2015 hasn’t been a stellar reading year for me so I have skipped one or two; on the whole however this is my go-to list for books I have to rediscover and consume on an annual-ish basis:

• Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit: J.R.R. Tolkien
• A selection of historical “whodunnits” from Agatha Christie/Ellis Peters the Cadfael series)
• One or two Dickens novels from the following list:
  Great Expectations/Little Dorrit/The Old Curiosity Shop/Bleak House/Barnaby Rudge/The Pickwick Papers
• One of the Brontë sisters’ novels; I usually alternate between Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
• The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake; I tend to miss the last book of the trilogy, but unusually this year I just read Titus Alone and enjoyed rediscovering the story after a hiatus of several years
• The “Emperor” series of novels by Allan Massie: Caligula, Tiberius, Augustus and Caesar
• The collected works of H.P. Lovecraft – all of it!
• Something by Stephen King, usually while I’m on holiday – this year I’ve been preoccupied by ideas for a novel set in prison, so it was The Green Mile and Different Seasons (four novellas, one of which is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption).

These are all fantastic reads, and I have tried to wean myself off them, but they are a habit now! But I’m resolved to read a lot more books that are new to me in 2016 so I’ll have to temper my craving for repeats. Is this something fellow readers can identify with or am I unusual in having so many books on repeat-read?

Books I First Read in 2015

• Dictator, the third book in the Cicero trilogy of novels by Robert Harris – I was eagerly awaiting this book for nearly five years, after reading Lustrum and Imperium in 2010. I love historical novels, I have a lifelong fascination with the Roman empire at the time of the Caesars (I read I, Claudius as a teenager and was enraptured), so I’m possibly biased, but this trilogy is a fantastic read;not only does it wonderfully evoke the sights, sounds and smells (especially smells!) of 1st century BC Rome, the real life character of Cicero is drawn with a touchingly believable, all-too-human vividness.If you haven’t read any books by Robert Harris yet, I urge you to try him; his 20th century dystopian offerings Fatherland and Archangel are both bleakly compelling.
• The Trial by Franz Kafka –  I love the original German title  – Der Process – it seems to sum up the subtle horror of the long-winded, nightmarish bureaucratic trap awaiting the protagonist, Josef K. I found reading this book almost ridiculous at points, dreamlike and horrifying at others; unsurprising as The Trial is a Dystopian/Absurdist classic. Kafka offers several books in these genres to unsettle you; if you haven’t read them already, you’re in for an unsettling treat.
• I picked up a leaflet at London Bridge underground station last summer; as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats, Transport for London featured poems by Irish artists; I discovered a translation of Antoine Ó Raifteirí’s I Am Raferty the Poet,  by one of Yeats’s closest friends and allies, Lady Augusta Gregory, along with some Louis MacNeice poems I hadn’t come across. This inspired me to buy and read Poems on the Underground; for years the poems on the underground have given me pleasure, and something beautiful to look at while assiduously avoiding my fellow commuter’s gazes; I had often tried to memorise a particular poem, and usually failed. This is a beautiful collection to dip into, and has led me to many new favourite poets.
• The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is a book I’d meant to read for years, which I finally got round to buying last year.I felt that reading this book was a necessary prerequisite to starting my first draft. It’s a short book, just over 100 pages, but it manges to cram in a wealth of writing rules and guidelines that crisply and lucidly insist upon themselves. I now use the guidance from this book in all my writing and it’s corrected me on some errors of style I was persistently, if unknowingly guilty of! I will never again sign off an email with “Thank you in advance” -I was suitably chided! It’s a little bit stuffy, prissy almost, but it very clearly lays out some golden rules that every writer needs to be aware of, even if they break them.
• The Great God Pan & The Three Imposters – These two novellas have long been on my “to read” list, as their author, Arthur Machen, comes recommended not only by Stephen King but also by the “dark baroque prince of 20th century horror” himself, H.P. Lovecraft. So I bought a couple of Machen’s books on Kindle for a week’s holiday reading in August: although some of the prose is a little dated, there is something truly uncanny about Machen’s tales, that left me with a creeping feeling of mounting weirdness and horror. And this is praise! I will definitely be reading more of Machen’s works this year.

My 2016 Reading List

Again I have two categories of books I want to read this year:

• The following are some of the books I own that have sat, unread, on my shelves (or Kindle) for years that I am determined to read this year:

• The Once and Future King by T.H. White; someone bought this for me as a Christmas present about five years ago, and I’m ashamed to say it’s still unread. The synopsis sounds great; a magical literary retelling of the Arthurian legends by an author with a genius for recreating the details of the past in his work.
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville is another book that has languished on my bookshelf for far too long; a classic tale of one man’s obsession, countered by the community spirit of the crew of the Pequod. Sadly this is a tale that is still relevant today.
• Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson; my son bought me this book last Christmas and I have to read it soon as he keeps asking me what I think of it! Set in a not-too-distant future, this sci-fi cyberpunk novel takes the reader to a post-modern world that isn’t that different from the way our own present is heading.

Other books that I want to read this year (in no particular order) include:

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman has been recommended to me several times; I have yet to read any of Neil Gaiman’s books which is definitely an oversight; this tale of a city under London will make the ideal commuter read for my trips on the Northern Line from Euston. Gaiman’s The Ocean At the End of The Lane also sounds intriguing.
• Go Set a Watchman  – Harper Lee’s sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird; the mixed reviews leave me unsure whether I want to sully the beautiful memory of TKAM.
• Our Endless Numbered Days is the début novel by author Claire Fuller, and I’m intrigued by its premise: my love of gardening and interest in self-sufficiency is documented in my blog, but my reading has sometimes strayed into areas that cross over into the “Doomsday Prepping” communities; to me they are fascinating and worrying in equal measure.So the blurb for this book caught my interest; a young girl taken away from home by her father to live in a remote self-sufficient community.
• I haven’t read any books by Donna Tartt yet, but the one I’m drawn to is her latest, The Goldfinch. This novel was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 so I am expecting good things. Possibly I am interested in the young protagonist, thirteen year old Theo, and how his life is affected by a terrible accident, and how this echoes some aspects of the story I am writing in And The Buntings Flew.
• Taking of which; one book I definitely want to read from start to finish in 2016 is my own! My target is to complete at least a first draft of And The Buntings Flew, and be on the way to a decent second draft by the end of this year.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and I hope I read a lot more new books this year; as well as write, write, write, a writer’s mantra should also include read, read, read. I believe that I can learn something from every book I read, even if it’s How Not To… but I also believe that every book will reward me for taking the time to read it, and that a connection WILL be made between me, the reader, and the author. And isn’t that one of the reasons we all write?

What books are on your “To Read” list this year?

Margaret