2012 Reading List



These are the books I'd like to read in 2012  - some are haunting me from 2011.

More by Geraldine Brooks. Caleb's Crossing,  Year of Wonders, People of the Book (and anything else she's ever written).

The Heart of the Matter and Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene. Just loved the End of the Affair.

A very big catch up on Virginia Woolf and I am embarrassed to admit having to do it...
To The Lighthouse
The Years
Mrs Dalloway

And a bit more too about the writer with her biography by her nephew Quentin Bell
and perhaps also Virginia Woolf and Her World, John Lehmann.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracey Chevalier comes very highly recommended from a fellow blogger, Kerry at The Tranquil Townhouse. The story of fossil collector Mary Anning, Kerry gave it a 9.

A little bit more Dickens...
Great Expectations and later in the year A Christmas Carol

Can't have a year without Austen so Northanger Abbey it is.

Seen the movie now read the book (what a terribly flippant 21st century way to dismiss a writer - I don't mean it...!) E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and Howard's End.

I am not that keen on the fantasy genre but I feel I should as the whole thing (on TV too) passed me by and I hate that! So the Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer.


A Week in December - Sebastian Faulks, I have four Faulks novels on my shelves... just not this one yet.

Khaled Hosseini,  A Thousand Splendid Suns and before that his award winning Kite Runner which I started and never finished. I'd like to try again.

So enjoyed the Time Traveller's Wife so I'd like to get Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffeneger.


Saplings - Noel Streatfield - one of his books for adults and now of course I'm really too old for Ballet Shoes.

There are some other Kiwi authors I'd like to read too. Keri Hulme's The Bone People and Maurice Shadbolt's Season of the Jew.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and then perhaps Freedom.

The World Beneath - Cate Kennedy, Tasmania's wilderness as a backdrop to a story that gets good reviews.

The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobsen - last year's Man Booker Prize winner.

The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman, about a bunch of journos working at a struggling English paper in Rome. It appeals.

House of Mirth - Edith Wharton


Ruth Park died at a ripe old age in December and I learned then that she was born in Auckland - I was reminded that I'd read Playing Beattie Bow and loved the Muddle Headed Wombat but have never read The Harp in The South so I will.

The Man Who Loved Children by Australian writer Christina Stead is on a lot of top 100 lists (internationally) so now it's on mine.


Open - An Autobiography, Andre Agassi - I generally hate sport, but tennis is more than just sport and this gets a good wrap from non-sporting readers.

The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
(I read Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, and if you love poetry you'll like it. It's simply written, but a dreamy little story about an eighteenth century German poet and his love for a young girl. ***stars)

Kingsley Amis - London Fields and Money because I just hated his son's last book.


I'll probably need it after having another go at Iris Murdoch. I'm going back to The Sea, The Sea and trying The Bell too.

Tried to read a Georgette Heyer recently and HATED it - so for another stab at historical fiction I'll pick Antonia Fraser - either Marie Antoinette: The Journey or The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Or both.

I'd also like to read Philippa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance which picks up the story after Ann was beheaded.

Diary of a Provincial Lady, I'm intrigued - Mise at Pretty Far West recommended this - I bought it and it sits on my pile of  'to reads.'

Over in the States, Glenda from Notes on the Journey loves Madeleine L'Engle who wrote A Wrinkle in Time.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Ann Thanks for your kind compliment on my blog this morning. So glad you like The Library of Design. And I'm pleased you don't hate me because of my job! (Please don't, it's really very dull and lonely most of the time.) I'm now enthralled with your 2011 and 2012 Reading Lists, and have made a note to buy a few of these titles. I love Graham Greene too. Another good author is Justine Picardie. She wrote a great bio about Chanel that's doing really well. (And she's just become engaged - to an Astor, no less! I do hope she writes a book about that fascinating family.) Hope you continue to enjoy the Library posts. Janelle McCulloch

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to write, Ann x

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