Year in Review

Not to be all whatever about it, but I think it’s been a pretty good thing I started this blog. While I’m glad there are a few interested souls out there reading it, I definitely do it for myself and it’s been a welcome change from just reading without saying anything about it. And my favorite activity has probably been this recent semi-themed month of mysteries etc. Christmas has prevented my finishing everything I’d hoped to before the end of the year, so I’ll be continuing with that in 2009 before starting my next theme—maritime fiction. More on 2009 later; here is my best of for 2008.

Best graphic novel—and by that I mean it’s still the only graphic novel I’ve ever read, but I really enjoyed it more than I expected to: Laika by Nick Abadzis.

Best new addition to the Canongate Myths series: Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith. I love this series, but it is not completely consistent, and this one was just so joyous. It was also my first Ali Smith and I liked it enough to read more, but you know how it goes.

Best volume of short stories: Wild Nights! by Joyce Carol Oates. I can see other people really hating this, but Oates’s imitations of the voices of Poe, Henry James, et al were pretty amazingly spot-on. I think the Poe story was my favorite: instead of dying in a Baltimore gutter, Poe goes slowly mad living in solitude at a lighthouse.

Best NYRB Classic: this is the toughest category, probably, but I think I have to give it to Sunflower. No, A High Wind in Jamaica. No, Sunflower…no….

I should do a best mystery category but that’s just too hard! Best 19th century would have to go to Moby-Dick. And best 20th century would have to go to another re-read, I think, The Garden of Eden.

Biggest disappointment of the year: the fact that I have only read (so far) some 80 books, down from last year’s 114. I can’t quite figure out how this happened. I’m less busy with work, and sort of have a lot of time to myself. On the other hand I’ve actually been spending a lot of time with the consumption partner, when we were separated for most of last year. So really I shouldn’t complain. But there are just so many things to be read…