books in 2011

My reading rate seems to have gone down in 2011. Unless, of course, I have forgotten to record some of the books as I finish them (always a possibility!).



Steve put up extra shelves this year to accommodate the collection. His own reading has added quite a bit to the bulk. We have both appreciated books as gifts, have bought quite a few second-hand and also from the rather wonderful "Last Bookshop" where everything costs £2. I have also bought full price books from bricks and mortar bookshops, notably Foyles, Blackwells and Waterstones.


I really don't want bookshops to vanish from the High Street and I won't be abandoning proper paper books, but I have also succumbed to the charm and convenience of the Kindle. It was my Christmas gift from Steve and I have read one e-book so far. I'm looking forward to the possibility of travelling with ten books in my bag, but just one rather snazzy piece of kit, resplendent in its own personalised Classic Penguin cover (designed and given to me by daughter no. 2) Here's this year's list with special favourites highlighted:


Sebastian Faulks, A Week in December
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring
Helen Fielding, Cause Celeb
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Book Shop
Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up
Karin Fossum, The Water's Edge
Henning Mankell, Italian Shoes
Helen Warner, RSVP
Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Sophie Hannah, A Room Swept White
Bella Pollen, The Summer of the Bear
Mary Kay Zuravleff, The Bowl is Already Broken
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Salley Vickers, Where Three Roads Meet
Steven Benatar, Wish Her Safe at Home
Andrew Motion, In the Blood
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Graham Swift, Out of this World
Victoria Hislop, The Island
Chitra Divakaruni, Sister of my Heart
Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Linda Grant, Remind me who I am again.
John Banville, The Sea
Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn
Maggi Dawn, Accidental Pilgrim
Nigel Slater, Toast
Kate Atkinson, Started early, took my dog
David Nicholls, One Day
Colette Rossant, Return to Paris
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
Peter Carey, Parrott and Olivier in America
Paul Auster, Sunset Park
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal
Anna Ralph, The Floating Island
P D James, Time to Be in Earnest
Jason Goodwin, The Bellini Card
Nicola Upson, Two for Joy

time to be in earnest

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I am reading P D James’ memoir Time to be in Earnest: a Fragment of Autobiography. I’m still reading it, and enjoying it enormously. She has taken a refreshing approach, having resisted writing a full autobiography and using the discipline of a diary of one year from her 77th birthday in 1997 to her next birthday. The diary acts as a convenient hook for a discursive comment or memory. So, for example, she might write about sitting next to a Deputy Chief Constable at a literary dinner and move from discussion of police procedure, via her opinion of the death penalty, to her personal response as an eleven-year-old child to the news reports of the murder of a child.

Thus an autobiography of sorts emerges in an interesting non-linear way but she retains control of those elements she prefers not to write about or elaborate upon. In many ways this working method is similar to blogging (in the hands of a consummate writer).

I’ve enjoyed her detective fiction and knew something about her life before I started reading. I was aware, for example, of her difficult personal life after her doctor husband returned from the second world war so psychologically damaged that he spent the rest of his life in and out of hospital until his death at the age of 44. I knew that she took on the mantle of provider for the whole family and worked as a senior Civil Servant. What I did not realise was that, as most girls of her class and generation did, she left school at sixteen. So the enormous range of her intellect has been fed by her own experience of life and relentless reading, rather than by conventional education.

I am struck, as I read, by what a very active public life she was leading at the age of 77; a packed diary of book signings, publicity tours, talks, conferences and dinners as well as personal visits and social life. She has continued to write and publish in the years since this memoir and I am particularly looking forward to reading Death Comes to Pemberley where she bring detective fiction to Jane Austen’s world! Last year (at the age of 90) she was one of the guest editors on Radio 4’s Today programme. She interviewed the BBC Director-General Mark Thompson and gave him a rather hard time. Regular presenter Evan Davies is reported to have commented that she should be permanently presenting the programme.