2013 booklist

As the year comes to an end, it's time for the list of books I've read in the past 12 months again. I hope that no-one thinks I do this to show off (I'm not sure that my choice of reading matter is anything to boast about anyway!) it's just that I don't do 'clouds' or online 'wallets' so this is the most accessible way of finding out if I've read a book before I buy it - if I happen to find myself in an English language bookshop away from home. Well, it may happen one day!

I've read a massive amount of books in 2013, well, massive for me anyway - it works out at more than 3 a month which is a third more than I've ever managed before. Admittedly many of them are murder mysteries which don't take long to knock over, but still... Perhaps that hot summer where one found it too uncomfortable to do anything but lie around reading had something to do with it. Whatever the reason, 39 books flashed past my nose this year, but I'll be beggared if I can remember what was in any of them! That's not a sign of reading them too quickly, but of my innate stupidity.

1. Alan Garner "The weirdstone of Brisingamen" - re-read, not sure I understood it any better now than I did 35 years ago!
2. Ariane Sherine (ed) "The atheist's guide to Christmas" - hilarious collection of essays by people such as David Baddiel, etc.
3. Eric Newby "A short walk in the Hindu Kush"
4. John Lanchester "Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no-one can pay" - highly readable assessment of the credit crunch
5. Terry Pratchett "Eric"
6. Margery Allingham "Sweet danger"
7. Les Woodland "The crooked path to victory: drugs and cheating in professional bicycle racing" - wanted to read this for many years, since I first heard Mr Woodland on R4, seemed very apt to read it this year as professional road racing imploded. The book proves that old adage that there is nothing new under the sun...
8. John O'Farrell "An utterly exasperated history of Modern Britain: or Sixty Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always"
9. Margery Allingham "The case of the late pig"
10. Ben Aaronovitch "Whispers underground"
11. Gladys Mitchell "The Saltmarsh murders"
12. Janet Street-Porter "Life's too fucking short"
13. Margery Allingham "A tiger in the smoke"
14. Rory Stewart "The places in between"
15. Rachel Johnson "Winter games"
16. Muriel Sparke "Girls of slender means"
17. Simon Armitage "Sir Gawain and the green knight"
18. Margery Allingham "The crime at Black Dudley"
19. George Orwell "Down and out in Paris and London"
20. Simon Brett "The body on the beach"
21. Peter Stanford "The devil: a biography"
22. Richard Templar "The rules of wealth"
23. Pete Brown "Man walks into a pub"
24. Terry Pratchett "Small gods"
25. Jonathan Tropper "This is where I leave you"
26. William Stephens Hayward "Revelations of a lady detective"
27. Eoin Colfer "Artemis Fowl: the Arctic incident"
28. Edward Marston "The railway detective"
29. Robert Peston "Who runs Britain?" - written on the eve of the credit crunch and therefore has an unwitting wistfulness about it
30. Terry Pratchett "Feet of clay"
31. Peter Lovesey "Cop to corpse"
32. David Crouch "William Marshal"
33. Piers Paul Read "The Templars"
34. P G Wodehouse "Full moon"
35. C S Lewis "The Screwtape letters"
36. Terry Pratchett "Dodger"
37. Dorothy L Sayers "Clouds of witness"
38. Andrew Taylor "The scent of death"
39. Edward Marston "The railway viaduct"

The highlight of 2014 for me will be the publication in paperback of the 3rd part of David Kynaston's fantastic history of post-war Britain, 'Modernity Britain, in June. Yes, I am that sad...

Happy New Year!