About a year ago, I wrote a few paragraphs in an attempt to summarise a few things about 2004. I may write one for 2005, we’ll see. However, re-reading that piece just now, the bit that grabbed my attention most was the list of books I’d read during the year. With my usual inability to stick to schedules or resolutions, I haven’t managed to read any of the stuff I intended to read back at the beginning of the year, but that’s not a problem; I’ve had fun regardless. The last book I read in 2004 was “Jane Eyre”, which I figured I ought to be at least aware of before reading “The Eyre Affair”, so appropriately enough, Jasper fforde’s book is first on the list for 2005…
The Eyre Affair – Jasper fforde
The Year 1000 – Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger
Voices of Time – JG Ballard
Vermilion Sands – JG Ballard
Man & Music 1: Antiquity and the Middle Ages – ed. James McKinnon
The Terminal Beach – JG Ballard
The Little Girl who was Too Fond of Matches – GaÈtan Soucy
House of Leaves – Mark Z Danielewski
Music in Medieval Europe – Jeremy Yudkin
Joe Meek: The Telstar Man – John Repsch
The Complete Dorothy Parker
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World – Francis Wheen
Lost in a Good Book – Jasper fforde
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace
The Girl With Curious Hair – David Foster Wallace
Oblivion: Stories – David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace
Enigma – Robert Harris
A Void (La Disparition) – Georges Perec
The Well of Lost Plots – Jasper fforde
See the patterns? In common with my music listening habits, I’ve decided to approach books (at least some of the time) with more of a completist, less of a random, attitude. I find that if I just read one isolated book by an author (this is also true for music) I’m more likely to forget that author altogether and never return to him/her. However, if I grab as much as possible in one go, the collected work is much more likely to make a deeper impression on me, and it’s fun to see the progressions in an author’s work without interruption.
So… I worked my way through as many early JG Ballard novels and short stories as I could find in the local libraries. For me, Ballard represents a way of appreciating something that might conceivably be called Science Fiction. Lots of speculative ideas about future worlds, but without all the “Star Log Sigma Beta XQZ17, Commander Zirkon Quiklok reporting” stuff. Later, I re-read a couple of David Foster Wallace books and took the opportunity to tackle the mammoth (and utterly brilliant) “Infinite Jest” while hoovering up all the short stories as well. I couldn’t find “Broom of the System” at the time, but was given a copy for my birthday, so that’s a definite for early 2006.
Oh, and the last one on the list… I haven’t finished it yet, so it doesn’t really belong here. I just liked the symmetry :-)