31 December 2008

Round up of 2008

In 2008 I read 78 books, of which:

27 were non fiction
51 were fiction, of which

17 were originally English
15 were from French
9 were from German
2 were from Finnish
2 were from Norwegian
2 were from Hungarian
1 was from Arabic
1 was from Chinese
1 was from Italian
1 was from Czech

The best fiction were:

Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
The Discovery of Slowness by Sten Nadolny
The Lord Chandos Letter by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Selected Short Fiction by Arthur Schnitzler
Illuminations by Eva Hoffman
The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon

The best non-fiction:

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart
Piano Notes by Charles Rosen
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Classic read: Middlemarch
Classic reread: I served the King of England

Discoveries of the year: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Daniel Kehlmann

I didn't do well on my previous year end's targets - no Proust, the Zola and Balzac started well but stuttered, but I did start exploring more German language literature, particularly the Viennese group of the late 19th/early 20th century (Zweig, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, etc) which was very fruitful.

Targets for this year:

Proust (as always)
Life and Fate
More German lit (Broch, Bernhard)

1 comment:

Vivek Sharma said...

It seems we are two of a kind, when it comes to reading books...
Happy reading!