My 2009 Bookshelf

I read 182 books this year, well over double last year's count of 74; however, this year I had 12 months' worth of commuting (prime reading time), compared to only two months last year, so it is to be expected. As my commuting time will be decreasing again next year, I expect my book list to drop in size again.

I didn't keep track of fiction vs non-fiction this year, mainly because the vast majority of the books I read were fiction — my former problem of not being able to find enjoyable fiction has now been reversed. In fact if you took out the categories of "Tudor history" and "popular economics," I suspect my non-fiction reading list this year would look pretty empty.

These are my favourite five books of the year:

1. A Happy Marriage — Rafael Yglesias (very beautiful and very sad)
2. What I Loved — Siri Hufstedt (Mrs Paul Auster has a similar style and similar protagonists to her husband: this is the story of two friends, the women they love and the lives they lead; like Iglesias's book, What I Loved gets bonus points for being set in New York)
3. The Year of the Flood — Margaret Atwood (although I like a lot of Atwood's novels, especially Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale, I was decidedly "meh" about her penultimate foray into science fiction speculative fiction, Oryx and Crake. The Year of the Flood is Oryx and Crake's prequel and works much better, perhaps because the former has female protagonists, which Atwood seems to write a lot better)
4. American Wife — Curtis Sittenfeld (the story of a woman a lot like Laura Bush and a family a lot like the Bushes; I didn't know very much about Laura Bush before and while this is, clearly, fictional, the Laura character was portrayed very sympathetically and highlights the dangers of judging a woman by her husband...) 
5. Matter — Iain M. Banks (I wanted to choose The Girl at the Lion D'Or as my fifth choice but as I included a Sebastian Faulks novel last year and as there is another weepie in this year's shortlist, I included Matter instead, which is my favourite IMB novel to date)

Token non-fiction: The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser. I read so many books on Tudor history this year and it is, after all, the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's coronation. I thought Fraser's book was much better written than the David Starkey version.

Token mini-series: The Red Riding Quartet by David Peace. None of the books in this mini-series were strong enough on their own to make my top five (or, at least, it was hard to pick one of the four) but as a whole, I really enjoyed reading them and watching the three-part TV drama. It sure was grim up north in the '70s...

The full library of 2008; as usual, both the sublime and the ridiculous are covered:

• Peyton Place — Grace Metalious
• The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy
• The Corrections — Jonathan Frantzen
• The Woman in the Fifth — Douglas Kennedy
• Lady Chatterley's Lover — D.H. Lawrence
• Possession — A.S. Byatt
• The Kingdom by the Sea — Paul Theroux
• Everyman — Philip Roth
• Interpretation of Murder — Jeb Rubenfeld
• The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco
• A Brief History of Secret Societies — David Barrett
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
• Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Bomber — Len Deighton
• My Cousin Rachel — Daphne Du Maurier
• Uneasy Money — P.G. Wodehouse
• Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves — P.G. Wodehouse
• The Postman Always Rings Twice — James M. Cain
• Gossip, Grooming and the Evolution of Language — Robin Dunbar
• The Mind of the Market — Michael Shermer
• Slaughterhouse 5 — Kurt Voneghaut
• Why Do People Believe Weird Things? — Michael Shermer
• Jamaica Inn — Daphne Du Maurier
• A Good School — Richard Yates
• The Last Tycoon — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Logic of Life — Tim Harford
• False Impression — Jeffrey Archer
• Everything Bad Is Good for You — Steven Johnson
• The Reader — Bernhard Schlink
• The 19th Wife — David Ebershoff
• Descartes' Baby — Paul Bloom
• The Human Story — Robin Dunbar
• Mistress of the Art of Death — Ariana Franklin
• 1974 — David Peace
• The Age of Innocence — Edith Wharton
• 1977 — David Peace
• 1980 — David Peace
• 1983 — David Peace
• The Death Maze — Ariana Franklin
• Q&A — Vikas Swarup
• Foucault's Pendulum — Umberto Eco
• In Search of the Perfect Language — Umberto Eco
• The Outcast — Sadie Jones
• The Valley of the Dolls-Jacqueline Susann
• Trainspotting — Irvine Welsh
• Eleanor of Aquitaine — Alison Weir
• Henry: Virtuous Prince — David Starkey
• The Other Queen — Philippa Gregory
• Cult of the Amateur — Andrew Keen
• Innocent Traitor — Alison Weir
• The Six Wives of Henry VIII — Antonia Fraser
• Children of Men — P.D. James
• Arbella, England's Lost Queen — Sarah Gristwood
• The Infamous Lady Rochford — Julia Fox
• Cityboy — Geraint Anderson
• Nudge — Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• Vile Bodies — Evelyn Waugh
• Chéri — Colette
• Fatherland — Robert Harris
• Couples-John Updike
• Do Androids Dream of Electic Sheep? — Philip K. Dick
• How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays — Umberto Eco
• The Sorrows of an American — Siri Hustvedt
• The Man in the High Castle — Philip K. Dick
• Sovereign — C.S. Sansom
• Mary Tudor — Anna Whitelock
• Perfume — Patrick Suskind
• Presumed Innocent — Scott Turlow
• Living with Teenagers — Anonymous
• On Green Dolphin Street — Sebastian Faulks
• True Tales of American Life — Paul Auster
• The Crimson Petal and the White — Michel Faber
• The Yellow Wallpaper — Charlotte Gilman Perkins
• The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper 
• The Witches of Eastwick — John Updike
• Revelation — C.J. Sansom
• Last Exit to Brooklyn — Hubert Selby Jr.
• Matter — Iain M. Banks
• Afterwards — Rachel Seiffert
• The Girl at the Lion D'Or — Sebastian Faulks
• The Sixth Wife — Suzannah Dunn
• The Anglo-Files — Sarah Lyall
• The Queen's Sorrows — Suzannah Dunn
• The Hours — Michael Cunningham
• Zodiac — Robert Graysmith
• What I Loved — Siri Hustvedt
• The Post Office Girl — Stefan Zweig
• Hoax — Clifford Irving
• Under the Skin — Michel Faber
• Public Enemies — Brian Burrough
• The Golden Notebook — Doris Lessing
• American Wife — Curtis Sittenfeld
• Dark Fire — C.J. Sansom
• The Other Hand — Chris Cleave
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin — Louis de Bernières
• The Robber Bride — Margaret Atwood
• The Importance of Being Trivial — Mark Mason
• The Sisters Who Would Be Queen — Leanda De Lisle
• The Algebraist — Iain M. Banks
• Down Under — Bill Bryson
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
• Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
• Super-Cannes — J.G. Ballard
• Swimsuit — James Patterson 
• The Abortionist's Daughter — Elisabeth Hyde
• Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell
• The House at Riverton — Kate Morton
• Minority Report — Philip K Dick
• World Without End — Ken Follett
• Pillars of the Earth — Ken Follett
• I See You Everywhere — Julia Glass
• Treason in Tudor England — Lacey Baldwin-Smith
• The Road — Cormac McCarthy
• War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
• My Sister's Keeper — Jodi Picoult
• The Suspicions of Mr Whicher — Kate Summerscale
• Leaving the World — Douglas Kennedy
• Pompeii — Robert Harris
• For Whom the Bell Tolls — Ernest Hemingway
• An Education — Lynn Barber
• Flat Earth News — Nick Davies
• The Accidental — Ali Smith
• The Pact — Jodi Picoult
• Illegal Action — Stella Rimington
• The White Queen — Phillippa Gregory
• Hideous Kinky — Esther Freud
• The Things We Do for Love — Imogen Parker
• The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks 
• The Time of Our Lives — Imogen Parker
• Change of Heart — Jodi Picoult
• Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel García Márquez
• A Week in December — Sebastian Faulks
• The Lady Elizabeth — Alison Weir
• The Associate — John Grisham
• The Tenth Circle — Jodi Picoult
• Salem Falls — Jodi Picoult
• Inherent Vice — Thomas Pynchon
• Mercy — Jodi Picoult
• Nineteen Minutes — Jodi Picoult
• Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
• Perfect Match — Jodi Picoult
• Vanishing Acts — Jodi Picoult
• Julie and Julia — Julie Powell
• Dante's Numbers — David Hewson
• Crash — J.G. Ballard
• Handle with Care — Jodi Picoult
• Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë
• My Trade — Andrew Marr
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue — Edgar Allen Poe
• The Widows of Eastwick — John Updike
• Mary, Queen of Scots — Antonia Fraser
• The Liar — Stephen Fry
• Second Glance — Jodi Picoult
• The Year of the Flood — Margaret Atwood
• The Damned United — David Peace
• Plain Truth — Jodi Picoult
• The Bostonians — Henry James
• Lancaster and York — Alison Weir
• Rivals — Jilly Cooper
• Appassionata — Jilly Cooper
• Engleby — Sebastian Faulks
• A Happy Marriage — Rafael Yglesias
• Superfreakonomics — Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• This Little World — Imogen Parker
• Grave Goods — Ariana Franklin
• Gate of Air — James Buchan
• Alice in Sunderland — Bryan Talbot
• The Watchmen — Alan Moore
• Last Night in Twisted River — John Irving
• Catch 22 — Joseph Heller
• London Fields — Martin Amis 
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson
• Elizabeth's Women — Tracy Borman 
• The Audacity of Hype — Armando Iannucci
• Black Dogs — Ian McEwan
• A Fool's Alphabet — Sebastian Faulks
• Scottsboro — Ellen Feldman
• Invisible — Paul Auster
• The Girl Who Played with Fire — Stieg Larsson
• Como Agua Para Chocolate — Laura Esquivel
• Jolly Super Too — Jilly Cooper
• Suite Française — Irène Némirovsky

2009 on the Silver Screen

Not only did I finally achieve my goal of watching at least half of the movies in the IMDb Top 250 this year, but I also watched almost twice as many movies this year as in 2008 (114 compared to last year's 67, although this total includes films I've watched on DVD, on TV and on planes, as well as in the cinema). This meant it was even more difficult to pick my top five movies of the year (like last year, I'm only considering movies released in the UK in 2009), but these are my final choices, in chronological order:

1. Gran Torino (2009 was the year I really got into Clint Eastwood films and this was the one that kicked it all off; only Clint could make, "get off my lawn" into a catchphrase)
2. Moon (Bowie Junior did good — a haunting and compelling film that stayed with me, even though I'm not usually fussed about films set in space)
3. Mesrine: L'instinct de mort (I watch so many thrillers that there had to be at least one in the top five and this was tightly structured, well-paced and with great acting from the charismatic Vincent Cassel)
4. The Boys Are Back (not just because it starred Clive, although he did a great job and it was by far the best of his three films released this year)
5. An Education (I was waiting for this to be released for a long time and it definitely lived up to my expectations)

Honourable mention: In the Loop, a) because although there are some wonderfully funny lines in An Education, it's really more of a drama than a comedy and although I tend to watch fewer comedies than dramas, I felt there ought to be at least one funny film highlighted, and b) because it was this film that got me into the TV series from which it was spun off, The Thick of It, which is now one of my favourite programmes.

And here is the full list of new films I've watched this year:
The Wild Bunch
The Reader
Paris, Je T'aime — DVD
In Bruges--DVD
The Machinist — DVD
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
Notorious
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Brassed Off — DVD
Dog Day Afternoon--Plane
Falling Down--Plane
Revolutionary Road
Barry Lyndon
Withnail & I — DVD
Doubt
Vertigo — DVD
North by Northwest — DVD
Gone with the Wind — DVD
The Wrestler
The Big Sleep — DVD
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
The Class
The Terminator — DVD
Gran Torino
The International
Gun Crazy
Watchmen
Chinatown
The Maltese Falcon
The Sting — DVD
Duplicity
Two Lovers
Genova
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Million Dollar Baby — DVD
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — DVD
Les 400 Coups
Trainspotting — DVD
His Girl Friday — DVD
In the Loop
Sleuth — DVD
State of Play
Psycho — DVD
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 — DVD
Dial M for Murder — DVD
Sounds Like Teen Spirit
To Catch a Thief — DVD
Synecdoche, New York
The Birds — DVD
A Woman Cut in Two
Straw Dogs — DVD
Days of Heaven — DVD
Fireflies in the Garden
Star Trek
Pour Elle
Sunset Blvd — DVD
Looking for Eric
Sunshine Cleaning
Rudo y Cursi
Public Enemies
Heat — DVD
Point Break — DVD
Brüno
Good Will Hunting — DVD
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
The Conversation — DVD
Moon
Once Upon a Time in the West
Life of Brian — DVD
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Coco avant Chanel
Mesrine: L'instinct de mort
The Time Traveler's Wife
Hotel Rwanda — DVD
Inglourious Basterds
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Valkyrie — DVD
Adam
Walk the Line — DVD
Mesrine: L'ennemi Public n° 1
The Hurt Locker
Broken Embraces
Away We Go
(500) Days of Summer
Play Misty for Me — DVD
Julie and Julia
Unforgiven — DVD
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner — DVD
The September Issue
Dorian Gray
The Soloist
Bellamy
The Way We Were — DVD
The Informant!
The Boys Are Back
Croupier — DVD
Chloe
Capitalism: A Love Story
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
Roman Holiday — DVD
The Thomas Crown Affair — DVD
An Education
Citizen Kane
Glorious 39
Bright Star
Close My Eyes — DVD
The Brothers Bloom — DVD
The White Ribbon
Cracks
Avatar
Father of the Bride — TV
Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars — DVD

The Soundtrack of 2009

Although the number of books I've read and films I've watched has gone up this year compared to 2008, the number of songs added to my iTunes library released this year hasn't. Sure, there are 84 songs in my library with a 2009 release date but a) this includes five albums, which don't really count because they are unrepresentative of the way I listen to music and because they contain too many songs about which I am meh, and b) it also includes compilations and soundtracks containing songs that were originally released before this year (it would be unfair to call There Is a Light That Never Goes Out as a top song of 2009, for example, just because it appeared on the [500] Days of Summer soundtrack).

Despite this, I have managed to come up with a top five, proving that either a) I'm down with the kids or b) my knowledge of contemporary pop music comes entirely from Gossip Girl and Radio Paradise. That being said, I really liked all of last year's top five (especially my top three) and regularly listen to them all; this year, on the other hand, I can't see any of them other than the number one song being a regular feature of my future "current" playlists:

1. Wait It Out — Imogen Heap [preferably the Live at TED version]
2. Runaway — Yeah Yeah Yeahs [GG entry #1]
3. Laughing With — Regina Spektor
4. Bad Romance —  Lady Gaga [GG entry #2]
5. Whatcha Say —  Jason Derulo [GG entry #3 — also, I only really like it for the Imogen Heap song, Hide and Seek, that is being sampled, which was used in another Josh Schwartz show, The O.C.]

I added 189 new songs (released any year) to iTunes this year but although there are a few good ones (Lewis & Clarke's cover of my favourite Cure song, Disintegration, Embrace's I Can't Come Down and All Along the Watch Tower, for example) and I don't think it's worth my doing a top five. If iTunes let me search for my most played choons within a particular time period, that would be interesting but, of course, it doesn't...

Naturally, choosing my top five books and films of the year is going to be harder because there are more to choose from so they are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

Christmas Wouldn't Be Christmas...

...without any crazy swimming in/leaping into the freezing cold Mediterranean. The parents cheated somewhat by wearing wetsuits but inspired by the warm, bright sunshine, I decided to forego even the fingerless gloves of Christmases past and leaped straight on into the sea in my bikini. 

"Vous êtes anglais ou écossais, évidemment," said a French lady walking past with her dog. Clearly only Brits would be mad enough to actually swim in the sea on Christmas Day. Wrapped in towels, afterwards, we sipped from a mini bottle of Champagne and ate some fresh baguette.

Now we're preparing a very nice côte de bœuf for dinner, which will be preceded by some freshly caught oysters and prawns — another advantage of being in France for Christmas is that there is not a single turkey in sight. Or, on this occasion, a mince pie or Christmas pudding — foods of which I am not in the least bit fond.

3D's a Crowd — Avatar Review

I had my first full-length, 3D movie experience this evening. We went to see Avatar in downtown Cannes. As it was raining comme une vache qui pisse, as the French so eloquently put it, the cinema was packed and we picked up our 3D glasses and took a seat. I'm not sure whether we had to pay extra for the glasses but it only cost 21 euros for the three of us and after London prices, this was a veritable bargain.

I wasn't sure I was going to like Avatar, not least because it is well over my two-hour length limit. I was somewhat thrown because as soon as the lights went down, we were immersed into the film — no trailers, no anti-piracy warnings, no BBFC certification (or the French equivalent), no credits (not even for any of the production companies), no nothing. The 3D effect was quite cool, although there was probably a novelty value involved. 

As I was watching a version with French subtitles, the subtitles themselves appeared almost 3D; this probably wasn't intentional and it was also a little distracting. It took a little while to get used to the fact that occasionally, characters would appear to walk "in front of" the screen and you would initially want to tell off a fellow audience member for standing up in the middle of the movie. Parts of the film were visually very stunning though with all sorts of floating jellyfish-like creatures, flying dragon-like creatures and all sorts of other 3D charismatic megafauna, which would regularly slide, soar or leap out towards you.

As for the plot, it was pretty cheese-tastic: paraplegic US marine gets signed onto a project exploring the planet Pandora, which is a resource of the incredibly useful substance unobtanium and which hosts the Na'vi, a species of nine-foot-tall, blue-skinned humanoids with tails and carbon-reinforced bones. 

Except, when he goes on his reccies, he has to climb into a pod that allows him to be connected up to his Na'vi avatar. Jake, the marine, is supposed to get friendly with the Na'vi so that he can find out if they can be persuaded to move from their sacred lands (which is where the unobtanium happens to be found), allowing the humans to put up some huge oil rig like structure. 

But of course Jake falls in love and life gets oh-so-complicated when he has to choose between his new girl and friends, and his own race. Ironically for a 3D film, the characters were all pretty one-dimensional: the disadvantaged goodie, the baddie, the brave heroine, the love rival for the heroine who is mean for most of the film but dies valiantly, and so on.

The film has a lot in common with Titanic, besides the same basic character types: a James Horner soundtrack, the dramatic shots of people falling and meeting their end when hitting a hard object, the meeting of two cultures, two worlds. In fact, when Jake's Na'vi gal is trying to save him by giving him an oxygen mask, I almost thought she was going to say, "there's a mask, Jake" (à la "there's a boat, Jack") and when Jake learns to fly one of the dragon-like creatures, he so nearly said, "I'm the king of the world."

But it did look very good and the story was just about engaging enough (even if the tautness of the plot was sacrificed in favour of creating some really cool-looking shots) to keep me going for the whole 2h40. My nose was killing from the heavy 3D glasses by the end, though, or, as one of the two women from Northern England in the audience put it, "oh nerrr; I've bruised me conk."

Waterloo Sunshine

When I got up at about 8:30, the mercury on my iPhone was indicating minus five degrees. As the iPhone, like its mistress, tends to be a bit of a hypochondriac about the cold, I also checked a few other weather websites and the consensus seemed to be that it was about minus three. Nonetheless, it was beautiful and sunny and I saw no reason not go ahead with my original plan to catch the Tube down to Waterloo and then do a circular route along both banks of the Thames.

The South Bank was busy, even for 9:30 on a freezing cold morning in December. Also, because I haven't done a proper run along the river since I got my iPhone, I kept stopping to take photos, which meant my iPedometer probably wasn't very accurate.

I ran along the South Bank to Tower Bridge before crossing over — Tower Bridge isn't exactly Brooklyn Bridge, but on a bright, winter morning it's a fairly striking sight. I then ran all the way back along the North Bank, past Somerset House, St Stephen's Tower and Westminster Abbey, to Vauxhall Bridge. Finally, I crossed back over and completed the circuit by running up to the Jubilee Bridge.

By that point, it was after 10:30 and the tourist hoards had made a beeline for the London Eye, the Aquarium, the Christmas markets and the other range of excitements on offer on the South Bank. I, meanwhile, could walk smugly back to the Tube station before jumping into a scalding hot shower in an attempt to regain some feeling in my feet. I have definitely earned my bacon sandwich today!

Fifteen Squared

It's a historic day for another reason: for the first time ever (or maybe just the first time in absolutely yonks), I finished the Saturday Grauniad crossword, after many weeks of incompetence and/or lacking inspiration. I had just one clue remaining last night (seven down) but I knew the answer, just not the logic, and then finally I got it this morning. Also, there were two words that I needed to look up in the dictionary after I'd worked them out to check that they were actually real words that meant approximately what I thought they did. 

And yes, I know that for many people this wouldn't be much of an achievement but you have to remember that for many years, I only ever knew the bunny slopes that are the Torygraph crossword.

It is perhaps obvious that I am ill at the moment, which has forced me to forego most running (other than a gentle, five-miler this morning) and which has therefore meant I have more time to spend solving crosswords and writing blog posts.

NB: This post was written on Sunday, December 6, but lest the Grauniad send their crossword lawyers to tell me off for giving away the answers before the closing date of the competition and lest I give other people the opportunity to enter the prize draw to win a Collins English Dictionary (I'd rather have the OED myself), the post will only be pushed live after the competition closes on Friday.