The books I read in 2009

In reverse order:

• History of the English Church and People by Bede. Interesting history gives way to repetitivie lists of alleged miracles. *
• Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Swedish policer. Wry characters and painstakingly slow pace. Clumsy ending. *
• Germinal by Emile Zola. Raw, brutal tale of miners strike. Overwrought and bathetic, but retains some power and plenty rage. *
• Above Suspicion by Lynda la Plante. Girl cop can't decide to shag her boss or the chief suspect. Dismal. No stars
  
• Purple America by Rick Moody. Excess style failing to compensate for trivial plot and unconvincing characters. A lit fic sugar treat. *
  
• For The Islands I Sing by George MacKay Brown. The life of an Orcadian poet. Nicely written, but not exactly eventful. *
  
• The Third Murderer by Carrol John Daly. Clunky and clumsy pulp novella from the 30s, where it should have stayed. No stars
  
• Heresies by John Gray. Moderately interesting collection of essays by a contrarian philosopher that starts well but soon becomes repetitive. Good points, hammered home rather too hard. *
  
• Wolf in the Shadow by Marcia Muller. PI Sharon McCone tries to find her missing lover. Indifferent mystery. No stars
• Vodka Doesn't Freeze by Leah Giarratano. Aussie policer spoiled by nastiness, plot cheats and clumsy character exposition. No stars
  
• Red Blood by Heather Graham. Insipid, femme orientated scares'n'sex vampire novel. Doesn't really deliver either, but not offensively bad either. Keeps you reading, just about. No stars
  
• Bound by Fire by Anna Windsor. Adominable combination of eroticism and horror. Neither arousing or scary, and so badly written it left me feeling embarrassed for the author. No stars
  
• December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Rosa. Poorly plotted and dully writen (albeit in translation) police thriller. Unconvincing, uninteresting and makes Rio sound like a very dull place. The writer is compared to Chandler - trust me, he isn't. No stars
• The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. Two novellas - one about a convict forced into freedom against his will, the other about a couple cornered by reality - exploring freedom and compulsion. Initially unconvincing, particularly around the central relationsip, but ultimately riveting. **
• Baghdad Burning by Riverbend. Life in Iraq after the invasion, as told with wit and rage by a blogger who has been silent for almost 2 years. **
• The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley. An American teaching English in Kosova (sic) is impressed by her student's response to The Old Man and the Sea, and their courage in a dismal situation. Lacks the rigour needed to make it be than modestly interesting. No stars
• Vlad the Impaler by M.J. Trow. An attempt to examine the history of Dracula - the historical Impaler and the myth that has built up around him. Waffley and unfocused, even its grisly subject matter barely makes it interesting. No stars
• Big Muddy by B.C. Hall & C.T. Wood. A modern journey down the Mississippi. Tries hard to be worthy, but lacks the detail to match the scope of the project, and the crisis, faced by the river and the people living on it. *
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Revisiting Macondo reveals a reversal of prior experience. The first half drags, and the second half soars. Still one of the greats. ***
• The Steps to the Empty Throne by Nigel Tranter. The ascent of Robert the Bruce to the throne of Scotland, passably told. The prose is marred by touches of imperial purple. No Stars
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Apallingly long, ill written account of a tormented young man's motivation to commit murder. Dostoevsky this ain't. Perhaps the worst book I have ever read. Avoid. No Stars
• Quisante by Anthony Hope. No Ruritanian derring-do in this well written but underpowered novel of an ambitious, talented man who lacks any moral sense or qulaity of self reflection. *
• The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Coruscating, technically challenging, but perhaps too ambitious for its own good. Not for the faint hearted. ***
• All Too Human by George Stephanopolous. Pacey insider on Clinton's first term. Stephanopolous comes across as either dishonest, or incredibly naive. He is good company, however.
• Red Shift by Alan Garner. Brilliant little novel that defies simple description. Events and characters in Roman Britain, the English Civil War and the 20th century overlap and echo around the same locations. ****
• Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min. Tepid account of the life of Jiang Ching, wife of Mao and instigator of the Cultural Revolution. Not as interesting or as well written as it needed to be to do justice to its atrocious subject. No Stars
• From Bondage by Henry Roth. Third installment of Roth's semi-postumous, somewhat fictionalised autobiography about literature and depravity in 1920s New York. **
• Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. Off kilter tale of crime and punishment among Russian anarchists in Geneva. Uneven, but still interesting to Conradians. **
• America in the Twenties by Geoffrey Perrett. The last time the wheels came off the global economy in an excess of consumer credit and financial recklessness. Interesting, but long. **
• Hitler: a Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock. This was the first full length biography of Hitler pubslished after the war. Enthralling, though hardly uplifting. ***
• The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson. A rather disappointing novel from one of the greats of British fantasy. Young readers might over-look its schematic format but others are advised to seek out the Changes Trilogy to see Dickinson at his best. *
• Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame. Memories of Frame's childhood are conveyed with nightmarish intensity and dazzling skill, but the other half, an uneasy comedy of manners and errors, is much less satisfying. **
• The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. Strange late play, of mismatched parts, but possessed of its own strange magic. Includes the best stage direction ever - "Exit, pursued by a bear." *