Books Wot I Read This Year

It's the end of the year, time to look back, take stock and most importantly boast about and pontificate on the books you've read this year. As Sigla points out, this is not an uncommon phenomena. The end of the year also reminds me of that I am forgetting more stuff (the more-to-remember-less-neurons-to-do-it-with syndrome), so my recent discovery of LibraryThing has been a boon. It allows you to log all of the books in your library, rate them, tag them and catalog them. Next year will be more, eh, categorical.

Being too tight to buy hardbacks, and tending to obtain most of my year's reading from second hand shops or my local library, not many of my listed books were published in 2006. Also given the year that was in it, a lot of time was spent reading pregnancy/baby books which I haven't included here.

These are my initial thoughts - and almost certain to be added to and revised as I remember extra stuff. I must have read more than this? Dublin Opinion suggested bloggers explain their top three book choices of the year so I have added some comments.

Best Of The Year
House Of Meetings, Martin Amis.
(Amis on top form is a wonder to behold. Amis's use of language is one you can't help stop and admiring. His depiction of a dying Russia is resonant, masterful.)
The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson
(One of those never-want-it-to-end reading experiences mixing riveting plots and fantastic characters, set during the foundations of The Age Of Enlightenment)
Air (Or, Have Not Have), Geoff Ryman
(An unusual, not-quite-Sci-Fi, but-not-quite-reality novel exploring the ambiguous effects of technology on a traditional society in an engrossing story)

Better
Conversations With My Agent, Rob Long
Set up, Joke, Set up, Joke, Rob Long
Adventures in the Screen trade, William Goldman
What Lies Did I Tell, William Goldman
The Kid Stays In The Picture, Robert Evans (I had a bit of a Hollywood phase mid-year, but all were highly entertaining)
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
Tamburlaine Must Die, Louise Welsh (slight but woven tightly)
The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris
Havoc In Its Third Year, Ronan Bennet

Good
Yellow Dog, Martin Amis. Even bad Amis is good.
Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre
The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Utterly Moneky. Nick Laird
I Am Charlotte Simmonds, Tom Wolfe

High Expectations, Disappointing Results Category
Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
(a victim of too high an expectation rather than being poor quality)
Lust, Geoff Ryman
(unfocused and rambling, just too many really uncomfortable passages to read)
Collapse, Jared Diamond
(I had high hopes after the excellent Guns, Germs and Steel but this was quite dull, if worthy, somewhat repetitive and, it transpires, not entirely accurate w.r.t. the Easter Islands)

Chinese Takeaway Category (tasty at the time, but soon forgotten and ultimately unsatisfactory)
Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The Popes Children, David McWilliams
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World, Francis Wheen
Jennifer Government, Max Barry
(Repeat after me, lots of hype does not a great book make)

Awful
The Rule Of Four, Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (I know, I know but even still)

Personal Discoveries Of The Year
Boris Akunin (Turkish Gambit, The Winter Queen, Leviathan and The Death of Achilles)
Clive James' Poetry (The Book of My Enemy)
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austin (Rather late to the party obviously, and I only read it because Mrs. PT made me, in return I made her read Neuromancer. I felt a little more understanding was engendered between us.)

Personal Achievement Of The Year
Reading 1/3 of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, not killing myself during or after.

Now your turn: http://www.technorati.com/search/Irishblogsandbooks