35 books read in the first half of the year (a total reduced by the eternal London Labour and the London Poor). I managed most of what I’d planned, starting with some continuing projects:
Brontës
Agnes Grey — Anne Brontë
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë
The Professor — Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë
Shirley — Charlotte Brontë
Villette — Charlotte Brontë
It was pretty clear why the famous two are the famous two, but there was quite a lot to enjoy in the other Charlotte books, especially.
Shakespeare
King Lear — William Shakespeare
Algeria
The Outsider — Albert Camus
The Meursault Investigation — Kamel Daoud
Chaos of the Senses — Ahlam Mosteghanemi
The Meursault Investigation is a much-touted answer to Camus, but reading them together, showed exactly why Camus is a great of world literature, and Daoud … isn’t. Chaos of the Senses was completely bonkers, and much more interesting.
Gutenberg
An Ocean Tragedy — W. Clark Russell
The Icknield Way — Edward Thomas
Letters of a Portuguese Nun — Marianna Alcoforado
SF/F
The Pinhoe Egg — Diana Wynne Jones
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen — Alan Garner
Indoctrinaire — Christopher Priest
Matter — Iain M. Banks
Ubik — Philip K. Dick
The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
Borne — Jeff VanderMeer
Scattered Among Strange Worlds — Aliette de Bodard
The Centauri Device — M. John Harrison
The Malacia Tapestry — Brian Aldiss
The last Chrestomanci book! Fortunately there’s plenty more DWJ available. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was my first Alan Garner, and his first book — I’m assured he gets better, but this was promising too. Borne made as much sense as a book dominated by a giant flying bear can, and was splendid fun.
Literature
Another Country — James Baldwin
The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay — Michael Chabon
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel Spark
Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders
Whit — Iain Banks
Restless — William Boyd
The Abbess of Crewe — Muriel Spark
The City and the City — China Miéville
Life — Gwyneth Jones
Serious Sweet — A. L. Kennedy
Lincoln in the Bardo was not at all what I’d been expecting — a gripping juxtaposition of realism and the absurd. Life was as absolutely brilliant as I remembered it, and my #1 underrated masterpiece.
Crime
Out of Bounds — Val McDermid
And to come? Continuing with my various projects and author themes, plus the ones that didn’t happen this time (Atwood and Germans). And maybe Fielding or Eliot.
Restless was very enjoyable.
And, re Brontes, Villette is a very fine novel. It ought to be better known.
Yes, I liked the unreliable narrator and some of the characters (especially Madame Beck). The coincidences were a bit hard to take, but it’s interesting how different our worldviews are!
And of course as you know, coincidence is a major convention of 19th c fiction. Just think about Dickens. One might speculate about why that is.