Out of the 103 books I read last year, 34 were published in 2011, 31 of which were fiction. All of these books were bought, bar three. I'm not sure how much they cost, but buying books in the year they were published is a fairly expensive business. I'm not sure a third of my reading this year will be books published in 2012. Here are the books listed by my rating. The balance of ratings were reflective of those across all books read.Friday, January 6, 2012
Reviews of books published in 2011
Out of the 103 books I read last year, 34 were published in 2011, 31 of which were fiction. All of these books were bought, bar three. I'm not sure how much they cost, but buying books in the year they were published is a fairly expensive business. I'm not sure a third of my reading this year will be books published in 2012. Here are the books listed by my rating. The balance of ratings were reflective of those across all books read.
100 up
I was having to update something this morning and realised that at some point last year I passed the 100th mark for volumes edited/authored. The vast bulk of these are issues of academic journals. The tally is: 20 academic books, 2 novels, 12 volumes of an encyclopedia, 68 issues of the journals Social and Cultural Geography, Progress in Human Geography and Dialogues in Human Geography, and 5 special issues of journals. I've no idea how much that totals in words, but my guess is somewhere between 11-12 million (the vast majority of which I didn't write, but edited). If nothing else, it amounts to a fair amount of dead trees and a lot of zeros and ones.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Review of White Nights by Ann Cleeves (2008, Pan)
On the Shetland Isles the white nights of mid-summer when the sun barely sets over the horizon has everyone a little crazy. One evening a practical joker gate-crashes the opening of an art exhibition in the remote village of Biddesta. The next morning he is found hanging in a boat shed. Inspector Jimmy Perez was at the launch, hoping to start a new relationship with artist Fran Hunter. He's called to the scene and the local doctor rules the death murder rather than suicide. Whilst Perez waits for Chief Inspector Roy Taylor to arrive from Aberdeen, delayed by fog, he gets to work investigating the crime. The village of Biddesta is small, but tight knit, with a long shared history and secrets. The hanged man not yet identified, another murder is committed; this time a famous local musician is found at the bottom of a cliff. Taylor is wound like a cog, always wanting to force the pace of the investigation, whereas Perez is more reflective and circumspect. As a shetlander, Perez knows the people and place, but the puzzle of the deaths and the reason behind it are elusively out of reach and take a while to fall into place.White Nights is the second book in the Shetland Quartet. My review of the first, Raven Black, is here. The strength of White Nights is its sense of place and characterisation. Cleeves immerses the reader in the small community, ways of life, and landscape of the Shetland Isles. The characters are well penned and the relationships between them credible and compelling. The telling was a little too descriptive at times for my tastes, especially near the start, but Cleeves has a nice easy going style of storytelling that is pleasant to the eye. I thought the middle of the book, once the investigation is well underway and Taylor is adding spice to tale, was excellent. My main problem was the resolution, which didn't quite gel for me. Regardless, this was a good, solid enjoyable read and I look forward to the third book in the series.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Wee Rockets launches
It wasn't too long ago since I noted the publication of Gerard Brennan's The Point (Oct 19th, in fact). Hot on its heals, he now has a new book out as of January 1st - Wee Rockets published by Blasted Heath. Here's the blurb:Wee Rockets is a gritty, urban morality tale; a wake-up call for society. It follows a gang of fourteen-year-old hoods as they rampage through West Belfast, fearless and forever upping the ante in their anti-social crimes. They mug pensioners to pay for the cider, cigarettes and sweets they hope will ease them through so many long, aimless days of summer. Their actions send shockwaves through an already damaged post-Troubles society that has yet to build a relationship with a new ‘catholic-friendly’ police force.
Stephen McVeigh, a local Gaelic football ‘star’ and concerned resident has had enough. He wants the kind of justice the Provos dealt in their heyday and he believes he’s the man to fill that void.
With rat-like instincts, Joe Phillips has realised that his luck can’t hold out much longer. He wants to relinquish his post as the leader of the Wee Rockets. But as Stephen McVeigh closes in with his ham-fisted investigation has Joe left it too late to change his ways? Without his loyal gang to back him up, Joe’s just a vulnerable fourteen-year-old kid from a broken home with nobody to turn to.
Wee Rockets does for Belfast what Irvine Welsh did for Edinburgh. It’s a frank look at the drink and drug-addled youth ejected onto the streets of a socially deprived community as they smirk in the face of authority and play Russian Roulette with their adolescent lives.
There's a promo video that accompanies the release. From 60 secs in it has Gerard walking a street in West Belfast discussing the area and the book.
Wee Rockets by Gerard Brennan from Blasted Heath on Vimeo.
At present, it's available from Amazon.co.uk for a special introductory price of 99 pence (or on Amazon.com for $1.50). I really am going to have to invest in an e-reader in the next couple of weeks as this is another e-only book I'm interested in reading. More details can be found at the publisher's website.Top read book reviews of 2011
I thought it might be interesting to look at the most popular book reviews read on this blog in 2011 (not from when they were first published). Not unsurprisingly, the older posts feature more strongly given that they have had the longest to attract hits. The top 15 were:The Builders by Frank McDonald (review posted Nov 2009)
Operation Napoleon by Arnadalur Indridson (review posted Oct 2010)
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (review posted Jan 2011)
I, The July by Mickey Spillane (review posted Nov 2010)
We Die Alone by David Howarth (review posted Dec 2010)
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (review posted Feb 2011)
Field Grey by Philip Kerr (review posted Feb 2011)
Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose (review posted Feb 2011)
Spitting on a Soldier's Grave by Robert Widders (review posted March 2011)
Cogan's Trade by George Higgins (review posted July 2010)
The Main by Trevanian (review posted Mar 2011)
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen (review posted June 2011)
A Stone of the Heart by John Brady (review posted May 2011)
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (review posted Jan 2011)
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (review posted Feb 2011)
The top two are also the reviews that have been most read since the blog started in July 2009.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
New to me authors read in 2011
I read 74 books by 71 new to me authors in 2011 (out of 103 books read). Below are listed the 61 new to me fiction authors (listed alphabetically), the vast majority of whom are crime fiction writers. I plan to read other books by a fairly large number of them, which means a similar list for 2012 should hopefully be shorter than this!Monday, January 2, 2012
Around the world in 365 days
Below are all my 2011 reviews organized by the country in which they were set (not by the nationality of the author). I managed to get a decent international spread, visiting 22 countries. The list is still dominated, however, by the US (29 books), although I managed 12 books set in Ireland, reading 17 books in total by Irish authors. Oddly, I only read one set in Australia, having read a number set there last year. Here's the split.29: United States
12: Ireland
9: England
5: Russia
3: Greece, South Africa, Sweden
2: Iceland, France, Denmark, Wales, Scotland, Canada, Italy
1: Australia, Ukraine, Argentina, Thailand, Laos, Netherlands, Austria, Hungary
4: Fictional
2: Multiple countries
11: non-fiction
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