I never do these lists until the end of the year, and this is very justified this year, with two December books making the cut. I read 147 books in 2013 (with 3 Did Not Finishes), 89 fiction and 58 non-fiction. Here, in no particular order, are my Top 10 Fiction Reads of 2013 and my Top Five Non-Fiction Reads of 2013, and after those, some reading plans for the year …
Top 10 Fiction Reads
Patrick Hamilton – “The Slaves of Solitude” – I love his “Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky”; this is vintage Hamilton but through the lens of a Virago or Persephone book!
Chad Harbach – “The Art of Fielding” – an excellent first novel and you do NOT have to like baseball to enjoy it.
Thomas Hardy – “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” – still don’t understand how I’d never read this book before. Yes, bad things happen, but it’s amazing.
George Eliot – “Daniel Deronda” – the first book I finished in 2013 and I knew it would be in the top 10 even then!
Barbara Pym – “Excellent Women” – hard to choose just one but this is a classic and a favourite and introduces many recurring characters. I’ve loved reading all of Pym in 2013.
John Lanchester – “Capital” – so glad that Sian bought this for my birthday as I was holding off on it and it was brilliant.
Jo Walton – “Among Others” – a gift from Emma, the pink cover worried me but it was a brilliant story about reading and books and science fiction. [where is my review of this? Don’t know, will have to search further]
Anthony Powell – “Dance to the Music of Time” – yes, there are 12 of them, and I counted them as separate reads, but you can’t separate them out in terms of a work. A worthwhile re-read and fun readalong with Matthew and Linda.
Susan Glaspell – “Fidelity” – marvellous Persephone that captured small-town America so well with an excellent story with characters you could really care about.
Victoria Eveleigh – Joe series (“Joe and the Hidden Horseshoe” and “Joe and the Lightning Pony“) for helping to rescue the pony story and writing classics that will last (thanks to Jane Smiley for that, too, but she has a bit more publicity …)
Top 5 Non-Fiction Reads
Adam Nicolson – “Sea Room” – I re-read his “Perch Hill” and read “The Gentry” this year, too, but this is the one I really loved re-reading, about his experiences owning his own Scottish island.
Ann Chisholm – “Frances Partridge” – a wonderful biography – I said at the time that she’s as good as Michael Holroyd in my estimation – and that’s big praise from me!
Jane Badger – “Heroines on Horseback” – what the world needed in 2013: a clear, complete and fascinating history of the pony book. So absorbing and well done, I could have read it twice in a row straight off!
Jude Rogers & Matt Haynes – “From the Slopes of Olympus to the Banks of the Lea” – I loved this book about East London / London around the time of the Olympics.
Andrew Martin – “Underground Overground” – fascinating, enthusiastic and well researched history of the Tube.
Reading plans for 2014
Sadly, we’ll be coming to the end of Ali’s Hardy reading project this year. I’ve read all of the books, sometimes a bit behind, and we just have “Jude the Obscure” for Jan-Feb then I think a couple of volumes of short stories. I’ve really enjoyed doing this and read some books I wouldn’t have got round to for years. There’s a First World War readalong going on in the LibraryThing Virago Group and on Ali’s blog, but I am not hugely keen on war books, so I’m limiting my honouring of 100 years since the beginning of World War I by re-reading Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth” this month.
What I have fancied is doing one of those Twentieth Century challenges where you read a book from each year of the century. But I’m not going to push myself to do it in a year or two years, even; I’m going to see what I get and then fill in the gaps. I know plenty of people, like Stuck-in-a-Book and Fleur In Her World who have done it and can be mined for lists. However, I do have some questions about the dating …
- Is it the date on the book you have in your hand, or the original date of publication that matters?
- What if there’s a new introduction in your copy, what happens then? That date or the original?
- If it’s the original date, does it matter if it’s not on your book and you have to look it up, e.g. I have a reprint of Winifred Holtby’s “Virgina Woolf” that is clearly older than the edition I have, but the only date in the book is that of the reprint.
- I’m presumably OK to have more than one book by one author as it’s my project and I can do what I like, right?!
I hope someone will come and answer those. I’ve put up a list of years on a new page, and I know I have 15 individual years in the current TBR (I have a LOT of books published in 2010 – am I just 4 years behind the times at all times, I wonder?)
I’ll be doing my usual Month of Re-Reading in January this month, and will be posting about that and the state of my TBR tomorrow. This was the wonderful state of my TBR after a good December’s reading and before adding my Christmas reads …
Hope all my lovely readers have a good 2014 of reading themselves!
Jan 01, 2014 @ 11:04:14
Very glad you’ll be joining in ACOB 2014! And I shall answer your questions – or at least the way that I have dealt with dates (you can make up your own rules really!) I always go by original publication date – even if that’s in another language, etc. But I don’t go by when something was written (so, say, Forster’s Maurice would be 1970-whatever rather than the 1930-whatever). New introductions etc. didn’t change me thinking about the original publication date.
Oh, and the Holtby biog was written in 1932 – I probably have the same edition you have, cos I had to go and find out online! Very odd that they don’t say in the book.
And I included re-reads, multiple books by the same author, individual plays etc…
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 11:07:15
Ooh, you’re a star – thank you so much! Are you doing that Holtby this year? I don’t think I have a 1932 yet. I think I’m going to have to write in the ones I’ve got in italics then change them as I read them, to avoid confusion esp on buying expeditions …
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 11:24:06
I actually read it for my Reading Presently project, and very good it was too! My review is here: http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/winifred-and-virginia.html
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 12:54:32
Great review and I’m looking forward to it even more now!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 11:52:29
Good luck with the project Liz – it sounds like it could be fluid enough so that you can read pretty much what you feel like! I *will* read more Patrick Hamilton this year!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 12:52:18
Thanks, yes, it’s more looking at what happens when I just read anyway rather than forcing myself into some obsessive gubbins – but I will note down what I have got covered already for when I’m out on buying expeditions!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 12:18:18
I’ll just second what Simon said, and emphasise that you can pretty much set your own rules according to what you want to get out of your project.
And it looks like you had a great year in books. I have both Tess and Daniel Deronda line up to re-read next year.
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 12:54:09
Thank you – most reassured. As an ex-librarian, and in fact ex-cataloguer, I can get really hung up on what’s on the back of the title page! And yes, a great year of reading, hence over 10% of them being the Best Reads. I can’t actually wait to read DD again, although I have Felix Holt coming up in about March …
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 15:12:16
I’m so glad to see another ‘Daniel Deronda’ fan. I think it often gets overlooked when readers think of Eliot, but it is definitely my favourite of her works.
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 15:15:59
I’m not sure that it completely and utterly beats Middlemarch but I’m already looking forward to re-reading it …
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 15:16:50
That’s a wonderfully diverse list of favorites (more diverse than mine, at least!) and I’m always so impressed by people who take on year-long challenges. Or any challenges at all. Somehow the structure of academic life makes me really reluctant to constrict my reading! But I bet it’s a great way to see connections between books. Good luck with the project!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 15:18:26
Thank you – I have always re-read Iris Murdoch in order every 7 years or so and have enjoyed doing Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym and Hardy, too. The Century thing is just to see how wide my reading naturally is, in date terms, I think!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 16:58:04
Very interesting year of reading and I admire your discipline in your reading plan. It means that you cover a wide range of genres. Like the idea of your year by year project..quire a challenge. After much thought I have decided it is invidious to choose between Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. I believe they stand jointly as the best of their kind. Happy reading in 2014!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 17:01:27
I definitely try to cover my favourite genres in my months of re-reading, and I think the readalongs give some pleasant structure without removing all free choice, so it all works well for me. The year-by-year thing will be VERY loose, though, more doing it to see what happens and unfolds. I think you’re right about MM and DD!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 17:20:46
ooh Liz good luck with A Century of books – I must say I am very tempted too- but I think I may do it next year. Looking forward to seeing how you get on.
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 18:24:35
Thanks – I’m not aiming to do it in the year, or two years, or anything, just seeing where the idea takes me and mildly curious as to how long it would take to do reasonably naturally!
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 18:25:44
Good idea – if I do it next year – or rather start it I will probably try to do it over two years.
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 19:06:30
A Century of Books sounds fun and tempting. But I don’t think I can take it on this year – too many challenges from 2013 yet to finish. Good luck though
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Jan 01, 2014 @ 19:10:16
It took me by surprise, to be honest, but I’ll just see how it goes!
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State of the TBR and A Month of Re-Reading in January | Adventures in reading, writing and working from home
Jan 02, 2014 @ 08:04:36
Jan 03, 2014 @ 11:18:40
Excellent Women is on my (not yet blogged) best of list too – I really feel like picking it up and reading it again I enjoyed it so much.
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Jan 03, 2014 @ 11:20:25
It was hard to pick just one of hers, I have to admit.
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Book reviews – The European Tribe, Map of a Nation and | Adventures in reading, writing and working from home
Dec 24, 2014 @ 12:09:24
Top books of 2014 (plus state of the TBR and 2015 reading plans) | Adventures in reading, writing and working from home
Jan 01, 2015 @ 16:27:17