Old year...

So, I didn't make it to a hundred books, but I read eighty-two, which I think is a good start. And that included two longish reading blocks.

The last three books of the year were the truly excellent The middle parts of fortune by Frederic Manning, an Australian who served as a private in the British army in WWI. It's an excellent novel about the experience of war in the trenches and particularly interesting as it's written from the point of view of a man who could have been an officer but preferred to stay a private. The central character, Bourne, is constantly resisting a commission: in real life Manning was eventually made an officer but then narrowly escaped court martial after being drunk on duty. [80]

A Christmas treat to myself was a lovely Georgette Heyer novel The quiet gentleman which was like most Georgette Heyer novels: like a hot bath or some really expensive chocolate, not exactly trashy, but an indulgent treat that doesn't really do one any good at all. Also like most Georgette Heyer novels inasmuch as half an hour after reading it I couldn't have told you about any of the characters, or indeed anything that happened. [81]

The last was a present from ma, a collection of Germaine Greer's early writings called The madwoman's underclothes. Amusing and clever and witty, if occasionally rather silly (much like marvellous Germaine herself), and always very much of their time. [82]

Later edit - it's actually 83 books as I forgot to add a course book, Ludwig Feuerbach's The essence of Christianity. [83] Yay!

So, looking back at my literary resolutions, I haven't really kept any of them except the last: 'To avoid rereading children's books and trash and to read new worthwhile things instead'. The attempt to read a certain number of books has done me good, though, I think; I haven't succumbed to the temptation to mindlessly kill pages in the quest for 100 books, but have been quite focused on keeping reading, which I think is a good thing, on the whole.

I'm also pleased that I've kept on at this blog: it is good to have something more on the books I've read than just the date I read them (which is what I previously kept a record of). It also motivates me to read decent books and not trash - not that many people read this but it would annoy me to keep having to list a whole lot of rubbish...