Rounding up 2008

So this year is drawing to a close and I can't help but feel this has been the fastest year I've ever experienced. Definitely far fewer than the usual twelve months. When I look back, though, quite a deal seems to have happened. And, as I usually measure time and capture events by the books I read, maybe it has been a whole year as it is certainly a very long time since I was reading Lady Chatterley's Lover.
So, in reading blog terms, what has this year consisted of? Well, let's first deal with the shameful: challenges. Yes I signed up for many in new year enthusiasm and the mistaken idea that my reading impulses could be directed. So how many did I complete this year? Not one. How many did I even make a start on? Oh dear, not too many. I apologise to all the kind people who set them up that I was so bad at taking part but it was just not to be; I have learnt my lesson, though, and fully accept that, now I have become comfortable with my blog-self, I am not a challenge person and will not be signing up for any in 2009.
I am also not a post-every-day blog-person. I began to feel that I should write about every book I read and post at least two or three times a week in 2008 which naturally led to long gaps in both of these, as I do not like feeling as though I have to do anything. So in 2009 I will post when I feel like it and write about books when I feel moved to do so. I will be listing books as I read them in my sidebar, though, for one reason only - that I forget them very quickly if I don't.
2008 was the year that I discovered that not all writers from the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond were unimaginative sex-crazed degenerates unable to string a decent sentence together. There are some wonderful books being written, especially in the fantasy genre, or, as it seems to be termed when it wants to be taken seriously, magical realism. Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Clive Barker and Ray Bradbury have restored my faith in the publishing industry this year, and the recent decline in the sales of mis-lit is starting to restore my faith in the human race altogether. I hope to discover more wonderful books and writers next year, and enter more magical worlds.
This was the year I finally set aside my prejudices and fell under Georgette Heyer's thrall. All I can say is I'm glad in equal measures that she was so prolific and that my parents have almost her entire works. Four books by one author in a year may not seem much to most of you but for me it is quite a ridiculous amount. I feel I may be reading even more by her next year.
It was also the year I rediscovered my love of poetry and I will never be able to thank Stephen Fry enough for that. My poetry collection has increased substantially and I have enjoyed reading it more than I can remember doing since I was a teenager and only read poetry or Kerouac, or sometimes poetry by Kerouac. I discovered wonderful poets this year, such as e e cummings, Robert Frost and Philip Larkin, that I had always ignored in the past going straight to the Romantics or the Beats. I hope for much more of this in 2009, as there are poets from other centuries and cultures whom I have yet to discover.
My main New Year's resolution last year was to get my TBR pile down and I have failed miserably. I didn't really think I would succeed and with books received at Christmas, as well as some book vouchers, there's little hope it will be brought down in the near future but it just means that I have plenty of choice for the year ahead.
I have counted up the books I read this year and it is quite paltry, little more than one a week on average, although if I added in the books I have got part way through - some abandoned and some just not yet finished - it would be substantially increased. I have been a bit of an intellectual butterfly this year, flitting from flower to flower but not always staying as long as I should. The amount of non-fiction I read decreased from usual years, although books like Colin Wilson's The Occult were quite chunky, and there has been an awful lot of very enjoyable escapism in my reading, and rather less intellectual challenge than is usual. Although, as I cast my eye down the list and see Anna Karenina, Proust's The Prisoner, Huysmans' A Rebours and others there, maybe I am being a little harsh on myself, but I enjoyed them all so much they didn't feel at all challenging to read.
And as for my writing, well, a quite pathetic amount has been created or edited; domestic issues, largely involving holding hammers and plasterboard for my other half, have distracted me too often. However, I have enjoyed working on the little I have written.
So what will I crown as my book of 2008? Last year it was a close-run thing between Sweeny Todd and Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, with Jayber just winning out. This year I find it hard to decide again: I think it is a photo finish between Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I really don't think I can pick a winner between them, and there are plenty of others that are up there with them, jostling for position. Which must mean that overall 2008 has been a very good reading year.
Here's looking forward to 2009 - Happy New Year everyone!