Books of my lifetime

As shown in
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22002960-barbara-s-three-quarter-century

I have been following various challenges from the group Around the World in 80 Books. This one is adapted from a challenge to read books from each of the last 100 years, using a checklist of the five books most popular with users of the Goodreads web site.

Firstly, I decided to restrict myself to my lifetime, i.e. 1946 onwards.

Reading 75 books in what remains of 2021 would be challenge enough in itself; reading the 75 “top five” for the years in question would be both expensive (as I would have to buy many of them) and pointless (Dr Seuss and Stephen King, among others, are grossly over-represented). So my challenge is:

By 23:59 on 31/12/2021, to have read at least one book first published (in its original language) in each year from 1946 to 2021, and posted, in date order, its title and a comment for each. Some, marked with # followed by its place in the list, will be from the Good Reads list; some will be books of special significance to me, such as my father’s story of his escape from POW camp. Some will be books I read and loved many years ago; if I cannot remember enough to write a comment, I shall reread them.

1946-1960

Beginning in the year of my birth, 1946, my first book in this challenge is
Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning – 1946#1, Austria, Germany, Poland, USA.

I could have chosen Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, which has been sitting on my shelf since I won it as a school prize in 1963.

1946#1 Man’s Search for Meaning
First published in the year of my birth, in German, as “Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager” (A psychologist survives the Concentration Camp). This 1985 paperback contains two further sections, “Logotherapy in a Nutshell” and “The Case for a Tragic Optimism”. Asking himself how he, and some others, survived the horrors of concentration camps (described in detail), the author concludes that it was through searching for meaning in their lives of suffering. This quest for meaning, and helping others to pursue it, became the cornerstone of his work. Have I given up my own search for meaning in my life, or can it be revived?

1947#4 John Steinbeck: The Pearl – Mexico, USA. A retelling of a Mexican folk tale about a fisherman who finds an enormous pearl. He thinks of the riches it will bring him, and what a difference that will make to his life – but of course it doesn’t work out that way. An easy narrative style, unlike my previous attempts to read Steinbeck. I am fascinated by the retelling of old stories.

I could have chosen
Albert Camus: The Plague, which I re-read for my Around the World in 80 Books challenge last year.

1948#3 Alan Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country – South Africa. On one level, this is a story of two families united by a murder, with surprising consequences. In the process, the author gives a picture of South Africa and the many problems which faced the country at the time. Much has changed; I wonder how many of the problems still remain.

1949#1 George Orwell: 1984 – England (London).
The central character in this dystopian fiction is employed in the rewriting of history. In the early pages, I found uncomfortable similarities with the real world, Then he is arrested, and discovers that the reason for his work is more sinister than he suspected.

I have also read #2 Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman (at school) and #5 Agatha Christie: Crooked House (along with most of Agatha Christie’s detective stories).

1950#2 Isaac Asimov: I, Robot – USA, Mercury, Space Stations. Set in the mid-21st century, a journalist interviews the pioneer of psychorobotics about robots she has known, and some of the complexities from applying the three laws of robotics. My favourite was the philosophical robot who refused to believe that he had been created by humans, and worshipped the machine he had been created to service.

I have also read #1 C S Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the rest of the Narnia series.

1951
I have read all five books in the bestseller list, but no longer have copies of any. Instead, my choice is
Operation Pax – England (Oxford). I began reading Michael Innes in my mid-teens, and this one was recommended by one of my teachers who had enjoyed account of a night exploration of the Bodleian Library’s underground stacks. The plot relies too heavily on coincidence for a classic detective story, and nothing is really explained, but there are some wonderfully eccentric portraits of academics and their families.

Later, I borrowed and reread 1951: #1 The Catcher in the Rye (USA)
I first read this as a teenager, on the recommendation of my elder brother. Now my step-grandchildren are all older than Holden, the narrator. Holden is hard to like; he doesn’t like himself, and only occasionally manages to like anyone else except his dead brother and his kid sister. (In Shakespeare, he likes Mercutio and Laertes, but has no time for Romeo or Hamlet.) All the more credit to the few adults who are making an effort to help him. Odd flashes of insight suggest that their efforts may not be in vain.

1952#3 John Steinbeck: East of Eden USA (California)
I downloaded this book last year, when preparing bible studies on Genesis and looking for novels exploring Genesis themes, but baulked at reading such a long and important novel. Now it was a pleasant surprise. Family relationships are explored, not only in the fictional Cyrus, his sons Adam and Charles, and Adam’s twin sons christened not Cain and Abel but Caleb (Cal) and Aaron (Aron), but in Steinbeck’s real-life family, grandparents Samuel and Liza Hamilton and their nine children. Samuel, and Adam’s Chinese servant Lee, provide loving support and deep wisdom at moments of crisis.

1953
I have read #1,#3 and #5, and seen #2 The Crucible but no longer have copies of any of them.
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle: Down With Skool! (England) is, apart from the Bible, the only book I received in the first decade of my life which I still own. My brother and I loved this and its successors, quoting words and phrases of prep school slang to each other. Rereading it, I am more appreciative of Ronald Searle’s illustrations and some of the sideswipes which passed me by at the time.

1954 Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood (Wales), written for radio but later filmed, is a delightful account of a day in the life of a fictitious Welsh village. My mother particularly liked the scene where Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard puts the ghosts of her two late husbands through their paces:
“Mr Ogmore: I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.”
I have also read #1, #2, #3 and #4 in the list.”

1955
Having read #1, #2, #3 and downloaded #4, I chose the latter for my 1955 book, though according to the preface it was not published until 1957.
Jack Kerouac: On the Road (USA, Mexico) was a difficult read based on five journeys made by Kerouac and a crazy friend, lightly fictionalized as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. Breathlessly short of paragraph breaks, it lurches between drunken parties, sex, drugs, jazz, and fast journeys in stolen or borrowed cars. The fourth journey, to Mexico, made the most impression on me, as Sal and Dean, for the first time, are confronted with a foreign world rather than cadging off a series of old friends. There are only hints of a journey of self-discovery rather than self-indulgence – but are my own travels any better?

1956#5 The Graphic Work Of M. C. Escher (Belgium)
A surprising book to find in the list of best-sellers, and on my bookshelf, come to that. In A4 format, it consists of 69 full-page prints and about 20 pages of notes. Many of them have an element of optical illusion and/or paradox: such as tesselations of shapes of birds, fish, or horsemen in different shades of grey who seem to be rising out of the paper to meet each other, and buildings with staircases going in different and incompatible directions.
I have also read #1 and #2 from the year’s list.

1957#4 Boris Pasternak: Dr. Zhivago (Russia) – reread
A complex novel, poetic in descriptions of nature, realist in details of the miseries of war, revolution and famine, idealist in long philosophical discussions, romantic in Yuri’s love for Lara, tragic in lives torn apart. I had read this in my 20s, but remembered only a few minor details.
For what it’s worth, I have also read #2 The Cat in the Hat, and don’t remember the plot of that one either.

1958#2 Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart (Nigeria)
Set in two Nigerian villages in a lifetime up to and including the coming of the missionaries, this novel gives a sympathetic account of the impact of tribal and religious customs on the life of the main character, Okonkwo. It was written during the early years of independence from colonial rule, and is part of a necessary rewriting of history.
I have also read #5 The Once and Future King, a retelling of the Arthurian legends.

1959#5 Walter Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz (USA)
Post-apocalyptic science fiction set in a monastery! The Brothers of the Albertine Order of Leibowitz are entrusted with the preservation and copying of such texts as have survived, though they are unable to understand them in a world bereft of science and technology. At first this seems absurd and comical. Always on the brink of war, the abbey survives as the world is rebuilt to the point of nuclear warfare and space travel. There is an interesting discussion of euthanasia for readers who persevere to the end.

I had never heard of the book or the author; the only one of the bestsellers whose title I recognized was Starship Troopers, and I don’t think I have read that. One great book from 1959 which I have read is Ginter Grass: The Tin Drum.

1960 Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons (London, England)
Again, I make my own choice rather than one of the five books listed for the year. Reading about a man called Thomas, appointed by a king called Henry to the important role of Chancellor who later gave up that appointment and quarrelled with the king over a question of church and state, I noticed the parallels and differences between Thomas More in the reign of Henry VIII and Thomas Becket in the reign of Henry II, and between this play and Murder in the Cathedral,

I have read #2 Green Eggs and Ham, a delightful children’s story with a tiny vocabulary.

Later, I read one of the “top five”:

1960 revisited
#1: Harper Lee To Kill A Mocking Bird (USA, Alabama)
From her strange first day at school to a narrow escape from a revenge killing, young Scout’s perceptions of her neighbours and their attitudes are vividly described. Set in a small country town in the 1930s, there is a particular irony when one of the children brings a newspaper cutting about Hitler to Current Events: the class and teacher condemn anti-semitism while unaware of the racism in their midst.

Revisiting 1951 and 1960 sways the balance of countries represented towards the USA and against England:

1961-1975

1961#5 Norton Juster: The Phantom Tollbooth (imaginary countries)
If this book had been available in my childhood, I would have loved it. I had come across the title when my stepdaughters liked to be read to, but knew nothing about the content. So this was a first reading. Through the medium of a fairy story, it makes language, maths, colours and sounds come alive, and ther’s plenty of word play to amuse the adult reader.

I have also read #1 and #4, and might have reread either for the challenge.

1962 Friedrich Durrenmatt: The Quarry (Switzerland)
A photograph shows a war criminal who died in 1945, but in 1960 a doctor recognizes it as an old acquaintance now running a hospital for the very rich. Barlach, a policeman dying of cancer and forced into retirement, takes it upon himself to discover the truth. Closer to horror than most detective stories.

I read the book earlier this year for the Magic Square 2021 challenge (book translated from German).

I have not read any of the five books listed. I started One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but gave up. No chapter divisons, just 4 parts, the first being 177 pages long.

1963 #5 John Le Carre: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Germany, England)
Burnt out but obedient to his Control, the spy, Alec Leamas, is devoid of ideology, but not quite of human feeling. His cynicism turns out to be justified. Le Carre brings a nuanced and critical attitude to the British secret service.

1964 #4 Lloyd Alexander: The Book of Three (imaginary country based on Wales)
An easy to read introduction to fantasy adventure, with details inspired by Welsh mythology. Brilliant illustrations at the start of each chapter.

1965 Olivia Manning: Friends and Heroes (Greece)
The third part of the Balkan Trilogy. When the war drives them out of Bucharest, Harriet and Guy refuse the order to relocate in Cairo, and go to Athens. Their high expectations are thwarted, not least through opposition within the ex-pat community. Guy is totally focused on work; his young bride longs to have her own needs for affirmation, friendship and a social life recognized. Then Gemany declares war on Greece, and the couple must move on again.
This is a re-read, and I remember watching a television adaptation of the two trilogies. bookseriesinorder.com gives the date as 1965, and it was only when I finished reading that I discovered the copyright date given in the book is 1964. Too bad! I shall count it as 1965 anyway.

1966 #3 Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Denmark: Elsinore)
An interweaving of passages from Hamlet with long chunks of tomfoolery between the eponymous characters and, sometimes, one of the Players. Some of the dialogues show the influence of Waiting for Godot.
1966 is the date given in the GoodReads list; however, the copyright details say 1967 for publication and first performance.
My stepdaughter Abi acted in the play. I am reading it after watching most of Shakespeare’s First Folio plays last year via Rob Myles’ The Show Must Go Online, with discussion on YouTube chat among the “groundlings”. I was struck by the number of comical characters in Hamlet: not just R&G, but the gravedigger, occasionally the players and Polonius, and even the Prince himself when he acts out his “madness”.
I have also read #2.

1967 #2 Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia)
A confused saga of a confusing family and the village/town they founded which died out with the family. At first a jungle clearing so remote its discovery cannot find the way back, Macondo is soon visited by gypsies bringing modern technology presented as magic tricks. Then came politics, wars, the banana plantation, and extreme climate events. I had to keep turning back to the family tree on page 7 to work out which Jose Arcadio or Aureliano is being talked about – and some dates would have been helpful.

I have also read #3 The Master and Margarita, where the magical realism annoyed me.

1968 #1 Philip Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (USA post nuclear holocaust)
How can one tell an android from a human? The standard test is by its lack of empathy. But is this true? Exterminator Rick discovers that truth is more complex. He comes to abandon, or at least modify, the presuppositions of his lifestyle – not least, his longing for a (very expensive) real goat to replace his electric sheep. An interesting exploration of ideas.

1969 #2 Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (USA Arkansas)
An interesting comparison with To Kill a Mockingbird (1960 #1). Both depict life in a small Southern town in the 1930s from a young girl’s point of view – one white, one black – and her growing awareness of racial prejudice. A particularly moving passage is Maya Angelou’s description of her school graduation ceremony, ruined by the guest speaker’s assumptions about the children’s futures and redeemed by the valedictarian, at the end of his address, leading the students in singing the poem they knew as the Negro national anthem.

1970 C P Snow: Last Things (England: London)
C P Snow was the first 20th century novelist I discovered, and I had read the earlier books in the series – those set before or during the second world war – losing interest as the central character moves away from academia to the civil service. In this book, Lewis Eliot, at sixty, has renounced politics for writing, though still in touch with his old friends. Unfortunately he is not sufficiently interesting or attractive to carry the weight of a novel in which everything is seen from his own perspective,

1971 #4 Corrie Ten Boom: The Hiding Place (Netherlands, Haarlem)
A complement to The Diary of Anne Frank, this is the story of a woman who helped many Jews find sanctuary, either in her family home or with others. Corrie ten Boom grew up in the family business selling and repairing watches, and the house became the centre of an intelligence network. Betrayed and imprisoned, she survived life in a concentration camp, and on her return to Haarlem she founded “a home where those who had been hurt could learn to live again unafraid.”

1972 Margaret Drabble: The Needle’s Eye (England, London)
Following a meeting,at a party (chance or contrived by friends) Simon becomes involved in Rose’s family problems, which leads him to reflect on his own.

1973 #3 Arthur C Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama (Solar System)
Refreshing to read a novel where the emphasis is on physics rather than private lives. A foreign body enters the solar system, and a team of astronauts is sent out to investigate. There is also a committee, of experts and elder statesmen, meeting on the Moon, to provide some comic relief.

1974 Emma Lathen: Sweet and Low (USA, New York)
Emma Lathen’s main character is a Wall Street banker, whose clients come from many different branches of industry and commerce. This time, it’s the manufacture of chocolate bars and trading in futures at the Cocoa Exchange. Always good entertainment.

I have also read #3 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

1975 #4 Elizabeth Peters: Crocodile on the Sandbank (Egypt)
The first of a series on cozy mysteries set in nineteenth century Egypt, with archaeologists as the main characters. The “mummy” paying nocturnal visits is obviously a human wrapped up. But who could it be? And why is it impervious to gunshot?

For the 15 years from 1961 to 1975, I have read 10 books from the bestseller list and 5 of my own choice: 3 set in the USA, 2 in England, 1 each in Switzerland, Germany, Wales, Greece, Denmark, Netherlands, Egypt and Colombia, 1 extraterrestial and 1 in Fairyland.
I have previously read 7 other books from the list, most of them many years ago and some barely remembered. Counting both recent and old reads, I have read the #1 choice for only 2 years.

Revisiting 1951 and 1960 sways the balance of countries represented towards the USA and against England:

For the 15 years from 1946 to 1960, the 13 books from the bestseller list and 2 of my own choice include 6 set in the USA, 2 in England, 1 each in Wales, Mexico, Austria, Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria. Counting both recent and old reads, I have read the #1 choice for 9 years.

I have previously read 25 other books from the list, most of them many years ago and some barely remembered. Counting both recent and old reads, I have read the #1 choice for 8 years – just over half.

1976-1990

1976 Patrick White: A Fringe of Leaves (Australia)
A tale of shipwreck among the cannibals and escaping with a convict on the run, told from the point of view of a Victorian lady who has come a long way from her childhood on a Cornish farm. I had read Voss, an earlier book by the same author, for a pre-university summer school.
I have also read 1976 #2, The Selfish Gene,

1977 #4 Colleen McCulloch: The Thorn Birds (Australia)
Saga of a family running a sheep ranch in the Outback, from 1915 to 1969. I was horrified at the way Ralph was able to buy preferment within the Roman Catholic church – this is foreshadowed quite early on so I don’t think it counts as a spoiler.

1978 Ian McEwan: The Cement Garden (England)
A family of four children goes to pieces after the death of their mother. Not for the squeamish!

1979 Jeffrey Archer: Kane & Abel (USA)
Two babies were born on the same day in 1906: one, surnamed Kane, to a wealthy banking family; the other, a foundling, adopts the first name of his foster-father Abel when he migrates to the USA. Their paths cross on several occasions, the most significant being when Abel approaches Kane’s bank for a business loan and is refused. Both are upright and successful men; their mutual hatred is the fatal flaw for each of them. A story well told.

I read this book last year because of the title, as part of my background reading on the stories of Genesis, though it was clear that the connection was tenuous. One of the characters remarks: “I can never remember, did Abel kill Cain or was it the other way round?”

I have also read #1 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, (and others in the series) having discovered and loved the radio series.

1980 Ellis Peters: One Corpse Too Many (England: Shrewsbury)
The second Cadfael book is set in Shrewsbury during the conflict between Stephen and Matilda for the throne of England after the death of Henry I. Interesting background to the better-known period of Henry II. Cadfael easily gets to the bottom of a mysterious strangled corpse in a heap of those executed by hanging, and discovers the murderer.

1981 Arto Paasilinna: The Howling Miller (Finland)
A richly comic novel set in and around a village in the North of Finland in the early 1950s, which I read as part of my Backpacking Eastern Europe project in the spring.

1982 #1 Alice Walker: The Color Purple (USA: Georgia)
One sister, abused and married off by her “Pa”, is trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she always refers to as “Mr _”, while the other escapes to travel to Africa with a couple of missionaries. They write letters to each other which remain unread for years, and are finally reunited. The part I enjoyed most were Nettie’s letters about adjusting to life in an African village, and how it is destroyed by the arrival of developers of a rubber plantation.

1983 Howard Jacobson: Coming From Behind (England)
Described by the Guardian reviewer as “a sort of Jewish version of Lucky Jim”, this campus novel has too much depressed introspection from the anti-hero, stuck in a midlands polytechnic and sending off endless letters of application for inappropriate jobs anywhere else. His “Jewishness” seems entirely negative: “Being Jewish he was as uninformed about beer as he was about flowers and birds.” There is a bizarre humour in the details of polytechnic life, including the plan to relocate the English Literature department to the football ground. The novel gathers pace as he visits his parents in Manchester, gaining some insight into why his life has turned out the way it has, and is called to an interview in Cambridge.

1984 Dick Francis: Proof (England)
One of the things I like about Dick Francis is the way in which he introduces the reader to various ways of making a living. In this book, we have a wine merchant, an industrial consultant specializing in fraud, and a road haulage contractor transporting liquids. The last-mentioned hires the consultant when tankers full of whisky goes missing, and the wine merchant is brought in because of his ability to identify mislabeled wines and whiskies by their taste. Having identified the criminal and gathered evidence, they make the mistake of staying too long, and narrowly escape a terrible fate.

1985 #1 Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
I’ve been meaning to read this for years! Now it is grimly appropriate in the light of fears about the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the future of women and girls in that country.
The Kindle edition has a new (2017) introduction by the author, including her resolution not to “put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the ‘nightmare’ of history, nor any technology not already available.” This nicely complements the “Historical Notes” with which the book ends, when a lecturer in 2195 attempts to reconstruct how the “document” of the Tale came into existence.

1986 Winston Groom: Forrest Gump (USA)
The story of a self-confessed idiot who turns out to have extraordinary talents, most of which land him in one disaster after another. He takes all this with remarkable equanimity: “Well, so what? I tried to do the right thing… So whatever else has happened, I am figgering this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain’t led no hum-drum life.” At times I was reminded of Candide

1987 Terry Pratchett: Equal Rites (fictitious “Discworld”)
A dying wizard passes on his power, not to the eighth son of an eighth son as he intended, but to a newborn baby girl. Girls can’t be wizards! Or can they? This is the third of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and written about ten years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It is a more adult play of imagination. The magic, whether of witches or of wizards, that Esk studies is mostly about “borrowing” – training your mind to take over the body of another person, animal or bird. And, at the end: “Esk and Simon went on to develop a whole new type of magic that no one could exactly understand but which nevertheless everyone considered very worthwhile and somehow comforting.”

1988 Susan Howatch: Glamorous Powers (England, “Starbridge”)
I read Susan Howatch’s Starbridge novels as they came out, at a time when I was exploring my own vocation in the Church of England. Set mainly in an English cathedral city, from the 1930s to 1960s, the three central characters and, later, two of their children are priests with different gifts and theological perspectives. Jon Darrow is introduced in the first book as an austere monk and spiritual director who guides the first protagonist through a crisis. In this second book, his life changes direction, and he struggles to adjust to life outside the monastery, shaped (as are all the main characters) by his upbringing and family life.

1989 William Dalrymple: In Xanadu: A Quest (Silk Road: China et al.)
Inspired by the opening of the Karakoram Highway between Pakistan and China, and a travel grant from Trinity College, Dalrymple sets out in an attempt to emulate Marco Polo by carrying a phial of holy oil overland from Jerusalem to Xanadu where the emperor Kubla Khan was in his summer palace. In spite of being twice arrested and threatened with deportation, and many other adventures on the journey, he succeeds in his mission only a few days late for the beginning of his final year at Cambridge.

(later)

As a travel story, it’s a good read with his contrasting travel companions, the bossy and ultra-organized Laura “in her Chador battle-dress” for the journey through Iran and the love-sick Louisa “dressed as if for the King’s Road”, plenty of adventure, and the triumph of a journey achieved in spite of … The title, taken from Coleridge, is misleading as he only spent a couple of hours “in [the ruins of] Xanadu” before being transported back to Peking.

Presumably his research report to Trinity College (who had given him a travel grant) was different in form, but I can imagine the dons sat up and took notice at a couple of his accidental discoveries: the presence of a nuclear testing site by the Karakoram Highway, his near-meeting with one of the few survivors of the Nestorian Christian sect, actual encounters with Uigur Muslims in Turkestan, and practical accounts of his experience of the various border crossings should they be so foolhardy as to follow in his footsteps. Favourite quotation: “As we pulled into the Kashgar bus station we made a vow never to visit Turkestan again. But within a day of reaching Chini Bagh, the old British consulate, we ere already beginning to reconsider our decision.” It’s the word “But” that arouses expectations!

1990
A S Byatt, Possession, England
A complex novel, as two late twentieth-century academics explore the relationship between the nineteenth-century poets they are researching. The author has created not only the characters, but long extracts from their poems and from the diaries of those whose lives intertwined with theirs. The last 50 pages are the most thrilling, as the mystery rapidly unfolds, with a climax during the (real-life) 1987 hurricane.

This completes the third 15-year period, in which only 3 of the books read for the project feature in the “Top 5” lists: The Thorn Birds, The Color Purple and The Handmaid’s Tale. I had previously read four others, all by British authors: The Selfish Gene, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and A Brief History of Time.
Of the 15 books read this year, 6 are set in England, 4 in the USA, 2 in Australia, 1 on a journey from Israel to China, 1 in the fictitious “Discworld”, and 1 (read for another challenge but copied in) in Finland.

1991-2005

1991 #1 Diana Gabaldon, Outlander, Scotland
Historical fiction based on the assumption of time-travel. The heroine touches a standing stone and is transported back 200 years from the 1940s where she narrowly escapes being tried as a witch, falls in love, and rejects an opportunity to return to her own time. Coming to the end of the book, I was shocked to discover a sample of the 9th in the series!

1992 #3 Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone, USA
I suppose this is a sort of coming-of-age novel, though the rebuilding of a life after family breakdown, bullying, teenage rape, eating disorder, bereavement, etc. is achieved only after seven years of therapy and a failed marriage. But the main character emerges as a woman capable of survival and close friendships.

1993 #1 Lois Lowry, The Giver, “Sameness”
A society resembling Brave New World, where pain and feelings are subdued, and colours are unknown. Only two people are aware that things could be otherwise: an old man and a 12-year-old boy. Every 12-year-old, and most adults, should read this book and ponder the questions it raises.

1994 #2 Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Japan
I had read this a few years ago, but did not remember this story of an uninteresting man and his bizarre experiences after the disappearance of his cat. One image resonated on this rereading: a dry well. A veteran tells of his capture in Manchuria: the captors throw him into a dry well. He lands in the dark, with a broken leg and shoulder, dazzled by sunlight only for a few minutes in the day, but those few minutes transformed his life. Later, the hero climbs into another dry well in order to think, and dreams of the wife who has left him. Then the well fills up.

1995 #5 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, USA, Kenya
Obama’s original intention, after graduating from Harvard Law School, was to write an academic work about “the current state of race relations in the USA” with a few “personal anecdotes”, What emerged was an autobiography telling the journey of his discovery of his identity as an Afro-American, and of the Kenyan family of the father he had barely known. I was particularly interested in his time working as a community organizer in Chicago.

1996 #4 Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, USA:Alaska
The story of a young man travelling to Alaska to test himself living for a season as a hunter-gatherer. His body was discovered in a broken-down bus which served as a refuge on the fringes of a National Park. Krakauer not only traces Chris’s travels over the last few years of his life, and compares his story with those of other wilderness-seekers, but discovers the hitherto unknown poison which caused his death.

1997 #1 J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, England
For a bit of light relief, I reread the first of the Harry Potter series. I think I have read them all, though the later ones get bogged down in long and complicated battles. School story meets the world of magic, with house points awarded and docked at the professors’ whims, but I was pleased that Neville’s ten points for having the courage to stand up to his friends swayed the balance.

I have also read #4 The Red Tent: the saga of Jacob’s family in Genesis told from the viewpoint of his daughter.

1998 Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind, USA
A biography of John Nash, a brilliant young mathematician in the 1940s and 1950s whose career was interrupted by mental illness, and, amazingly, resumed after a long break. The early part of the book is reminiscent of E T Bell’s Men of Mathematics, which had influenced Nash’s choice of the subject, and gives a vivid and carefully researched picture of mathematics departments at Princeton and MIT. Having studied maths and its history a long time ago, I would have appreciated a bit more help in understanding the nature and importance of Nash’s contributions. Later, the author gives a detailed account of the psychiatric hospitals Nash attended, and the forms of treatment then available.
I attended a showing of the film of the same title as part of the Gothenburg Science Festival, and it led to a discussion about schizophrenia.

I have also read #1 (another Harry Potter book) and #4 The Poisonwood Bible

1999 Tami Hoag, Ashes to Ashes, USA:Minnesota
Genre: crime/police detective/serial killer. The story, like many others, alternates between the narrative of a police investigation and the thoughts of the murderer. An ingenious plot, keeping the reader guessing, but I could have done without the love interest.

Yet again, I have read #1, another Harry Potter.

2000 Kate Charles, Cruel Habitations, England
Set in a cathedral town, where a young woman searching for her long-lost sister encounters another young woman recovering from a hysterectomy. The author has written many detective stories with a churchy setting; this one is more a novel of family lives than a detective story.

For the fourth year running, the #1 choice was a Harry Potter book.

2001 #1 Yann Martel, Life of Pi, India, Pacific Ocean
A shipwreck adventure in a lifeboat with a tiger, sandwiched between the story of a teenager’s discovery of three faiths and a series of disturbing conclusions. The author is introduced to Pi as “a story that will make you believe in God.” Perhaps not, but reading it has enhanced my understanding of my own faith and its underlying myths. Indeed, the short desert island episode reminded me of C S Lewis’s Perelandra.

2002 Iain Sinclair, London Orbital, England (London)
Having recently completed walking the London LOOP (London Outer Orbital Path), I was intrigued to discover this book. While the LOOP links railway stations within travel zone 6 (with one exception), and usually stays within the London Boroughs, Sinlcair’s target was to “Walk the M25”, a bit further out, and provide a history of land use in the shadow of the city (landfill, asylums which become housing estates, etc.) as well as biographies of some of the region’s colourful characters. At some points his journey overlaps mine: Borehamwood Studios, Epsom rather than Ewell, and Purfleet where Dracula set up his base. The project began when footpaths were closed during the epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease, and finished with the financial collapse of the Millennium Dome and the birth of Greenwich Millennium Village (which is where I live). Sinclair and his friends/fellow walkers took numerous photographs; the book contains neither photos nor maps, but at over 550 pages is probably heavy enough without.

2003 #1 Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, Afghanistan
“There is a way to be good again.” With those words spoken by his father’s old friend, Amir realizes that the guilty secret which has shaped his life from the age of 12 is not as secret as he thought. The “way” is just as dangerous, demanding and difficult as he feared. But can he take it, and will it work?
This time, Harry Potter was #2; I have also read #5 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

2004
Laurie King, The Game, India
Following in the footsteps of Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurie King continues the Sherlock Holmes stories well into the twentieth century, and introduces Mary Russell, first as a teenager at a loose end who makes friends with the elderly detective. In this book, they have been friends for nine years, partners in detection for five, and married for three. Sherlock’s brother Mycroft asks them to travel to India on a secret mission: find Kimball O’Hara (yes, the hero of Kim, now middle-aged and last seen three years ago), to prevent an international catastrophe. This is more an adventure story than a detection, featuring a mad maharajah, and combines travel (India), history (1920s) and literary homage (to Kipling). Plus more than I ever wanted to know about pig-sticking.

2005
Jacqueline Winspear, Pardonable Lies, England, France
Like last year’s read, this is part of a series of twentieth century historical detective stories. Maisie Dobbs, introduced in the first book as a homesick twelve-year-old in service in a stately home, now has her own business as “psychologist and investigator”, and is hired to investigate the death of her client’s son, in the war. The client promised his late wife, who was convinced that the son had survived, to find him; he wants nothing more than to prove his death. Again, there is not much detection; it’s more a matter of winning the confidence of those who know the answers.

I have also read #2 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

1991-2005
For seven years running, 1991-1997, and in two later years, I read one of the top five; in four other years I had previously read at least one of them (mostly Harry Potter books) but did not count it for this challenge. Four of the books I read were non-fiction. The others come from a wide range of genres, but no science fiction.
5 have a USA setting; 4 England; 2 India; 1 each Scotland, Afghanistan, Japan, 1 an imaginary country. Secondary settings in Kenya, the Pacific Ocean, and France

2006-2020

2006 #5 Cormac McCarthy, The Road, USA?
A grim story of a father and son walking in search of food and warmth, unable to trust anyone they meet in a world after nuclear holocaust.

I have also read #4 in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.

2007 #5 Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why, USA
The complexities of relationships for an American high school student are revealed by the tapes send around after her suicide. We hear the story through the reactions of Clay, a boy who would like to have known her better – though he is so little interested in a dating survey that he fills in his profile based on the character of Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye) and is surprised to receive a list of “exactly the sort of people I’d expect to fall for a Holden Caulfield.”

I have also read #1, another Harry Potter book

2008 #1 Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
I found a lot to like about this story where reality TV meets the ancient custom of sacrificing children for the good of the community. Katniss comes to the arena with some good survival techniques, but less equipped for the psychological challenges that lie ahead. What will her friends and family back home say about her performance? I’d have to read the rest of the trilogy to find out.

2009 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, England (London)
Way back in the 15th year of this project (1960), I re-read A Man for All Seasons, where the history of Thomas More is enacted against a background of the various roles played by “the common man”. Hilary Mantel’s trilogy presents the same period of English history from the viewpoint of one (common in origin, uncommon in talents) man: Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII’s right-hand-man, civil servant extraordinaire. In this, the first book, we see through Cromwell’s eyes the decline and fall, first of Cardinal Wolsey, then of Thomas More. This also was a re-read in the light of her 2017 Reith Lectures on historiography: “Resurrection: the Art and Craft”, which gave a clear statement on the author’s code of practice.

2010 #2 Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (USA, Japan)
In telling the life story of a remarkable man, this book reminds me of some others I have read for this challenge: Life of Pi (2001) for survival on a raft in the Pacific, and Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) for surviving violent and inhuman treatment in a prison camp. Add Louie’s youthful struggle to become an Olympic athlete, his flights in a damaged aeroplane, and his postwar struggle against the effects of his wartime experiences.

2011 #1 Veronica Roth, Divergent
Another Brave New World reconstruction of society, this time based on factions sharing a dominant value (Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, Erudition) – apart from those DIVERGENT people who combine aspects of several profiles, and the FACTIONLESS outcasts, Some interesting insights, but too much fighting.

2012 Fredrik Backman A Man Called Ove (Sweden)
Ove is a widower who thinks his life is over, until, time and time again, he finds himself doing the right thing in spite of himself, especially in his lifelong fight against “men in suits”. Very funny, especially to those who know something of Swedish society and the implications of choosing a BMW over a Volvo.

2013 Sarah Lark, The Fire Blossom (New Zealand)
Well researched novel about emigrants from a German village in the mid-19th century: the elders who cling uncompromisingly to their old identity, and the young ones engaging in different ways with English and Maori languages and cultures. Three young women have very different hopes and expectations; all find a future in sheep farming.

2014 E Lockhart, We Were Liars (USA
Starts off as an easy read about happy summer holidays. But all is not as it seems in this unputdownable mystery about memory lost and regained.

2015 Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train (England)
I nearly gave up before the halfway point, when I realized that the stories of Rachel and Megan were a few months out of sync with each other. Neither character attracted me enough to read further. But then a third voice, Anna, comes in, the narrative speeds up, and it turns out that none of the narrators is omniscient. The ending is both surprising and exciting.

For the next five years, I have chosen books read for another challenge, and copied the reviews from other lists or the My Books page.

2016 Sarah Meyrick Knowing Anna (England)
Anna’s family and friends come together to walk the Pilgrims Way from Guildford to Canterbury in her memory. Each day’s walk is told from the perspective of one of the pilgrims, based on the word their priest, Stephen, has given them for meditation when walking in silence. A good choice of words and how they bring focus. I was walking the Pilgrims Way when I read the book, and would have appreciated more geographical detail!

I have also read #1, the final Harry Potter book.

2017 Min Jin Lee, Pachinko (Japan, Korea)
A family saga. Sunya’s two sons, with different fathers and characters, end up running pachinko (pinball) parlours in different Japanese cities, and her grandson, after an American university education and a prestigious job in banking, is wondering if this is the best the future can offer him.

Almost all the main characters are Korean living in Japan, and suffering discrimination on many levels, from Sunya’s arrival in 1933 to the last chapter in 1989. (Among the many insightful questions in the “Reading Group Guide”, this topic is almost completely avoided.) I would have given the book five stars but for an uneasiness about the character of Hansu, the “Yazuka” boss who fathers Sunya’s elder son – amoral villain, or someone who tries to use his enormous power for good? Again, the Reading Group Guide is silent on this.

2018 Christoffer Petersen Paint the Devil: The Wolf in Denmark (Denmark)
When the livelihood of a local community is threatened, it’s easy to blame the wolves. The government sends in a biologist – but perhaps a psychologist would be more use.

2019 Daniel Colegate, Turn Left At Mont Blanc: Hiking The TMB – One Couple’s Inspirational, Funny & Brutally Honest Account Of Their Adventure Around Europe’s Highest Mountain (Switzerland, Italy, France)
“Brutally honest” in the subtitle says it all, with more than I wanted to know about bowel incontinence, alongside a detailed account of how a walk along a stretch of the GR5 morphed into the Tour de Mont Blanc – but “inspirational” in the way two unfit and overloaded trekkers adjust to the expectations of their guide book. I didn’t find it “funny”, so only four stars, but it’s a lot better than my own struggle to get round the TMB.

2020 Raynor Winn The Wild Silence (England, Iceland)
Readers of The Salt Path will be delighted to learn that Moth survived his university course, and that he and Ray are now running a rewilded cider farm in Cornwall. But it was not all plain sailing …

If you haven’t read The Salt Path, read it first.

2006-2020 Summary
I have read 10 listed books, 5 of which were #1, from 7 years Of the 15 books reviewed above, 4 each are set in England and USA, 1 each in Sweden, New Zealand, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland, and 2 (dystopias) from unspecified countries.

That makes 75 books, but I still have to add one from this year! After that, I am thinking of working backwards from 1945.

2021 Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me (USA)
A delight to read the Goodreads 2021 Award for Mystery and Thriller, with an unusual plot and so well written that I realize how much I have struggled with some of my choices, including #1s.

I am setting up two bookshelves on Goodreads: Hot off the Press, for books read in the year of publication (including this one), and Before I was Born, working backwards from 1945. I shall use these for my records, and keep discussion threads for new challenges.