livros de 2011

A paltry year in books, but nevertheless one richly rewarded by them.



The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthieson
I remember reading this way back last January mostly wrapped up in blankets and staving off the literary and literal cold with endless steaming cups of tea - wonderful

Human Chain - Seamus Heaney
Seeing Voices - Oliver Sacks

The Dharma Bums - Kerouac
a re-read from way back in my final year at uni - I can report it fully supported the re-read and remains a firm favourite.

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
Perhaps the best novel I read all year - the writing is like the characters and the landscape; brutal, sparse and incredible

The Silent Way - Caleb Gattegno
A Way & Ways - Earl Stevick
Memory Meaning & Method - Earl Stevick
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers

Waterlog - Roger Deakin
This made me go and buy a wetsuit and start plunging into the natural waters of England - and they be mighty COLD - delightful from start to finish - I found myself rationing the chapters to not race through it too quickly and have since gone back to stretches again and again

Seven Pillars of Wisdom - T.E. Lawrence
This spent almost three years sitting on my bookshelf - an Oxfam impulse buy for 70p when I was doing my initial teacher training at IH. I mostly read it on trains and in soggy tents in Cornwall - making it a tad harder to truly invest in the scorching heat of the Saudi deserts but an epic and fascinating piece of (history)

A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
One of the most incredibly written novels I've come across purely for its use of language, but I couldn't help feel it ran out of steam a hundred pages shy of its end

The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

Thanks Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
Don't know why I've never read Wodehouse before - it's like reading extended scripts for Blackadder

Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell





And I know it's cheating but I'm going to include one I technically finished in January (because hell - I'm still on my xmas holidays for another 3 days!)

The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing
Incredibly written and compelling - had me (and Mariana) asking questions for weeks after putting it down. Not one to take on lightly, and not at all sure I agree with or understand its grisly ending but heart-shudderingly powerful prose raising important issues.








I spent a large part of xmas trying to learn this song - it's beautiful

Chico Buarque - A Rita



Wishing everyone a delightful and non-apocalyptic 2012 x