Review of 2009

2009 – the year I got the book club website up and running, and started this blog. Originally I was going to try it for a month, and see how it went. 3 months later and I'm still posting, though I'm thinking it would be nice to have some other voices on here apart from mine. So next year's project is to find a way of getting my fellow bookclubbers, all busy as bees, to post some stuff on here too.

As it seems to be the thing to do, here's the What Katy Read review of the year

Most Puzzled By:

The rave reviews & general enthusiasm for the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy. Curious about a book that had been on bestseller lists in Sweden and all over Europe, I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the first in the series, at the beginning of the year, and was underwhelmed. Great long paragraphs devoted to boring lists of family members, clunky dialogue. And the denouement with our hero trussed up naked in a cellar was more than a little creepy. I assumed it was a bad translation. I only finished it out of pique because I'd bought it in hardback. And yet other people who I've talked to about it since have raved about it with such enthusiasm that I think I must have missed something. Home for Christmas I spotted the second book in the series on my mother's shelf. So reluctantly I think I'd better read it, just to check.

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Most Interesting Tweets:

2009 was the year I got into twitter. Lots of interesting folks to follow. For literary tweets I have been following @BloomsburyPress in New York. Speaking of tweets, James Bridle made a book of his. Cute idea. Fascinating blog, booktwo.org – have a look.

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Most Eagerly Anticipated:

In November I re-read Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler, a book I loved when I first read it some years ago, and which I enjoyed just as much on the second reading. Imagine my delight, then to discover that she has a new book out, this time on the Arctic – The Magnetic North. It's currently nestling near the top of my Christmas reading pile.

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Favourite Bookshop:

I haven't really found a bookshop I like more than the London Review bookshop on Bury Place, just round the corner from the British museum. Calm and uncluttered, ever-changing display tables, delicious food and coffee in the cafe, it's pretty much perfect. And luckily it's just round the corner from my office. The one thing I'd love is if they stocked a wider range of magazines. Now that Borders has closed, it's hard to find the good stuff.

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New Year's Resolutions:

My NY resolutions are always things I want to do more of. January's hard enough, I think, without giving stuff up. When I became a designer – a couple of years ago, now – I found my reading really tailed off; these days I seem to get my intellectual kicks from trying to figure out how to do new things in InDesign. There was a time when I used to read things with a definite view towards improving myself & stretching my brain a little. So my NY resolution is to try and read a few more 'important' books. Maybe not Finnegan's Wake. Let's say important books with punctuation. I'm off to a good start, as my lovely sister-in-law gave me 'Auto da Fé'  by Elias Canetti – Nobel-prize-winning author, translated from German – it's ticking lots of boxes. Happily she tells me it's not at all hard going and very funny.

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Most Interesting Designs:

Lots of lovely things come out of Penguin these days. They have a brilliant designer there called Coralie Bickford Smith, who seems to produce consistently beautiful work. It's simple: all they are doing at Penguin is reissuing classic books from the backlist, but in a format so lovely it will entice people to invest in the books again. In times when people have less money to spend I think it's all the more important to create something really unique and worthwhile.

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Hot Tips:

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann, and The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. Plus the latest incarnation of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern looks amazing.

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Most Enjoyed:

My favourite book I read this year was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Well-written and inventive, short and very sweet.

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Interior Design:

Books on shelves has been an exciting recent development at my place. It's lovely having a book rainbow, although the flaws in the system became apparent the other day when I was looking for a copy of A Town Like Alice to lend my sister, who is off to Australia for a month. Couldn't remember the spine colour, so not a hope of finding it. But they do look pretty.

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Favourite Moment:

Getting a comment from author Tobias Hill. Having some readers (!), and people who have left comments has surprised and delighted me. Blogging just seems like the most narcissistic thing in the world sometimes, but my lovely fellow bookclubbers and friends for whom this is primarily intended have been nothing but encouraging, which makes me think that it's worth carrying on. So here's to 2010 & what it may bring.