2011 was a busy year for What Katy Read in terms of fitting it in around new baby Emiko. I'm pleased to say, though, that I've managed it, and while online posts have been a bit more infrequent I haven't missed a book club and have managed to keep the website more-or-less up-to-date. Hooray. Thanks for reading if you're a book-club member or one of our online visitors, I hope you've found some things here that you have enjoyed.
So, 2011 – not a comprehensive list, but here are some highlights:
Our top-scoring book of 2011 was The Hare With Amber Eyes (78/100). Runners up were The Invisible Bridge (72/100), The Paris Wife (70/100) and A Visit from the Goon Squad (70/100)
It's an obvious choice but The Guardian newspaper's literary coverage is unrivalled. Here's their publishing year, a round-up of publishers' recommendations and books they wish had got more attention. Also worth looking through, their Books of the Year, recommended by an impressive list of well-known authors. I'd mention also The New Yorker – I have friends who subscribe and who give me piles of issues that they've finished with when I go to visit. I take them home and dip in and out at odd moments in the following weeks and am consistently amazed at the breadth and quality of writing in this weekly paper. There's nothing else like it. I tried their ipad app, but that was a disaster – they've got lots of technical issues to sort out so I'm not recommending that just yet.
Finally I'd flag up Page One, a brilliant documentary about The New York Times, which is a fascinating, worrying and at the same time thoroughly entertaining film about the future of the print industry.
I'm not sure I approve, but it does seem to be on youtube so I'll post the link here. Much better, though, get it on DVD and enjoy it properly. Oh, and I enjoyed this article by Zoe Williams that made me think and led me to the book we're currently reading for Book Club, John Lanchester's Whoops!.
School of Life Bibliotherapy – a Christmas present from my mum. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime you can check out some sample prescriptions here. The School of Life continues to go from strength to strength: this year I learned How To Be A Better Friend. And how wonderful would a School of Life reading retreat be, in one of the fabulous houses from the Living Architecture project. Sadly prohibitively expensive (though not I suppose if you get a big group together), and very quickly booked up. But maybe oneday.
Mollie Makes is my new discovery. My subscription (from-me to-me present) starts after Christmas and I'm excited about trying out their fabric book-covers shown here. In Japan people routinely use covers over their books, and I've always liked this, partly because I don't always like the cover design, and partly because it's nice not to have everyone instantly see exactly what you're reading. Plus it's nice to have a bookmark in a paperback. So I'm keen to learn how to make my own. Some beautiful examples below from the brilliant and talented Hello Sandwich.
Also there's Port, a fabulous men's magazine now on its third issue that makes me wish I was a boy. Old favourite Mono-Kultur continues to delight, with issues devoted on Bless, Ryan McGinley and Chris Bear (Grizzly Bear). The latest one on comic book illustrator Chris Ware came through the post the other day, and is being saved as a treat to read in grey January. Finally another subscription I mentioned a little while ago is Aussie magazine Frankie.
On a different note the always excellent and beautifully produced Monocle magazine has launched an in-house 24-hour radio station, Monocle24. Culture, business, current events, travel and food all presented with that particular Tyler Brûlé spin on things that somehow manages to make even the most mundane of subjects into aspirational lifestyle choices. And as Monocle specialise in championing small producers, handmade items, beautiful materials, interesting neighbourhoods and intelligent debate, I think that's no bad thing. I'd like their books coverage to be a little more developed, but apart from that it's love all the way.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'd never read him before, and absolutely loved this novel. I immediately went on to read Middlesex, which I didn't like quite as much, but I'd still recommend. A wonderful writer I'm glad I've finally discovered. Here he is discussing it with The Guardian's Sarfraz Manzoor
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, recommended by Nick Hornby in his excellent Believer magazine column Stuff I've Been Reading. A brilliant and engaging study of real lives in North Korea and winner of the Samuel Johnson prize ('All the best stories are true').
I also, for the first time, bothered to read the Booker Prize Shortlist. I don't begrudge Julian Barnes the win, The Sense of an Ending was a good and thought-provoking novel, but I personally championed Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers and Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie were also books that took me to another world, and that I wanted to share with others.
And finally, for coffee-table books, I was enthralled by Magnum Contact Sheets, the latest in the Magnum series produced by Thames & Hudson. Everything about this book from the content to the design and production is just wonderful. Contact sheets from Magnum's legendary roster of photographers are shown along with the final image selection and text giving some insight into the photographer's working process. It's a testament to a bygone age – one of the things that surprises is how few photographs these photographers would actually take – sometimes just one or two frames (while a present-day digital photographer might shoot hundreds). Through showing the contact sheets the reader gets a real look at the editing process, as well as the composition and framing in camera. It's a fabulous archive, and a truly wonderful book to have. Even the large format makes perfect sense, as to be able to appreciate the small thumbnail negatives you need a generous page size. It's an investment book, for sure, but will give hours and hours of pleasure and instruction for years to come. (Special editions with a limited edition print are also available.)
I think that's it. Book club and I will be back in the New Year, me with the usual set of unlikely resolutions (read more, post more, learn French, learn Japanese, learn to sew, paint the kitchen wall, learn how to make books on the ipad, exercise more & go on an diet until my pre-pregnancy Acne jeans fit me again, etc., plus more generally be a bit braver & try not to procrastinate so much about stuff). Have a happy New Year, hope some good books come your way, and see you soon. Kate x