2011 in Books

To say I was lax with reviewing this year is an understatement. I shall try to do better next year, but I make no promises. Nonetheless, here is the list of books I read this year. For my favourites, go here.

(*) denotes reread.

1. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
2. Fragments by Marilyn Monroe
3. Erotic Poems by Goethe (translated by David Luke)
4. And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac
5. Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson
6. The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love by Giovanni Boccaccio
7. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
8. How Humans Evolved by Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk
9. Shopgirl by Steve Martin
10. Fever PItch by Nick Hornby
11. Sad Book by Michael Rosen
12. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Howard Hibbett)
13. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
14. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
15. The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James
16. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
17. The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
18. No one belongs here more than you. by Miranda July
19. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
20. Courage by J. M. Barrie
21. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
22. Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth
23. The Housekeeper & The Professor by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)
24. The Double Helix by James D. Watson
25. The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
26. Ten Poems From Hafez by Jila Peacock
27. Poems of John Keats selected & introduced by Claire Tomalin
28. Amulet by Roberto Bolaño (translated by Chris Andrews)
29. The Essential Rilke selected & translated by Galway Kinnell & Hannah Liebmann
30. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
31. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
32. The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells
33. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman
34. Letter to D by André Gorz
35. Chattering: Stories by Louise Stern
36. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
37. Lopsided by Meredith Norton
38. Paper Towns by John Green
39. Invisible by Hugues De Montalembert
40. The Giver by Lois Lowry
41. Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras
42. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
43. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
44. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
45. The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy
46. Why We Need Love edited by Simon Van Booy
47. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
48. Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan & Rachel Cohn
49. Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So by Mark Vonnegut
50. Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter edited by Simon Van Booy
51. How To Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
52. The Outsider by Albert Camus (translated by Joseph Laredo)
53. Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre (translated by Carol Macomber)
54. In The Country of Men by Hisham Matar
55. Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds
56. One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds
57. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
58. Fires by Raymond Carver
59. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
60. The Divinity Gene by Matthew J. Trafford
61. Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
62. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
63. Poem of the Deep Song by Federico García Lorca (translated by Ralph Angel)
64. Rain by Don Paterson
65. A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
66. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
67. Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings
68. Behind the Mask by Lousia May Alcott
69. The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
70. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
71. Persuasion by Jane Austen
72. Sand and Foam by Kahlil Gibran
73. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
74. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
75. The Collector by John Fowles
76. Bed by David Whitehouse
77. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
78. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
79. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 
80. Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry*
81. The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
82. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
83. The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence
84. The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi Durrow
85. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
86. Regeneration by Pat Barker
87. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
88. In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey
89. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
90. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
91. An Old-Fashioned Girl by Lousia May Alcott*
92. The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker)
93. On Suicide by David Hume
94. My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
95. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
96. The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson
97. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
98. Emma by Jane Austen
99. When We Were Fifty by Christopher Matthew
100. Granta #115: The F Word by Various Writers
101. Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor
102. Eros Unbound by Anaïs Nin
103. Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald
104. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
105. Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer
106. The Coma by Alex Garland
107. The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman
108. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
109. Divergent by Veronica Roth
110. Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar
111. At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
112. Across the Universe by Beth Revis
113. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling and Paul de Man)
114. The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Stanley Lombardo)
115. A Very Short Introduction: Classical Mythology by Helen Morales
116. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
117. No Way Back by Theodor Fontane (translated by Helen Chambers & Hugh Rorrison)
118. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
119. Oresteia by Aeschylus (translated by Christopher Collard)
120. Weight by Jeannette Winterson
121. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
122. Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis by Ugo Foscolo (translated by J. G. Nichols)
123. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos by John Berger
124. Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod (translated by M. L. West)
125. Blue Nights by Joan Didion
126. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
127. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
128. So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid (translated by Natasha Wimmer)
129. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
130. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
131. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
132. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
133. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien*
134. Five Dialogues by Plato (translated by G. M. A. Grube)
135. Birds and Lysistrata by Aritsophanes (translated by Stephen Halliwell)

Best Books from 2011

I constantly get asked for recommendations. These are the books that I’ve read this year that I’d like to champion. They are absolutely wonderful, and if you get the chance, you should read them. Click here for last year’s favourites. 

• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (do yourself a favour and read the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
• The Collector by John Fowles

Contemporary

• A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi Durrow
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
• Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer

• No one belongs here more than you. by Miranda July
• Chattering: Stories by Louise Stern
• Granta #115: The F Word by Various Writers
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
• The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy 
• How To Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
• The Divinity Gene by Matthew J. Trafford
• My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

Memoirs/Non-Fiction

• Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth
• Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So by Mark Vonnegut

Poetry

• Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
• Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson
• Poems of John Keats selected and introduced by Claire Tomalin
• Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds

2011 in Concerts

Adele

I was absurdly lucky to be able to see Adele. I love her to bits, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be in London the day of this concert, so I didn’t buy a ticket in advance. It turned out that I was — so, ticketless, I went to the venue. It was a tiny little place in Notting Hill, the night of the release of 21. My friends told me I was nuts. I went straight up to the ticket desk and said that I didn’t have a ticket, but really wanted to get in, and asked if they had any spares. The lovely gent behind the counter told me to go get a drink, and come back in forty-five minutes, and if anyone didn’t show up, he’d let me in. Some bugger didn’t show up, and he stamped my hand.

It was a fantastic show, she’s absolutely gorgeous and lovely and so ridiculously talented. I also quite like this shot I got of her, despite the fact that all I had on me was my point-and-shoot.

Will Sheff

I didn’t take this photograph, I nabbed it off the interwebs. But this was a bloody brilliant show. I was quite spoiled this year with regards to seeing singers I loved in small venues. This was definitely the smallest — St Pancras Old Church. There was just eighty people in the audience, in the tiny, echoing, lovely church. Will Sheff played a mostly solo show, although Patrick, Okkervil River’s bassist, came out for a few songs. I bootlegged most of the show, and I upload one of the songs if you want to have a listen.

Emmy the Great

Emmy the Great is the least-known of all the bands I went to see this year, but I absolutely adore her sound and her music. I had a fun night, it was brilliant seeing her. She’s a little awkward, but I think part of that is exaggerated. She’s talented and I really can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. I both want everyone to listen to her and appreciate her music and want her to be a secret so that I can continue to sit front row at her shows without difficulty. I got a few good shots, but I mostly took videos.

C’est tout! I didn’t get to as many shows as I would’ve liked, since I had a pretty hectic year. I had tickets for Death Cab in November, but the mate I was supposed to go with bailed and as it was aways away I didn’t fancy it alone. But oh, well! I’ve seen them before, at least. Did you guys see any great gigs this year?

2011 in Movies

1. P.S. I Love You*
2. Some Kind of Wonderful*
3. Across The Universe*
4. The Jane Austen Book Club*
5. Definitely, Maybe*
6. Before Sunrise*
7. The King’s Speech
8. Black Swan
9. Fever Pitch
10. Under The Tuscan Sun*
11. French Film
12. Funny Face
13. Say Anything
14. Morning Glory
15. Moulin Rouge*
16. Enchanted*
17. Pride & Prejudice*
18. A Single Man
19. Can’t Buy Me Love
20. Once*
21. The Blind Side*
22. The Breakfast Club*
23. My Fair Lady
24. Me & Orson Welles
25. Cinderella* 
26. Romance & Cigarettes 
27. Thor
28. 500 Days of Summer*
29. Water for Elephants
30. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
31. It’s Kind of a Funny Story
32. Veronika Decides to Die
33. Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging
34. Love & Other Drugs
35. PS I Love You*
36. Christopher and His Kind
37. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
38. Ratatouille*
39. Across the Universe*
40. The Jane Austen Book Club*
41. 84 Charring Cross Road
42. Bridget Jones’ Diary*
43. The Shawshank Redemption
44. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
45. Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants*
46. Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2*
47. Love Actually*
48. Post Grad*
49. My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend
50. Friends with Benefits
51. Thumbelina* 
52. Something Borrowed
53. Easy A
54. Crazy Stupid Love
55. Happythankyoumoreplease
56. X-Men: First Class
57. Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy
58. High Fidelity*
59. Little Women
60. The Ugly Truth*
61. My Week With Marilyn
62. Bridesmaids
63. Smart People
64. Ballet Shoes
65. Country Strong
66. A Knight’s Tale*
67. Love Actually*
68. Hamlet 2
69. Midnight in Paris
70. Green Lantern 
71. The Adjustment Bureau
72. Reality Bites*
73. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Don’t judge me by my movies, judge me by my books!

2011 in Theatre

I definitely saw fewer plays this year than in previous years (I normally average at least four, sometimes up to seven or eight), but it’s been a pretty busy year and I’ve spent a lot less time in London than I usually do. No matter! I saw a couple of great ones.

The Children’s Hour is written by Lillian Hellman and the production I saw starred Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss. They were both quite good, although I believe Keira Knightley was better the previous year in The Misanthrope. Being a fan of Mad Men, I enjoyed seeing Elisabeth Moss preform. I didn’t know the plot prior to going in, which I ended up being thankful for. I was glad I went, but I think it could have been improved. I’m reasonably sure that we went to see it nearer the beginning of its production, in which case the kinks would’ve been ironed out within a couple of weeks.

La Sylphide was a ballet I went to see at the infamous Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Unfortunately I can’t recall the names of the two leading dancers, but it was a mesmerising ballet and the male lead especially was exceptional. When I walked out I wanted to spend my life watching nothing other than ballet. Obviously this wore off, but it was gorgeous. 

I also saw three or four productions at my university, a couple of which were actually extremely good. I’m always amazed at how talented my friends are.