Books in 2009 (not counting work).

[tree_and_leaf]

1. Lindsey Davies, Ode to a Banker R
2. Lindsey Davies, Saturnalia R
3. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book.
4. Terry Pratchett, Nation (excellent!)
5. Georgette Heyer, The Spanish Bride, which I must admit I found rather tedious, and not a patch on An Infamous Army. The stuff about campaigning life is fascinating, but the hero is a bore and the heroine (age 14 at marriage) is a complete and rather dull Mary Sue.
6. CM Yonge, The Three Brides (rather cheating to count this, as I'd read at least half of it before the year). R
7. Percy Dearmer, The Story of the Prayerbook. Rather more learned than the rather Ladybird title would suggest; like all P Dearmer's prose writings, a combination of clear judgment with the odd bit of outrageousness, and a blunt and witty, if occasionally rude, style. R
8. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon.
9. Oliver Bottini, Mord im Zeichen des Zens.
10. Simon Barrington-Ward, The Jesus Prayer.
11. William Barclay, The Lord's Prayer.
12. Benedikt Schauffelberger, Wie die Freibürger ihr Münster bauten.
13. Nick Page/ Andreas Malessa, Lobpreis wie Popcorn. R
14. Arthur Ransome, Swallowdale. R
15. Kenneth Leech, The Eye of the Storm.
16. Stratford Caldecott, Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of JRR Tolkien. R
17. JRR Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham. R
18. Merryn Williams, The Chalet Girls Grow Up.
19. Jacqueline Rayner, Winner Takes All (Doctor Who pro-fic; quite decent; plot bears certain resemblance to "Warriors of the Kudlak", though the aliens' plot was less plausibly worked out. Quite good characterisation of Mickey, though).
20. George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord.
21. Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign.
22. Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer.
23. Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. I like the 44 Scotland Street stories (though not enough to buy the Scotsman); they're my favourite A.M.S. Would it have killed him to do some research on the Cubs, though? Google would have been enough. (As for calling a woggle a toggle...!)
24. RJ Anderson, Knife
25. Philip Reeve, Starcross
26. Michael Chaubon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Nu?
27. Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree. Being a grab bag of Irish and Norse mythology, not to mention the bits that are obviously Tolkien (Y HALO THAR, Old Forest?)
28. Jim Butcher, Storm Front (Dresden Files 1).
29. Jim Butcher, Full Moon.
30. Sarah Walters, Tipping the Velvet. A fascinating view of a subculture I know nothing about, but I didn't particularly enjoy it as a novel.
31. John Buchan, John Macnab. Sheer glorious escapist comedy.
32. Jim Butcher, Grave Peril.
33. Jim Butcher, Summer Knight.
34. Terry Pratchett, Going Postal R
35. George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple
36. TS Eliot, The Family Reunion.
37. Eamon Duffy, Walking to Emmaus.
38. Susan Howatch, Glamorous Powers.
39. Jim Butcher, Death Masks.
40. Beth Williamson, Christian Art: a very short introduction
41. Kyle Keefer, The New Testament as Literature: a very short introduction.
42. Terry Pratchett, Night Watch R
43. Jim Butcher, Blood Rites.
44. Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting.
45. Susan Howatch, Glittering Images.
46. Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths
47. Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths
48. David Feintuch, Midshipman's Hope
49. David Feintuch, Challenger's Hope (I liked the first one, but got decidedly fed-up of the unending gloom and positively Hardy-ish combination of malign fate and a depressing and unsound theology).
50. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth (I really enjoyed this: warm, humane and inspiring. Am beginning to wonder if JR is his own evil twin).
51. Susan Howatch, Ultimate Prizes.
52. Susan Howatch, A Question of Integrity.
53. Timothy Radcliffe OP, Why Go to Church?. Excellent book on the Eucharist considered as a sort of sacramental drama. The ABC's Lent book, and a worthy choice (the Cantaur-OP axis strikes again?)
54. Susan Howatch, The Heartbreaker
55. Jeffrey John, The Meaning in the Miracles. Fantastic book.
56. Timothy Radcliffe OP, What is the Point of Being a Christian?. Worth reading, but not as good as Why Go To Church? I suspect this is because TR's tendency to discursive style benefited from the tighter structure of the liturgy of the Mass; this is full of good insights but tends to be One Damn Thing After Another.
57. Michael Smith, Station X.
58. Dorothy L Sayers, The Man Born To Be King R
59. Rudyard Kipling, Rewards and Fairies R
60. Mrs Oliphant, The Perpetual Curate. R
61. Louisa May Alcott, Little Men.
62. HV Morton, Atlantic Meeting.
63. Jim Butcher, Small Favour
64. Susan Howatch, The High Flyer.
65. Reginald Hill, Death's Jest Book
66. Deepak Chopra, Jesus. Er... not quite as bad as I expected? But deeply and rather repulsively Gnostic (the crucifixion doesn't matter, because Jesus' soul was communing with his spiritual BFF - a Tibetan lama - and didn't feel the pain!); as far as I could tell a poor grasp of the historical context, despite an attempt to make great play with it; and also rather poorly written. And the suggestion that Jesus was a great spiritual teacher because he learned enlightenment from the East - unlike the legalistic Jewish tradition - is extremely anti-Semitic in its implications (it is, I suppose, closely related to Marcionism, though with a more Gnostic Christology, and worse than anything catholic doctrine has endorsed).
67. Pascal Mercier, Nachtzug nach Lissabon. Marvellous!
68. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion.
69. Julian of Norwich, Revalations of Divine Love (first read in a scholarly edition - does that count as re-reading or not?)
70. Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
71. UA Fanthorpe, Safe as Houses
72. Boris Akunin, Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk.
73. Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ.
74. Stephen Cottrell, Hitting the Ground Kneeling.
75. Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City.
76. Ann Astell, Eating Beauty. Borderline work - a rather strange but occasionally beautiful book about eucharistic devotion. I think I need to re-read it when I can give it more attention.
77. Luther Blissett, Q. A novel-by-anonymous-committee about the Reformation. Ironically, they really, really, don't like Luther. Or Holy Mother Church. They do like Anabaptists, though.
78. EP Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus. A fairly conservative take thereon, though not by comparison with Ratzinger.
79. Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty.
80. Jim Butcher, White Night.
81. Stephen Cottrell, From the Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for all Christians.
82. Jim Butcher, Small Favour
83. Jim Butcher, Dead Beat. I think I may be getting obsessed with the Dresden Files, but they're so good!
84. Philip Pullman, Lyra's Oxford. A pretty story, but slight. Best bit of it probably the map...
85. Paul Magrs, Never the Bride.
86. George MacDonald Fraser, The General Danced at Dawn. R
87. Charles Williams, War in Heaven R
88. George MacDonald Fraser, McAuslan in the Rough R
89. Charles Williams, Many Dimensions R (Williams really was very bad at titles; the only one that's both effective and has anything obvious to do with the book is All Hallows Eve.
90. Tim Barker, What Fettle, Mun? A Celebration of the Cumbrian Dialect.
91. Alan MacDougall, Youth Politics in East Germany: The Free German Youth Movement, 1946-1968.
92. Len Deighton, SS-GB. Bleak but gripping counter-history - not sure a German invasion would really have succeeded long term, but he portrays the chaos and mutual distrust among the various organs of the Nazi state very well.
93. GK Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown. R
94. ibid, The Wisdom of Father Brown.
95. ibid, The Incredulity of Father Brown
96. ibid, The Secret of Father Brown
97. ibid, The Scandal of Father Brown
98. Dante, Hell (trans Sayers)
99. Jennifer Vandever, The Bronte Project. I think this is what would happen if you tried to weld together Possession and a particularly jaundiced David Lodge novel, and then rewrote it in the style of chick lit. Problematic: the characterisation and prose style are thin, and it doesn't even tick the 'satisfying fantasy' box. Also, the author doesn't know academia, so the satire is unconvincing...
100. Dante, Purgatory, trans Sayers (now, that's more like it!)
101 Jim Butcher, Blood Rites R - I was trying not to reread any books I'd read already this year, but it was there and I needed a book...
102. Alfred Kerr, Ich kam nach England. A diary-like memoir of his exile in pre-war England, and his attempts to persuade the British to take the threat of Hitler seriously. Kerr is perhaps best known to British readers at one remove - his daughter Judith wrote "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit" and "The Tiger Who Came to Tea", but was a distinguished journalist and author in his own right.
103. CS Lewis, Of this and Other Worlds. Lewis on SF/ fantasy; pretty good stuff.
104. Michael Yelton, Outposts of the Faith: Anglo-Catholicism in Some Rural Passages. Somewhat disappointing; a source of mind-boggling anecdote - including the priest who removed his maniple when Cramnarian liturgy was read - but only really interested in Anglo-Papalists, and no useful footnotes.
105. George Guiver (ed) The Fire and the Clay: the Priest in Today's Church.
106. Michael Chabon The Final Solution. Published Holmes fic, not bad at all.
107. Charles Merrill Smith, How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious. Satire on the church (more specifically, US Protestantism c 1965; extremely amusing in a slightly alarming way).
108. Sigrun Arenz, Kalt bis ans herz.
109. Patrick O'Brian, The Road to Samarcand.
110. Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals.
111. Rosemary Gallagher, John Trenchard, Jeffrey John, This is Our Faith: a Popular Presentation of Church Teaching.
112. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. An extremely interesting take on the sources of the Gospels - and quite a convincing demolition of some of the assumptions of form and source criticism.
113. Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More.
114. The Dave Walker Guide to the Church. Most cartoons appearing in religious publications are not so much funny as sad and desperate. Dave Walker, on the other hand, is both very funny and a sharp observer (this week's one on woman bishops was brilliant, incidentally).
115. David Lodge, Paradise News.
116. William P Young, The Shack. Much better than I'd expected; not very well written, but nevertheless unbearably moving in places, despite the fact that it's very embedded in a context which is not mine, that is American evangelicalism from a flyover state. I'd not have the nerve to try and depict the life of the Trinity, and occasionally Young's God sounds a bit banal. But I can certainly see why it touched a chord with many readers, even though I did feel it came close to emotional manipulation at times....
117. Cuthbert Bede, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green. An early Oxford novel and Bildungsroman of a rather hapless student...
118. de Boek/ Bund der Familie, Belgien Verstehen. Aimed at children, but remarkably helpful. Though I'm still not sure I understand Belgium, I'm nearer doing so now...
119. Sven Regeners, Neue Vahr Süd. I'm very behind the times on this one! And I'll have to get hold of the sequel (or rather, what it's a prequel to, Herr Lehmann. The reviews sounded discouraging, but then they didn't mention that Regeners is funny, albeit in a black way - had I connected him with the band 'Element of Crime', I'd have read it sooner.
120. Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck. Church bookstalls ftw!
121. Thomas Maude, Guided by a Stonemason On church architecture by, er, a stonemason. Interesting stuff.
122. Cyprian Smith, The Way of Paradox R.
123. Dave Walker, My Pew and things I have seen from it.
124. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion. R
125. Ewald Arenz, Ehrlich und Söhne.
126. Hermann Kant, Die Aula. R. Still one of my favourite books.
127. Christopher Hill, A Turblent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church.
128. The Rules of Golf According to Dennis the Menace
129. Aidan Kavanach OSB, Elements of Rite: A Handbook of Liturgical Style.
130. Mary Schoeser et al, English Church Embroidery 1833- 1953: The Watts Book of Embroidery.
131. Reginald Hill, Midnight Fugue.
132. Lindsey Davies, Alexandria.
133. Richard Furness, Poster to Poster: Railway Journeys in Art Vol 1 Scotland.
134. CM Yonge, The Dove in the Eagle's Nest.
135. John Pritchard, How to Pray.
136. Petra Oelker, Die Schwestern vom Roten Haus.
137. Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers. R
138. David Lodge, Deaf Sentence.
139. Simon Schama, The American Future.
140. Susan Hill, Howard's End is on the Landing.
141. CM Yonge, The Caged Lion. R
142. Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore. R
143. Allegra McReady, Economy Gastronomy.
144. Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days.
145. Nicola Upson, An Expert in Murder.
146. AA Milne, The Red House Mystery.
147. Iain Pattinson, Lyttelton's Britain.
148. Charles Williams, All Hallows' Eve R.

... R denotes books reread.