Wednesday, January 5, 2011

State of the Blog, Part Two: The Authors

It is a new year, and time to assess my reading progress for the year just closed.  I approach this "winter" assessment with trepidation and excitement, since it lets me see how much progress I did -- or didn't make -- in 2010 and let's me plan ahead for 2011.  Out with the old! In with the new!

This is the second of my quarterly blog assessment posts.  This first part addressed the book lists. Part Three, coming soon, will deal with the challenges I participated in last year and joined (or plan to) this year.

My list of authors is in the right-side column.  I plan to add a few authors this year, including P. D. James and Dorothy L. Sayers.

NOTE: If you are reading the books of any of my favorite authors, please leave a comment here or on the post for that author (click on the name below or in the right-hand column) and leave a link to any related post. I will add the links on the author's page. 


I am changing the format of this post and only listing the books I read in 2010, rather than details for each author. In 2010, I read a total of 23 books by my favorite authors. The big winners were Dick Francis and Nick Hornby.

Kingsley Amis
One Fat Englishman (reviewed here)
On Drink (collective review of all 3 drinking books here)
Every Day Drinking
How's Your Glass?


Kate Atkinson
Case Histories
One Good Turn

William Boyd
The New Confessions (reviewed here)

Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow

A. J. Cronin
Three Loves (reviewed here)

Dick Francis
Second Wind (reviewed here)
Under Orders
Proof
Enquiry

Jim Harrison
The Farmer's Daughter (reviewed here)

Nick Hornby
The Polysyllabic Spree (reviewed here)
Juliet, Naked (reviewed here)
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

David Lodge
Deaf Sentence (reviewed here)

Jack Ohman
Angler Management: The Day I Died While Fly Fishing and Other Essays (reviewed here)

Anthony Powell
Venusberg (reviewed here)

Julia Spencer-Fleming
I Shall Not Want


John Updike
The Witches of Eastwick
The Widows of Eastwick

On the other hand, I didn't read a single book by Saul Bellow, Cara Black, James Lee Burke (which surprises me), M. F. K. Fisher, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald, Richard Ford, John Lescroart, Elinor Lipman, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, Martin Cruz Smith, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Simon Winchester, or P. G. Wodehouse (which really shocks me). The year went by so fast!