Cornflower Books

Cornflower Blues 2010 - part 1: a breath of fresh air

    It's time to choose my best books of the year, the Cornflower Blues 2010. This is always a difficult process as there are more strong contenders than space here allows, but tough as it is to exclude some gems, I have to make the cut.

    I shall be listing the books over several posts but I'm beginning today with my first category which I've called "a breath of fresh air" as the three books in it are vibrant, invigorating, original, and are all written in a major key, if you see what I mean.

    I'll start with Michael Faulkner's The Blue Cabin: Living by the Tides on Islandmore which I read back in February - that post will tell you all you need to know, but Mike's account of his and his artist wife Lynn's major life-change is warm, open and engaging, and it may make you want to find your own island hideaway.

    A book which went down very well with the CBG was John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America. I loved Steinbeck's voice and his perceptive portrait of the American landscape he saw and the people he encountered on his journey, as also the view of himself and his canine companion which his distinctive narrative affords the reader.

    My third book today is not unrelated to the other two - there are similarities in tone and mood, sometimes in subject matter, also in location. Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (post on it here) was a real pleasure to read and as I noted, one of its strengths seemed to be the author's feeling for the inner life that informs so much of human character and behaviour.

    All three books here are good-natured, respectful, considered, and there's an integrity to them which appealed to me strongly.

Cornflower Blues 2009 - part 3 (the rest of the fiction)

    

    Here's where it gets really difficult - choosing just a few titles from the eighty-eight novels I've read to date this year. I'm going to eliminate re-reads to narrow the field slightly, and then because as I begin to write this I'm still swithering(!), I'll just list the books and give a link to their original posts.

Here are the top twenty:

 

and in no particular order, the top ten:

Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel; out in paperback soon (post)

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (post)

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (post)

Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee (post)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (post)

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd (post)

Ask Alice by D. J. Taylor (post)

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (post)

The Outlander by Gil Adamson; due in paperback soon (post)

A Proper Education for Girls by Elaine di Rollo (post)

Cornflower Blues 2009 - part 2 (book group books)

    The second category in my books of the year list is for best book group books. If you've taken part in the Cornflower Book Group at all - and look, we're famous now! - please join in here and let us know which titles made the biggest impression on you. I'm giving my top four, though others are close contenders, but these books stood out in my fiction reading overall this year, not just in what the group has read.

   J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country was a beautiful, finely-balanced study of a brief period in a man's life, both for what it was and for what it might have led to. (Our thoughts on it are here).

  Robertson Davies was another author I'd never read before he came up on the list of suggestions for the group, but his Fifth Business was a most interesting, thought-provoking read, with a narrative of "page-turning force".

Elizabeth Jenkins' The Tortoise and the Hare, a study of an uneasy marriage undermined by an unlikely affair, certainly got us all talking! 

Wallace Stegner was another great find for those of us who read his Crossing to Safety; much to admire and much to ponder.

Cornflower Blues 2009 - part 1 (non-fiction)

    It's time to choose my books of the year, and agonising over which to include and which - reluctantly - to leave out, I've decided to 'cheat' a bit in order to fit in more novels than usual. I'll start by listing my top non-fiction titles and favourite book group books, and then I'll go on to the rest of the fiction.

Criteria for inclusion? They must have impressed me on one or more of the following counts: mastery of material, narrative thrust, intelligence and beauty of writing, sheer enjoyment! As you can see, this is not scientific, it's simply some of the books I've got most from or have rated most highly since the beginning of the year.

Why do we make mistakes (though not, of course, when choosing our books of the year...)? Read Michael and Ellen Kaplan's breathtaking Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human for an entertaining, accessible, multi-disciplinary look at errors of all kinds. (More on it here).

For a clear-sighted view of an author and her work you could do no better than read Julia Jones' The Adventures of Margery Allingham: a reliable, well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable biography of a writer who is worth getting to know as a person in her own right as well as as a creator of memorable fiction. (Original post here).

A look around someone else's bookshelves and a chance to hear their literary reminiscences are pleasures I find irresistible, and Susan Hill gives us both in her very personal, individual Howards End is on the Landing, an account of her 'year of reading from home'. (The full story).

Monty Don's The Ivington Diaries was a big hit with me, savoured slowly over a couple of months of quiet, reflective reading. I've talked about it several times, but here's 'the passionate gardener'.

20th. December, edited to add:

The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters, ed. Charlotte Mosley. Just finished, but more than deserving of a place on the list. Screamingly funny, very moving, hugely absorbing.