Splinters

As Ben, Steve and Ismo have all given their round up of what they most enjoyed this year, I'll do likewise. I've been pretty crap at keeping my list of books read in 2005 list updated (it resides at the bottom of this page) but I've just fixed that. I like having this list - it measures out the year in books, working as a very low maintenance memory prompt.

I've already written a review of my book of the year, Nic Dunlop's The Lost Executioner - and in general for me 2005 has been largely a non-fiction year. I seem to be alternating between hefty history books, travelogues and fluffy stuff like David Sedaris - I seem to have read his entire back catalogue.

I've kept coming back to themes like the Titanic and Angkor Wat. I wrote recently about Angkor: Heart Of An Asian Empire - it's an excellent and managable overview of Angkor's history from its creation to its disappearance to its rediscovery. Robert Ballard's book about the discovery of the Titanic is spectacular, and Asne Seierstad's two books The Bookseller Of Kabul and A One Hundred And One Days are both great eye witness accounts of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. I enjoyed the old fashioned reportage of these books - Seierstad doesn't pretend to write a history of those countries, but simply spends time within them - I think they're a valuable document that, like Salam Pax's the Baghdad Blog, work well in conjunction with more traditional historical accounts. Richard A Clarke's Against All Enemies is an excellent insider overview of the US War On Terror and the US intelligence agencies' continued failure to anticipate or understand the causes and fallout of terrorism. The Silent Takeover was also an excellent overview of global capitalism - I read this at the beginning of the year and remember agreeing with Noreena Hertz's analysis continually - unfortunately I can't remember much else, so looks like I'll have to re-read it.

Of all the political stuff I read though, it's Lenin's Tomb that consistently prods my brain and feels like I'm reading real news i.e. analysis of facts that gets beyond the level of "what about the children?". Like Steve says, "he seems to read and absorb everything. One has complete confidence in his mastery of the material". So Lenin's Tomb is Blog Of The Year, for sure.

There's been precious little literature, or indeed, fiction, amongst my reading this year. I've attempted and failed with several books this year - Thomas Bernhard's Extinction was the biggest casualty, a real shame because my copy of it has been sitting on my shelf since June 1996 and I brought it back from England to Thailand especially to finally read it. Sadly the tone of it put me off and I couldn't read what was being said for irritation with the voice of the narrator. Steve will be fed up.

Travelogues remain my favourite genre of book - anything that avoids reading like Bill Bryson gets a thumbs-up from me. The 8.55 To Baghdad deservedly won numerous accolades in 2004 for tracing Agatha Christie's numerous sojourns by train to Iraq to live and work with her husband amongst the archaelogical dig sites in the middle of the desert - it takes a while to get going, but from page 100 onwards it is great travel writing. In The Heart Of Borneo I've written about before - less successful for me was Shelby Tucker's Among Insurgents, which describes his highly illegal walk across Burma. While Tucker's research and interest in the plight of the ethnic groups within Burma who live within the jungles and conduct a never-ending guerilla war with the military junta can't be faulted, his writing style doesn't give the reader much to go on - Tucker doesn't give an answer, he "replies stoutly". Not good.

Ms Bookish has written some entertaining posts about her end of year best and worst.