Reading List

I kept a running list of the books I read in 2006 and arranged them in approximate categories, beginning with Arts and Crafts
Some of these books are old friends I had occasion to visit during the year, either for reference or just because I find them so valuable and/or useful they are worth re-reading.

M.C.Richards: Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person (Out of print and apparently unavailable.) Published in 1962. Re-reading this is pure 1960s nostalgia and yet, and yet... how much of what she says is still true, particularly about the true meaning of education.)

Jonathan Holstein: The Pieced Quilt. An American Design Tradition

Bets Ramsey,Merikay Waldvogel: Southern Quilts. Quilts of the Civil War

Faun Valentine: West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers

Carla Needleman: The Work of Craft

Suzi Gablik: The Re-Enchantment of Art

Anne Truitt: Daybook. The Journey of an Artist

Henry Glassie: The Spirit of Folk Art

Garard Degeorge and Yves Porter: The Art of the Islamic Tile

Biography

Richard Holmes: Coleridge –. VolI: Early Visions. Vol.II: Darker Reflections

Hilary Spurling: Matisse. The Master (Two Volumes)

Molly Hughes: A London Childhood of the 1870s (Persephone)

Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life. Diaries and Letters (Persephone)

Geoffrey Wainwright: Lucy Duff Gordon

Iris Irigo: The Last Attachment. The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli

John McGahern: Memoir

Claire Tomalin: Samuel Pepys. The Unequalled Self

Philip Callow: Lost Earth. A Life of Cezanne


Travel
A.W. Kinglake: Eothen.

Robert Byron: to OxianaThe Road

Lit. Crit.

Louis McNeice: The Poetry of W.B.Yeats. (“..for existence is still existence, whether the tense is past or future.” “..the poet is a specialist in something everyone does.”


Novels

Norah Hoult: There Were No Windows. (Persephone)

Dorothy Whipple: They Were Sisters. (Persephone)

Kashuo Ishiguro: Never Let me Go. The Remains of the Day. When We Were Orphans. An Artist of the Floating World.

Colm Toibin: The Master (Fictionalised account of later years in the life of Henry James)

Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Pat Barker: Double Vision

Michael Frayn: Spies

Noel Streatfield: Saplings (Persephone)

Sebastian Barry: A Long, Long Way

Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner

Kay Smallshaw: How to Run Your Home Without Help (Persephone)

Ian Mckewan: The Cement Garden

Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty

Alexander McCall Smith: Portuguese Irregular Verbs. The Finer Points of Sausage

Dogs. At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. (Trilogy)

Laura Graham: The Unfortunates

Patrick Gale: Rough Music

Robert Edric: Gathering the Water.

Carol Shields: Larry’s Party

Marina Lewycka: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Louise Erdich: The Master Butcher’s Singing Club

Nicola Kraus: The History of Love

Niccolò Ammaniti: I’m Not Scared



Some All-time Favourite Books

Andre Gide: La Porte Etroite. Les Nourritures Terrestre (Translated by Dorothy Bussy as Straight is the Gate and Fruits of the Earth

Proust: A La Recherche du Temps Perdus (In the translation by Scott Moncrieff. I’ve tried some of the contemporary translations but go back to Scott Moncrieff as being, perhaps, less literal, but more true to the spirit of the book.)

Ford Maddox Ford: The Good soldier

Tolstoy: Anna Kerenina

M.C.Richards: Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person (Out of print and apparently unavailable.)

Jonathan Holstein: The Pieced Quilt. An American Design Tradition

Carla Needleman: The Work of Craft

Anne Truitt: Daybook. The Journey of an Artist

T.C.McCluhan: Touch the Earth

Henry James: What Maizie Knew. Portrait of a Lady

Flora Annie Steel: The Garden of Fidelity

Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth

Jonathan Holstein: The Pieced Quilt. An American Design Tradition