My Top 5 books of 2005 were (in this order):
- Paradise, by A.L. Kennedy
- History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
- Mothers & Other Monsters, by Maureen McHugh
- Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
- The Closed Circle, by Jonathan Coe
Yes, to those of you who saw that list before, I switched the order a little.
Runners Up were:
- Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell (does what Ghostwritten tried to do, but so much better)
- An Unfinished Season, by Ward Just
- Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham (can he write a bad book? Seriously?)
- Old School, by Tobias Wolff
My favorite new discovery in 2005 was: A.L. Kennedy. Everything I read by her took my breath away. And there’s still a couple books waiting in the wings. Can’t wait!
Those were my top five, but I read sooooo many good books this year.
I read good OLD books:
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
- The Way by Swann’s, by Marcel Proust
I read a truly shocking (for me) amount of non-fiction:
- Sixpence House, by Paul Collins
- A Girl Named Zippy, by Haven Kimmel
- The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
- The Lives of the Muses, by Francine Prose
- Wine & War, the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure, by Don & Petie Kladstrup
- Foreign Babes in Beijing, by Rachel DeWoskin
- Travels with a Tangerine, by Tim MacKintosh-Smith
- Why Are We at War?, by Norman Mailer
- Silent Bob Speaks, the Collected Writings of Kevin Smith
- The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty, by K.C. Cole
- In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson
I read historical fiction that only added more things to my ‘must’ lists:
- Author, Author, by David Lodge (must go back and read some Henry James. Haven’t read any since undergrad!!)
- Neighboring Lives, by Thomas Disch and Charles Naylor (need to read some pre-Raphaelites again. And look at their paintings. It’s been ages…)