Reading: not just a town in Berkshire

Last year I decided to start a log of all books I had read or was reading in 2007. There turn out to have been 60 in total of which (some are in more than one category):

Sf/f 30
Crime 6
Historical 9
Other 3
Y/a or kids 8
Autobiography 2
Biography 4
Commentary 3
Review 7
Translated from Swedish 4
Read for the first time 44
Read before 16

Or, put another way:


Which I find interesting. You might not. For one thing, not so long ago that would have been nigh on 100% sf/f titles rather than a piddly 50% at 30. And where does that "read before" come from? Time was everything would have been a first timer. Almost a quarter of that 30 were books I only read because I was asked to review them, so let's assume 23/60 were science fiction & fantasy titles read because I wanted to. And of them (which doesn't show in the table, but hang on, I'll do a quick count ...) 8 were re-reads of Terry Pratchett and one was the last Potter.

And I wouldn't be surprised if 2008's haul is even less. A perk of doing a review is you get to keep the book in question, but I've not kept one of them. Only one, Chris Wooding's The Fade, came even close to it. I think the only sf title that made me go "wow!" at the end of it, apart from Northern Lights for the second time, was Philip Reeve's A Darkling Plain. Meanwhile, out in the real world, the sf market is still turning out highly accomplished stuff ... but it's leaving me cold.

Big Engine started this - that was when I first began to lose the ability to read sf for enjoyment. But something else has changed too, in the world outside my head. Far too many of the 30 sf titles were lacking in warmth, charm, humour, characters you could relate to. It didn't used to be that way. Did it? And I just don't have the heart for that kind of stuff anymore.

SF is going out in my own head, too. SFnal ideas don't flood in like they used to. They still tend to be weird by mainstream standards but I don't see myself doing any more space opera.

I don't think I'll ever deny that my first four novels were science fiction - in fact you have permission to shoot me if you hear me ever say any such thing - but it's just possible that some of you will one day be able to say "ah yes, I knew / first read him when he wrote sf." "Ah," your conversation companion will reply, "the early days."

For the record, here's 2007's full list.

• Making Money, Terry Pratchett
• A Darkling Plain, Philip Reeve
• The Fade, Chris Wooding
• Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
• The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
• Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
• Frozen Tracks, Åke Edwardson
• The Tyrannicide Brief, Geoffrey Robertson
• The Court of the Air, Stephen Hunt
• Johnny & the Bomb, Terry Pratchett
• The Fifth Woman, Henning Mankell
• Woodenface, Gus Grenfell
• Waylander, David Gemmell
• Maskerade, Terry Pratchett
• The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
• In War Times, Kathleen Ann Goonan
• The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke
• So Far, So Near, Mat Coward
• Pride & Perjury, Jonathan Aitken
• I, Jack, Patricia Finney
• George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
• The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks
• City of Pearl, Karen Traviss
• The Unadulterated Cat, Terry Pratchett
• The Lost Art, Simon Morden
• Dissolution, CJ Sansom
• Saturn Returns, Sean Williams
• The Loom of Youth, Alec Waugh
• Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling
• The Greatest Raid of All, C.E. Lucas Phillips
• Slide Rule, Nevil Shute
• HMS Ulysses, Alistair MacLean
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Fly for Your Life, Larry Forrester
• Windfall, Desmond Bagley
• Shout at the Devil, Wilbur Smith
• Dark Space, Marianne de Pierres
• Vice Versa, F. Anstey
• Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson
• Mary Anne, Daphne du Maurier
• The Sea Shall Not Have Them, John Harris
• The Good Shepherd, C.S. Forester
• The Land God Gave to Cain, Hammond Innes
• The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
• The Time of the Reaper, Andrew Butcher
• The Wine of Angels, Phil Rickman
• Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
• Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
• Dublin, Edward Rutherfurd
• Slow Decay, Andy Lane
• Border Princes, Dan Abnett
• The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
• Glorifying Terrorism, ed. Farah Mendlesohn
• Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Selma Lagerlöf
• A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller
• The Forest, Edward Rutherfurd
• Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
• Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
• The Last Letter Home, Vilhelm Moberg