annual review

It's the middle of March already; high time to look back onto the previous year and go through the books I've read, to sort the good from the bad but also to keep the record going.  Last year, and it's not the first time I mention this, threw a lot of distractions at me and kept my mind occupied.  There was much less time for reading than in the previous years and the number of books I finished halved.

Here it goes:

• Best American Travel Writing (2005) – If this compilation is anything to go by, 2005 was a bad year for travel writing.  The book is full of inconsequential, self-absorbed pieces, memories of my father and places I've seen and the like.  Insight or surprises are largely lacking.  Many pieces are written in the present tense in painful worship of the fake urgency of now.  It is telling that the one of the best stories describes a walk from New Jersey to New York City.
• Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson – Bryson is a rockstar travel writer, but his forced funniness gets tiring quickly.  Nevertheless, this memoir weaved into a tour of Britain stands strong, if only as a historical document of Britain in the 90s.
• The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux – Great travel writing is always about what a place felt like at a certain time; its quality can only be told decades later.  This landmark book, as old as me, sometimes gets repetitive with endless rides down transcontinental train lines, but it captures the vibes of all the places traversed, places that don't exist in this form anymore for the most part.
• Chasing Che by Patrick Symmes – An obvious project that could have easily gone wrong.  The author sets out, on his trusty BMW, to retrace Che's tire marks as described in The motorcycle diaries.  As he is not a hagiographer of Che but a traveler with open eyes, this book brings a lot of unexpected encounters and is rather inspiring.
• The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa – In the second half of the 19th century, Sicily was transitioning from feudalism to modernity.  This little book captures some of the turmoil, but I was less than impressed.
• Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf – A spontaneous purchase at Munich airport at the end of a long day became the highlight of my literary year.  In a stolen car, two unlikely teenage friends embark on a hilarious roadtrip through places that can be identified only sporadically but ring close to home.  The writing is fresh and every improbability entirely believable.
• Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino – This collection of short stories by one of the godfathers of modern Italian literature is well done, especially the topically related first half, but it didn't bowl me over.
• ¡Guerra! by Jason Webster – An American in Spain tries to understand the Civil War on location.  The more he learns, the more he travels to find out more.  History and the present are seamlessly intertwined in this engaging and enlightening book.
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway – Hemingway was in Spain when it happened, though as a journalist, not a fighter. Here, he imagines three extraordinarily dense days in the war.  While the narrative and the characters are rather cookie-cutter, the writing is a feast.
• A year in the merde by Stephen Clarke – College grad goes to Paris for work and girls, with emphasis squarely on the latter, and writes down what happens to shows France how only a foreigner can see it.
• Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth – A compendium of words with explanations and etymological back stories.  I learned a lot and forgot most, obscure without fail, almost right away.  But I love words, and I loved this book.
• Downriver by Iain Sinclair – This book is an abomination, full of verbal incontinence, navel gazing and insider jokes made to make the reader feel inadequate. On the other hand, it must be said, Sinclair is an exceptionally skilled writer. (And apologies for originally misspelling his first name in my earlier Hatchet Job of the Year contender of a review.)