The Books of 2011

by Charlotte Reads Classics

There are a few hours of 2011 left but I have finished all the books this year I’m ever going to finish. I have just started Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, which is as large as my dictionary!

This is a round up of my year of reading, and I have to say I think this is the best year yet:

93 books

My new author discoveries and particular recommends for the year are:

There isn’t an author on that list whose backlist I don’t immediately want to  devour, except for Anne Brontë, which I’ve already done!

Here is how 2011 went for me:

January

  • The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • One Day by David Nicholls
  • In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

February

  • The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
  • The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
  • The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
  • Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
  • Fatherland by Robert Harris
  • The White Lioness by Henning Mankell

March

  • Parisians by Graham Robb
  • A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
  • Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

April

  • Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
  • The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
  • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl by Wendy Jones
  • The Pyramid by Henning Mankell
  • Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
  • Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
  • The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
  • Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
  • Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
  • Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

May

  • The Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland
  • The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
  • The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
  • Great House by Nicole Krauss
  • The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
  • Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
  • Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
  • The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin

June

  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  • The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen
  • The Small Hand by Susan Hill
  • How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  • Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

July

  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal
  • Nemesis by Jo Nesbo
  • The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories by Michel Faber
  • Without Feathers by Woody Allen
  • Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield
  • Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe
  • The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  • Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
  • One Moment, One Morning by Sarah Rayner
  • Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
  • When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

August

  • Delirium by Lauren Oliver
  • The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
  • The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
  • The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
  • Cleopatra by Stacey Schiff
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

September

  • Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  • Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
  • The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
  • The Accidental by Ali Smith
  • Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
  • The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kauffman

October

  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  • The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  • The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

November

  • The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
  • Starlight by Stella Gibbons
  • The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan
  • Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  • Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
  • Jane’s Fame by Claire Harman

December

  • Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  • Emma by Jane Austen
  • Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
  • The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
  • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  • Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons