What I read in the Year 2005

In 2005 I was working in the city of Sheffield, in easy reach of bookshops, and starting to order more and more books from Amazon – in those days they stocked a lot of American paperbacks at very reasonable prices so there were a large number of parcels coming to our house at this time. In fact, virtually all the books I read in this year were purchased new or borrowed from the library which certainly isn’t the case now. I recorded my reading for the year in a little notebook which was the twin of that for the previous year (see here) but lilac rather than grey. I read 298 books in the year.

The first book I read in the year was George Vs Children by John Van der Kiste. I had obviously purchased a number of books by this author because I read one as my last book for 2004 as well (see here). This book is the story of what happened to each of the titular king’s children and I found it interesting – I still own it.

The final book I read in the year was Last Act in Palmyra by Lindsey Davis. It’s part of her series of novels set in Ancient Rome featuring a detective like figure called Marcus Didius Falco. They are well written and very enjoyable – I eventually read and collected the whole set. You can find my review of one of the series here.

Reading through my little notebook I realise that this year I read a lot of biography and travel books (some books are a bit of both). The biographies include Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Margaret Forster which is very readable, And Why Not by Barry Norman which I remember enjoying although I suppose that many young people wouldn’t have heard of him now, A Profound Secret by Josceline Dimbleby which I know is a family memoir but I can’t now remember what the secret is, Dick Turpin by James Sharp which dispels a lot of popular myths, Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda which is an excellent life of a complicated woman, and News from No Man’s Land by John Simpson which is about his life in journalism.

In travel books I read Himalaya by Michael Palin which is very readable, AA Gill is Away by the journalist and which I can remember nothing about, To the Baltic with Bob by Griff Rhys Jones which is about barge travel on European rivers, and The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle in which the author travels to those isolated islands around the globe which are still British.

Although I haven’t counted them up it seems to me that I was reading more non-fiction this year but it is also the year in which I discovered Urban Fantasy – that is novels about our world but with a supernatural element such as werewolves, witches, vampires and the like ands which are most often written by American authors. These books often feature a female main protagonist and there may be some romance. My notebook is filled with series that I started and then worked my way through, many of which I collected and still read today. Particularly present this year are Laurell K Hamilton where the main character is a vampire hunter, Charlaine Harris whose heroine is telepathic and becomes involved with vampires and other supernatural creatures, Tanya Huff who writes again about vampires, Kelley Armstrong whose first books are about werewolves and Sherrilyn Kenyon who writes about all these creatures but adds some Greek mythology as well.

Looking at what I read in 2005 I think it was a good year, in fact I can see me reading many of these books with enjoyment nearly twenty years later – I still own many of them !