I've hardly read any of these, but The Blank Wall was one of my best reads of whatever year I read it in. Great summaries! and I never cease to be amazed at how much reading you do. Do you ever eat or sleep?
I probably read, all told, 3 to 4 hours a day. Usually early morning, meal/tea breaks, and before bed. And we have no TV – haven't had one since 1987-ish, so while the rest of you are watching, ;-), I am reading. (Well, we do have a set we occasionally use to watch DVDs. No TV reception in our rural location, though now we have satellite service available. We are completely out of the habit of watching, so have no real desire to get back into it. Except when reading Simon's Bake-Off pots – those are a hoot! Maybe if we could get BBC…. :-)) And I'm a very fast reader; have been all my life. I used to carry secret books to class to read hidden inside my textbooks, because I was always the first one finished the assigned readings and otherwise would spent most of the class horribly bored. I think it's genetic – my dad was a tremendously fast reader, as is my son. I spent another 1-2 hours online most days, reading or trying to formulate blog posts. My real life takes up the greatest part of my awake hours. Really!
Yes, wasn't The Blank Wall amazing? It really shook my preconceptions about how that sort of domestic noir would pan out.
It was a real surprise – I wasn't expecting it to go the way it did. Really liked it – it was a bit of a shake-up, wasn't it?
I haven't finished a complete decade yet; I'm reading in a rather scattershot manner all across the century! Finding some great ones, and some, well, not so great.
I love how you've pulled the decade together here; it's interesting to see some of the themes of writing from all around the same time, and how they compare.
I read your recommendations just before heading out to the local library's annual book sale. I snagged an almost-new copy of "West With the Night" for a quarter. It's a book I've heard about but never read. I've eager to read it.
I'm doing Books of the Century in a very lackadaisical manner, just noting the years of the books I read and seeing how it pans out. Don't think I've done any complete decade yet. But what I like is the randomness of it, which is exemplified in your list too – what a combination of books. Some I know well, some I've never heard of. I love West with the Night (though I read somewhere that it is quite a fictionalized version of her life – that doesn't bother me, but it did surprise me). When you reviewed the Bryher I was intrigued, really must try again to find it – there were only expensive copies around. But why on earth would you call a book by such a confusing title, I wonder?