Books Read in 1988

Following on from last month’s Books Read in 1987.

The total for the year is up to 115, and there seem to be rather a lot of art and poetry books in the mix, the latter mainly because I had recently joined The Poetry Book Society and was taking advantage of many special offers. Of the art books, Edward Quinn’s biography of Max Ernst, an enormous coffee table volume stuffed to the gunwales with full colour reproductions of Ernst’s work, is the most expensive book I have ever purchased, £35 and worth every single penny. I adore it.

It was also a year in which I had some ‘dedicated’ reading periods, with the bulk of April’s reading devoted to the Etruscans and for October books by and about the German philosopher Nietzsche. On this day in 1988 I was burrowing my way through A Nietzsche Reader, while on the occasion of my 34th birthday I was reading Still Life With Woodpecker by the irrepressible Tom Robbins.

1988 was the year I discovered T. E. D. Klein and Stephen Gallagher, Umberto Eco and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, though in the latter case it wasn’t until reading Love in a Time of Cholera that he blew me away. It was the year I introduced myself to the work of Dan Simmons and Lucius Shepard.

As usual, most of the author details have been completed from memory, so if you see something that looks incorrect please shout.

Here’s the list:-

The Rattle Bag – Edited by Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes

The Pursuit of the Millennium – Norman Cohn

Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy

The World of the Phoenicians – Sabatino Moscati

Cider House Rules – John Irving

Max Ernst – Edward Quinn

Too Much of Water – Peter Dale

The Fountains of Paradise – Arthur C. Clarke

The Power – Ian Watson

Poetry Supplement Christmas 1976 – Edited by Stuart Montgomery

Barefoot in the Head – Brian W. Aldiss

Lest Darkness Fall – L. Sprague de Camp

Conditionally Human – Walter Miller Jr.

The Anarchistic Colossus – A. E. Van Vogt

Poetry Supplement Christmas 1977 – Edited by Colin Falck

War Games – Brian Stableford

The Fifth Hand of Cerberus – Gene Wolfe

Poetry Supplement Christmas 1978 – Edited by Patricia Beer

The Dream Years – Lisa Goldstein

A Circus of Hells – Poul Anderson

Strangers – Gardner Dozois

The Disaster Area – J. G. Ballard

Poetry Supplement Christmas 1979 – Edited by Douglas Dunn

Survivor – Octavia E. Butler

The Second Trip – Robert Silverberg

An Infinite Summer – Christopher Priest

Italy before Rome – John Reich

Everyday Life of the Etruscans – Ellen Mac Namara

The World of the Etruscans – Aldo Massa

The Etruscans – Massimo Pallottino

The Emergence of Man: The Etruscans – Dora Jane Hamblin

Skeleton Crew – Stephen King

The Shattered Horse – S. P. Somtow

Poetry Supplement Christmas 1981 – Edited by Andrew Motion

The Fires of Spring – James Michener

Winter Poetry Supplement 1983 – Edited by David Harsent

The Bear’s Tears – Craig Thomas

The Poetry Book Society Anthology 1987 – 1988 – Edited by Gillian Clarke

Lizzie – Evan Hunter

Power of the Sword – Wilbur Smith

Two Horse Wagon Going By – Christopher Middleton

Song of Kali – Dan Simmons

The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius Michael Moorcock

Lovecraft’s Book Richard A. Lupoff

The Falling Woman – Pat Murphy

Radio Free Albemuth – Philip K. Dick

Green Eyes – Lucius Shepard

Hart’s Hope – Orson Scott Card

Dr. Adder – K. W. Jeter

A Feast Unknown – Philip Jose Farmer

The Storyteller – Harold Robbins

Cop Hater – Ed McBain

Dark Gods – T. E. D. Klein

The Fortunate Pilgrim – Mario Puzo

The Wolf – Max Davidson

Carrie – Stephen King

The Boys from Brazil – Ira Levin

The Gabriel Hounds – Mary Stewart

Ride the Golden Tiger – Jonathan Black

Finishing Touches – Thomas Tessier

Firefox – Craig Thomas

The Secret Lemonade Drinker – Guy Bellamy

Valley of Lights – Stephen Gallagher

The Diamond Hunters – Wilbur Smith

The Fast Men – Tom McNab

Baal – Robert R. McCammon

The Distant Laughter – Bryan Forbes

Glitz – Elmore Leonard

The Pleasures of Helen – Lawrence Sanders

Jaws – Peter Benchley

Visiting Light – Jean Earle

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

Slaves of New York – Tama Janowitz

Masters of Art: Klee – Marcel Mamat

The Old Gringo – Carlos Fuentes

Disbelief – John Ash

Miro – Gaston Diehl

The Book of Daniel – E. L. Doctorow

The Masters of Art: Chagall – Marie-Therese Souverbie

Carpenter’s Gothic – William Gaddis

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Surrealism in the Tate Gallery Collection

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby – Tom Wolfe

Spring Fever – P. G. Wodehouse

Bernice Bobs Her Hair – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Magic Cottage – James Herbert

Sexy Dreams

The Poetry of Chess – Edited by Andrew Waterman

City – Clifford D. Simak

Spanking the Maid – Robert Coover

Fiesta – Ernest Hemingway

Lines to the Mountain Gods – Evan Hadingham

The Big Knockover and Other Stories – Dashiel Hammett

Nietzsche – J. P. Stern

A Nietzsche Reader – Edited by R. J. Hollingdale

The Gay Science – Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche

Northlight – Douglas Dunn

Beyond Good and Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo – Friedrich Nietzsche

The Daylight Moon – Les A. Murray

Magritte: Academy Editions – Pere Gimferrer

Ecce Homo – Friedrich Nietzsche

Queer – William Burroughs

Gerald’s Party – Robert Coover

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Demon Box – Ken Kesey

Death Is A Lonely Business – Ray Bradbury

Requiem for a Dream – Hubert Selby Jnr.

Serenissima – Erica Jong

Still Life with Woodpecker – Tom Robbins

Ragtime – E. L. Doctorow

The Air Mines of Mistila – Philip Gross & Sylvia Kantaris

The Shadow Hunter – Pat Murphy

The Search for Omm Sety – Jonathan Cott