Books Read in 1990

Following on from last month’s Books Read in 1989.

And the total for the year has gone into free fall, dropping to 67 titles in all (42 less than in 1989). I guess 1990 was another one of those odd years when I had a life that didn’t revolve entirely round reading, though at this remove I can’t recall what it actually did revolve round.

Probably women.

Food is another possibility.

Or maybe I was just reading lots and lots of comics, which I’ve never bothered to list.

There doesn’t really seem to be much of a pattern to my reading in 1990. It looks like I made several attempts at ‘theme reading’, but none of them seem to have lasted for more than two or three volumes. I read a lot of very long books, including three that weighed in at more than a thousand pages.

On this day in 1990 I was finishing off Demon by John Varley. More significantly it was the night before the day when I dived into the oeuvre of Thomas Ligotti. And, on the occasion of my 36th birthday, I had just cracked open McCammon’s Swan Song, and as that’s the last book listed for 1990 I’m now wondering what the hell I was doing all through December 1990.

As to highlights of the year, as mentioned above I discovered Ligotti (though I’d read some of his stories in magazines, so not entirely terra incognito). I also sought out for the first time the work of James Ellroy and Thomas Harris, after reading features on those writers in Fear magazine, and they both became instant firm favourites.

I’m ashamed to admit that Fear was also my gateway to the work of Ramsey Campbell, who I really, really should have checked out before. It was a false start as I wasn’t taken with Ancient Images and didn’t return to his work for a few years, when I finally realised what all the fuss was about and got with the programme.

And I also believe 1990 was the year when I first stumbled across one of Ellen Datlow’s anthologies. That worked rather well.

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 Home Planet – Kevin W. Kelley

Tanglewood Tales – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Trillion Year Spree – Brian W. Aldiss & David Wingrove

Lightning – Dean Koontz

Wizard – John Varley

Demon – John Varley

Songs of a Dead Dreamer – Thomas Ligotti

The Psychology of Imagination – Jean-Paul Sartre

All the Grey Cats – Craig Thomas

Vicinity Cluster – Piers Anthony

Chaining the Lady – Piers Anthony

Kirlian Quest – Piers Anthony

The Big Nowhere – James Ellroy

Land of Dreams – James P. Blaylock

Ancient Images – Ramsey Campbell

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Celebration – Edited by Byron Preiss

The Order of The Day – Andrew Greig

The Messianic Legacy – Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln

Koko – Peter Straub

Malafrena – Ursula K. Le Guin

Bodywatching – Desmond Morris

The Best of A. E. Van Vogt Volume 1 – A. E. Van Vogt

The Best of A. E. Van Vogt Volume 2 – A. E. Van Vogt

The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe

Prime Evil – Edited by Douglas E. Winter

There Are Doors – Gene Wolfe

Rage – Wilbur Smith

On Stranger Tides – Tim Powers

Rethink – Gordon Rattray Taylor

The Last of the Wine – Mary Renault

Red Dwarf – Grant Naylor

Empire – Gore Vidal

Ancient Iraq – Georges Roux

The Luck of Nineveh – Arnold C. Brackman

The Assyrian – Nicholas Guild

The Toynbee Convector – Ray Bradbury

Daddy’s Girl – Clifford Irving

The Jaguar Hunter – Lucius Shepard

The Journeyer – Gary Jennings

Footsteps – Bruce Norman

A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

Tale of The Mayor’s Son – Glyn Maxwell

Tales of Neveryon – Samuel R. Delany

Neveryona – Samuel R. Delany

Flight from Neveryon – Samuel R. Delany

Return to Neveryon – Samuel R. Delany

The Wine-Dark Sea – Robert Aickman

The Greek Experience – C. M. Bowra

Seventh Son – Orson Scott Card

The Covenant – James Michener

Demons & Dreams – Edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Full Moon – P. G. Wodehouse

Earthblood – Keith Laumer

All You Who Sleep Tonight – Vikram Seth

Assyrian Sculpture – Julian Reade

The Price Was High Volume Two – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Marquis de Sade – Gilbert Lely

Billy Bathgate – E. L. Doctorow

The Earth Again Redeemed – Martin Green

It – Stephen King

Philip Larkin: Collected Poems

Comet – Carl Sagan

Bluebeard’s Egg – Margaret Atwood

Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels – David Pringle

The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris

The Golden Man – Philip K. Dick

Swan Song – Robert R. McCammon