Books Read in 2002

This post follows on Books Read in 2001 which I posted back at the start of last December.

And for 2002 I read a grand total of 118 books, a decrease of seven on 2001’s total. Plenty of writers I tried for the first time, but none that went on to become a regular part of my literary diet. Lots of very good books, and if I had to pick a favourite it would be a three way contest between “The Devil’s Larder” by Jim Crace, “Blue Diary” by Alice Hoffman, and “The White Road” by John Connolly, which I rate still as the best of his Charlie Parker novels. The most disappointing was “The White Goddess” by Robert Graves, which had been sitting on my shelf for over twenty five years before I finally picked it up in 2002, and with hindsight I wish I’d left it for another twenty five years. I loved previous books I’d read by Graves and this opened with one of the most inspirational passages I’ve ever seen in the introduction, only to then serve up over four hundred pages of stodge and tedium. One for the anoraks. It took me nearly two weeks to persevere through the book.

Themes seem to have been a thing this year, with healthy dollops of vampire books and erotica related material. From the end of the year flurry of computer books, I’m guessing that 2002 was the year I bought my first PC; I haven’t bothered to dig out the names of any of the authors. One other book that I read is a mystery – “The Great Escape”, read in May and weighing in at 283 pages. I’m pretty sure it was nothing to do with the film of the same title, but other than that I have no memory of what it was about or who the author was. If anyone thinks they know, then feel free to post in the comments.

On this day in 2002 I was reading “The Telling” by Ursula K. LeGuin, and on the occasion of my 48th birthday I was gorging myself on Les Daniels’ history of “Wonder Woman”.

Here’s the list:-

Killing Time – Caleb Carr

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis – Wendy Cope

Eating Pavlova – D. M. Thomas

The Killing Kind – John Connolly

On Writing – Stephen King

Stiff Lips – Anne Billson

The Flying Sorcerers – Edited by Peter Haining

The Servants of the Rosch Lance – Fallon Michelle Abelard

A Few Little Lies – Sue Welfare

Dracula – Bram Stoker

Unforgivable Stories – Kim Newman

How to Make Money While Watching TV – Vernon Coleman

For the Birds – Joseph Farley

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – T. S. Eliot

Lying Together – D. M. Thomas

Carmilla – Sheridan LeFanu

The Kafka Effekt – D. Harlan Wilson

Bag of Bones – Stephen King

The Telling – Ursula K. LeGuin

From the Dust Returned – Ray Bradbury

Cold Kiss – Roxanne Longstreet

The Vampire Encyclopedia – Matthew Bunson

The Dark Fantastic – Douglas Winter

Wanderers and Islanders – Steve Cockayne

The Darkest Part of the Woods – Ramsey Campbell

The Devil’s Larder – Jim Crace

Death of a Naturalist – Seamus Heaney

Dracula Unbound – Brian W. Aldiss

The Hidden Language of Demons – L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims

Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan

The Angel of Darkness – Caleb Carr

The Power of Women – Guy Bellamy

Venus in Furs – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Kid – Simon Armitage

The Secret Laboratory Journals of Dr Victor Frankenstein – Jeremy Kay

The Extinction Club – Robert Twigger

Suckers – Anne Billson

The Fourth Hand – John Irving

Stardust – Neil Gaiman

The Vampire Journals – Traci Briery

At Home with the Marquis De Sade – Francine Du Plessix Gray

Justine and The Story of O – Guido Crepax

The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography – Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

How to Write a Dirty Story – Susie Bright

Submerged – A. L. Barker

The Rose City – David Ebershoff

Pharos – Alice Thompson

The Great Escape –

Dreamcatcher – Stephen King

Ariel – Sylvia Plath

Nosferatu in Love – Jim Shepard

Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson

Crow – Ted Hughes

Writing Horror – Edited by Mort Castle

The Velocity Gospel – Steve Aylett

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer – Ridley Pearson

Blue Diary – Alice Hoffman

Animosity – David L. Lindsey

Vox – Nicholson Baker

Desperation – Stephen King

Abarat – Clive Barker

The White Goddess – Robert Graves

Coldheart Canyon – Clive Barker

Warlock – Wilbur Smith

Doctor Death – Jonathan Kellerman

The Bone Hunter – Tom Holland

The Talisman – Stephen King & Peter Straub

The Waste Land and Other Poems – T. S. Eliot

The Chosen – Edward Lee

The War Poems

Ghosts & Other Lovers – Lisa Tuttle

Signals of Distress – Jim Crace

The Vampire Vivienne – Karen E. Taylor

Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee – Stan Lee & George Mair

Pleasures of the Flesh – Laurence Haloche

Property Of – Alice Hoffman

Fogheart – Thomas Tessier

Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson

Vampyres – Tim Greaves

Killer’s Wedge – Ed McBain

Tourniquet Heart – Edited by Christopher Teague

Spiderman: The Ultimate Guide – Tom DeFalco

Guilty Pleasures – Laurell K. Hamilton

Imagined Slights – James Lovegrove

From A Buick 8 – Stephen King

Wank: The Tapes – Lars Eighner

The Straw Men – Michael Marshall

Lust – Geoff Ryman

Incantations L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims

The Seven Sisters – Alex Wheatle

Wild Cards: Deuces Down – Edited by George R. R. Martin

Everything’s Eventual – Stephen King

The White Road – John Connolly

Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin – Richard Davenport-Hines

Vampires: The Occult Truth – Konstantinos

The Hunger – Whitley Streiber

Great Vampire Stories

Children of the Night – Tony Thorne

Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula – Edited by Christopher Frayling

The Image of the Beast – Philip Jose Farmer

The Regulators – Stephen King

The PC Novice’s Handbook

500 of the Weirdest & Wackiest Web Sites

PCs for Dummies

Hollywood Lies – David Ambrose

Blown – Philip Jose Farmer

The Executioner’s Art – David Fine

Wonder Woman: The Complete History – Les Daniels

Phantoms of Venice – Edited by David A. Sutton

Blood and Souls – John Davey

Birmingham Noir – Edited by Joel Lane & Steve Bishop

Shadow Black – Tom Arden

Windows XP in Easy Steps

The Virtual Menagerie – Andrew Hook

Word 2000 in Easy Steps

Falling Out of Cars – Jeff Noon

Dorian – Will Self

Tales from Earthsea – Ursula K. LeGuin