Books Read in 2005

This post follows on from Books Read in 2004, which I posted at the end of April.

And for 2005 I read one hundred and eight books, up eight from 2004’s total. 2005 was the year in which I first read short story collections by Gary Braunbeck, Reggie Oliver, and Glen Hirshberg, with all of whom I’ve become a lot better acquainted since. My book of the year (excluding “Tropic of Capricorn” which I read for the fifth time in 2005) was Ketchum’s harrowing novel “The Girl Next Door”, but shouts out also to “Taming the Beast” by Emily Maguire and “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk. It was a good year.

On this day in 2005 I was reading “Darkness Rising 2005”, an anthology edited by the redoubtable team of L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims (Mick and Len, the ghost story men), which has the dubious distinction of being the book in which my story ‘Waiting for Seasons to Change’ saw print. And on the occasion of my 51st birthday it seems I was just on the point of finishing “Dead Man’s Hand” by Steven A. Roman, a tie-in novel to the Final Destination film franchise (you can read my review of the book elsewhere on this site).

Here’s the list:-

Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller

Outlet – Randy Taguchi

The Master of Knots – Massimo Carlotto

Dreams Never End – Edited by Nicholas Royle

Success… And How to Avoid It – Mat Coward

Strangers – Taichi Yamada

Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar – Neil Gaiman

Darkly Dreaming Dexter – Jeff Lindsay

Dark Water – Koji Suzuki

Falling Into Heaven – L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims

The Elastic Book of Numbers – Edited by Allen Ashley

Spiral – Koji Suzuki

Apocalypse Now, Voyager – Jay Russell

Four Tales: James Hogg

The Two Sams – Glen Hirshberg

Beasts – Joyce Carol Oates

The Flute-Player – D. M. Thomas

Vertigo Visions – Edited by Alisa Kwitney

Memories & Hallucinations – D. M. Thomas

The Curse of Mephisto’s Seed – Book One: The Awakening – William P. Haynes

My Soul to Keep – Tananarive Due

The Vampire De Sade – Mary Ann Mitchell

The Keep – F. Paul Wilson

Good Bones – Margaret Atwood

Checkpoint – Nicholson Baker

The Sweet Smell of Psychosis – Will Self

Lanzarote – Michel Houellebecq

The Black Violin – Maxence Fermine

The Ends of Our Tethers – Alasdair Gray

Firecracker – Sean Stewart

Desolation – Tim Lebbon

Book of Voices – Edited by Michael Butscher

Earthbound – Richard Matheson

Killing the Beasts – Chris Simms

H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life – Michel Houellebecq

Underground – Craig Spector

Death of an Ordinary Man – Glen Duncan

The Mask Behind the Face – Stuart Young

Don’t Turn Out the Light – Edited by Stephen Jones

Fags and Lager – Charlie Williams

The Overnight – Ramsey Campbell

Poe’s Progeny – Edited by Gary Fry

The Black Angel – John Connolly

Home Before Dark: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories, Volume 2 – Gary Braunbeck

The Life to Come – Tim Lees

Darkness Rising 2005 – Edited by L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims

Unnatural Acts and Other Stories – Lucy Taylor

Taming the Beast – Emily Maguire

Chat – Nan McCarthy

The Fatal Bodice – Alina Reyes

3 – Julie Hilden

Connect – Nan McCarthy

Platform – Michel Houellebecq

Crash – Nan Mc Carthy

When You Love You Must Depart – Alina Reyes

The Key – Junichiro Tanazaki

The Sexual Life of Catherine M – Catherine Millet

Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth

The Sinner – Tess Gerritsen

Chasing the Dime – Michael Connelly

Kisscut – Karin Slaughter

The Murder Book – Jonathan Kellerman

L.A. Requiem – Robert Crais

Skinny Dip – Carl Hiaasen

Who Needs Cleopatra? – Steve Redwood

Haunted – Chuck Palahniuk

Hawke’s Harbor – S. E. Hinton

Tarantula – Thierry Jonquet

Four and Twenty Blackbirds – Cherie Priest

Blood on the Saddle – Rafael Reig

The House of Cthulhu – Brian Lumley

Nobody True – James Herbert

Taming the Beast – Emily Maguire

Blackbird House – Alice Hoffman

Blood Red – James A. Moore

The Healer – Michael Blumlein

The Girl Next Door – Jack Ketchum

Incubus Dreams – Laurell K. Hamilton

The English Soil Society – Tim Nickels

Peaceable Kingdom – Jack Ketchum

The Brief History of the Dead – Kevin Brockmeier

The Plucker – Brom

Cold Fire, Calm Rage – Joe Stein

Paranoia in the Launderette – Bruce Robinson

An Accident Waiting to Happen – Vincent Banville

Without Blood – Alessandro Baricco

The Dark Horse Book of the Dead – Edited by Scott Allie

States of Grace – Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing – Allen C. Kupfer

Breathe – Christopher Fowler

New Wave of Speculative Fiction – Edited by Sean Wright

One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed – Melissa P.

Harry Keogh Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes! – Brian Lumley

Dark Harbor – David Hosp

The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler – Reggie Oliver

The Spirit Box – Stephen Gallagher

Screaming Science Fiction – Brian Lumley

King of the Birds – Alison L. R. Davies

Flaming London – Joe R. Lansdale

The Dark Domain – Stefan Grabinski

Dead Man’s Hand – Steven A. Roman

Infernal – F. Paul Wilson

Heaven’s Falling: Ascension – Garry Charles

In the Rain With the Dead – Mark West

Sex and the City – Carrie Bradshaw

Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre – Edited by Tim Leider

Shoedog – George Pelecanos

Ground Zero: The Art of Fred Gambino