These are some of the ones I read in 2005, probably missing a few but I didn’t start making the list until late in the year!

(from most recent)

• Papel mojado by Juan José Millás — Got it in Barcelona, in a bookstore’s “biblioteca juvenil” section. It’s not really a kid’s book (unlike “Charlie”, below), but I guess it gets the “youth classic” label because it’s a short and fairly straightforward thriller without too much sex and violence? Update: I finally finished (it’s only 140 pages but slow going for me) — no sex and not much violence, just the threat thereof (yes, the threat of violence and I suppose sex as well…). Not super-exciting but it did have a good surprise ending (though I guessed at least part of the surprise).
• Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco — I really loved the magic, the dream-imagery, the tenuous connections (if I may say so). Apparently the lyricism of Baricco’s writing puts some people off, but I marvel at the variety of techniques he uses here: prose poetry, repetition, different narrators and levels of emotional distance (from omniscient to unreliable first-person), repetition, letter-writing, repetition, even (unconventional) prayer…to name but a few. Oh, and repetition. I have only recently come to make the observation that much of the writing I enjoy most is written by authors whose first language is not English. And in many cases, as in this one, it is a translated text (from Italian, in this case). What does that mean? What does that say about me? I’m not sure.
• Charlie y la fábrica de chocolate by Roald Dahl — That’s right, the Spanish version. Gives you an idea of what level my Spanish (reading, at least) is at. Deliberately refrained from using the dictionary for words I didn’t understand. Just went with the flow, getting meaning from context or simply “absorbing” in a zen way. Let the words ooze into my grey matter, one way or another!
• Running Wild by J.G. Balllard
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Edith Grossman translation) — I have to commend Ms. Grossman on her translation, I found it a wonderful read. I understand that this is one of the most “owned but not read” books out there. I wanted to read it in 2005, the 400th anniversary of the publication of the first part, so I did. It’s a very funny book and very “post-modern” in its self-awareness as a book! Everyone asks me if I read it in Spanish, and the answer is no. Not quite ready for that yet, although many of the word games only make sense in the original, and I found I referred to my Spanish copy quite often, rereading particular lines or passages I had just seen in English. Took me awhile, but highly recommended! Did you know that Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day? Spooky…now there’s a conspiracy theory waiting to be hatched!
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez — Amazing… I haven’t got my hands on a cheap/used copy of 100 Years of Solitude yet, but when I do… I also have The General in His Labyrinth which I hope to read soon (yeah, right, add it to the list!). Why do I keep forgetting about our wonderful new Bibliothèque nationale du Québec (and I was just there a few days ago)? That’s as cheap as it gets… But I have a feeling “100 Years” is the kind of book I’ll want to own.
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
• Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal — a great little (and little-known) book. Somehow this reminded me of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, perhaps because it’s a book about books and about readers (and, in this case, destroyers).
• Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice