2017 Year Of Reading Round Up
Posted 19th January 2018
Category: Round-Ups Genres: N/A
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This year I read 59 books. Less than I’d hoped but when I looked at it again I realised I’d focused on that ‘5’ – 59 is one less than 60 and 60 is the average number for me. As stated previously, I wasn’t able to read as much in December as I had planned so I’m using some of January to make up for that albeit that I’ve chosen different books. The few times Ana and Iris hosted their Long-Awaited Reads month had a continuing impact on me and when a new year rolls around I find myself thinking of books I’ve had for a while or, in the case of Philip Pullman, books I’ve had for a short time but have been waiting for for years.
As with last year I had difficulty arriving at my previously usual 5 ‘best of’ books so again there are only 3. I believe it is indeed an issue of discernment and experience and I’m just going to go with the flow. There’s a subtle difference between an amazing book and an amazing book that blows you away and I’ll continue to use the differentiation to highlight particular books.
As always, books that have been reviewed have a line underneath them and the title links to the review. Up until my personal favourites list, all books are rated as objectively as possible. If you’d prefer to skip all that, click here to view my personal favourites.
The Best Of The Best
Kit De Waal: My Name Is Leon – Confused as to why he can’t stay with his mother as he is doing a good job looking after her, Leon is taken in by a foster carer whilst his white brother is adopted. A fantastic look at the British social services in the 1980s and the wider issues involved.
Phillip Lewis: The Barrowfields – Henry looks back on his childhood, his father who tried so hard to be a writer, his distant relationships with mother and sister, and his own attempts to be someone. Utterly fantastic.
Tom Connolly: Men Like Air – Three British and one American man in New York, living their lives, getting the flu, ending strange relationships, and working in art galleries. Difficult to summarise, I’ve opted to show the comedy element; this is a fab book.
5
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland
- Helen Oyeyemi: What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
- Nicholas Royle: An English Guide To Birdwatching
- Orlando Ortega-Medina: Jerusalem Ablaze
4.5
- A J Waines: Lost In The Lake
- Amanda Craig: The Other Side Of You
- Anthony Cartwright: The Cut
- Caroline Lea: When The Sky Fell Apart
- Chitra Ramaswamy: Expecting
- Claire North: The End Of The Day
- Eric Beck Rubin: School Of Velocity
- Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
- Joanna Cannon: The Trouble With Goats And Sheep
- Louise Douglas: The Secret By The Lake
- Naomi Hamill: How To Be A Kosovan Bride
- Nicholas Royle: Ornithology
- Terri Fleming: Perception
- Zoë Duncan: The Shifting Pools
4
- A J Waines: Girl On A Train
- Josephine Johnson: Now In November
- Juan Carlos Márquez: Tangram
- Louise Douglas: The Love Of My Life
- Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel
- Marie-Sabine Roger: Get Well Soon
- Nicola Cornick: The Phantom Tree
- Ricarda Huch: The Last Summer
- Samanta Schweblin: Fever Dream
- Susanna Kearsley: The Shadowy Horses
- Tom Malmquist: In Every Moment We Are Still Alive
- Tove Jansson: Letters From Klara
3.5
- Emma Cline: The Girls
- Fanny Blake: Our Summer Together
- Joanna Hickson: The Agincourt Bride
- Kate Chopin: Bayou Folk
- Lesley Glaister: The Squeeze
- Lewis Carroll: Through The Looking-Glass
- Sally O’Reilly: Dark Aemilia
3
- Adrian Mourby: Rooms Of One’s Own
- Alison Kent: This Time Next Year
- April Munday: The Heir’s Tale
- Barbara Erskine: Sleeper’s Castle
- Emma Henderson: The Valentine House
- HelenKay Dimon: It’s Not Christmas Without You
- Helen Irene Young: The May Queen
- Isabella Connor: Beneath An Irish Sky
- Julianne Pachico: The Lucky Ones
- Rory Gleeson: Rockadoon Shore
2.5
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: With Her In Ourland
- Evie Wyld: All The Birds, Singing
- Hanif Kureishi: The Last Word
- Jaci Burton: A Rare Gift
- Jennifer Donnelly: Revolution
2
- Lindsey Hutchinson: The Workhouse Children
1.5
1
- Kitty Danton: Evie’s Victory
0.5
- Alison Sherlock: A House To Mend A Broken Heart
My Personal Favourites
At the start of 2017 I went back a few steps – where previously I’d got into the habit of saying ‘no goals’, in 2017 I said ‘no goals, but’. I’d considered making a vague plan for diversity in all senses of the word and I was compelled to make it formal, albeit that I didn’t set any numerical targets. Lo and behold, whilst I didn’t fail exactly, I definitely didn’t do as well as I’d hoped, so this year I’m purposefully not going to make any plan even though I want to. What I am going to do that I think (hope!) is okay to think of as a goal, is read more of my own books.
One area in which I did do well, at least in context, was older books. I added a count for books published before 1970 to my 2017 list and retrospectively, and found the number increasing without much thought. 1970 feels most right to me – a cut off is difficult and at times I feel 1970 is too young but when readers are calling Angela Thirkell’s 1960s works classics and you want to include Barbara Comyns 1950s and 1960s, that date seems the way to go.
Quotation Report
In Bayou Folk, a woman who seems 125 years old is respected, however, she is not 125 years old… she may be older.
In Get Well Soon an older man wishes people would just get on with the idea of accepting people as they are. And in The Cut, Cairo reminds us that whilst the media talks a lot about a divide and makes it seem all-pervading, most often people just get on with their lives.
In The Shifting Pools, Duncan puts forth the concept of getting over something, healing, and studies it, saying why time doesn’t heal, it merely allows you to scab over, to find new ways to live. Stasis rather than healing.
In School Of Velocity, Jan recommends a musician use the energy in the air as the house lights go down as a kind of armour. Then there’s this:
Accompaniment is a particular skill. You are the bridge between the audience and the soloist, a lens that magnifies the leading melody, a handler to the outsized personality next to you, one player who sometimes has to be two.
And in Rooms Of One’s Own, Mourby quotes from William Morris (“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”) which makes one wonder whether Marie Kondo is a fan.
I missed Wednesday’s post but with good reason – I’m getting back into the swing of things and have 3 posts in the works, it’s just that they’re not finished yet. I may have to write more than one post on La Belle Sauvage because there’s the objective side of it and then the very personal part of my overall experience. We’ll see.
What was your favourite(s) book from last year?
January 20, 2018, 1:24 pm
Like you, my reading was a little down in 2017 however I think the quality and enjoyment was high. Some of my favourites included: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, Sandlands by Rosy Thornton, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham.
January 23, 2018, 12:42 am
My reading was a bit up in 2017 on account of Tor dot com novellas and the fact that I participated in several readathons. And it was a good-as-hell reading year — I discovered kind of a lot of books that I immediately loved and wanted to own forever, whereas some years I discover NONE. So that was exciting, and I guess we’ll see if 2018 is at all comparable.
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January 19, 2018, 3:28 pm
Goodreads tells me that my favourite books last year were Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. That’s about as diverse as my reading got. More than 50% of the books I read were by women, though.
I suspect this year will be even less diverse, as my goal is to read some Greek, Latin and fourteenth century classics.
Another goal is just to read more. I was shocked by how few books I read last year. I didn’t even manage a book a week. I want to do better than that this year.