This year I read a total of 40 books, though I’m considering it 39 as one was a re-read of a novelette, and I’m not sure I read all of it. 39/40 isn’t a good number for me really, but the year saw a few changes, not least the addition of two rabbits to my home and time. (I’m happy to report that rabbit time is now at a more normal level.)

I had a lot less trouble choosing my 5 ‘best of’ books this year. Granted, I read fewer books so there was less competition, but I also just found it easier – I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to get easier – the more one reads and all that.

As always, books that have been reviewed include a link in the text. From here until my personal favourites list, all books are rated as objectively as possible. If you want to skip the objective list, click here to view my personal favourites.

The Best Of The Best

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah – A Nigerian student leaves behind the love of her life to study in America, where she discovers that she is now ‘black’. This book is fairly complex, summing it up difficult, but it’s incredible, albeit that the heroine isn’t particularly great (the hero’s fine).
Claire Fuller: Swimming Lessons – Gil sees his long-lost wife outside the bookshop and injures himself trying to catch up with her; alongside the narrative of the family coming together to help him are the letters Ingrid wrote to Gil about the lie of their marriage, that she slips in between the pages of relevant novels. This is an utterly fantastic book – very well written, well plotted, and the literature aspect is incredibly compelling.
Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad – Two slaves run away from the plantation and board an underground train to a less southerly state where life is likely better. Fantastic.
Weike Wang: Chemistry – The unnamed narrator has been proposed to by her boyfriend twice and can’t find it within herself to say yes; there’s a lot of confusion – she’s struggling with her PhD and is unconsciously still suffering from parental neglect. A search for identity where the reader is more privy than the character, this is an excellent book full of vignettes, humour, and it boasts an interesting writing style.
Yaa Gyasi: Homegoing – As the slave trade continues in Ghana, one sister is ushered into marriage with a white man at the ‘castle’ whilst her unknown half-sister is taken into slavery to be shipped to America; we follow both women’s decedents as they tackle their pasts. A wonderfully written book that succeeds in writing short pieces about various characters without you ever feeling lost.

5

• Edith Wharton: The Age Of Innocence
• Eloisa James: A Duke Of Her Own
• Jessie Greengrass: Sight
• Patrick Gale: A Place Called Winter
• Solomon Northup: Twelve Years A Slave

4.5

• Claire Fuller: Our Endless Numbered Days
• Laura Pearson: Missing Pieces
• Nicola Cornick: The Lady And The Laird
• Nicolai Houm: The Gradual Disappearance Of Jane Ashland

4

• Charlotte Lennox: The Female Quixote
• Claire Fuller: Bitter Orange
• Dorthe Nors: Karate Chop
• Jenny Colgan: Christmas At Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop
• Kirsty Ferry: Watch For Me By Candlelight
• Marian Keyes: The Break
• Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage
• Rosie Travers: The Theatre Of Dreams
• Shannon Stacey: What It Takes
• Sherry Thomas: The Luckiest Lady In London
• Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
• Valeria Luiselli: Faces In The Crowd

3.5

• Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn
• Diana Gabaldon: Outlander
• J Courtney Sullivan: The Engagements
• Manu Joseph: Miss Laila, Armed And Dangerous
• Nick Spalding: Checking Out
• Shannon Stacey: Mistletoe & Margaritas

3

• Charlotte Smith: Emmeline
• Eloisa James: This Duchess Of Mine
• Hiromi Kawakami: The Nakano Thrift Shop

2.5

• Glenda Young: Belle Of The Back Streets
• Özgür Mumcu: The Peace Machine
• Sarah MacLean: A Rogue By Any Other Name

2

• Ben Okri: The Famished Road

My Personal Favourites

I finished the books I’d carried over from the previous December – the Northup and Sullivan. The only real target I’d set was to add to my diversity stats, and this I achieved. Otherwise, I read a fair number of classics and newer popular books – I’m counting Outlander somewhere in between those times – and finally read books by Ben Okri, Hiromi Kawakami, Colm Tóibín, and Sylvia Plath.

I also read from a slighter wider variety of sources, incorporating the library in a more concrete fashion than the drips and drabs of previous years. Approximately eight books were from the library, which is over double what I’d thought before looking at my reading notes.

Quotation Report

In The Age Of Innocence a man of great means but lack of general awareness as according to his station in the novel, laments the absence of independent thought of his beloved and looks forward to the opportunity he will have to educate her… to a certain point… she shouldn’t be too knowledgeable after all. Whilst in the same book, a few chapters later, the author of it all produces this fun line:

She sang, of course, “M’ama!” and not “he loves me,” since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

In Swimming Lessons, Claire Fuller posits that ‘writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line. A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader’.

Hilarity and heartbreak in Chemistry:

At the gate, he goes through his repertoire of tricks – sit, lie down, crawl, play dead, roll over, high-five, sit, lie down, crawl, play dead, roll over, high-five. I ask him to please be dignified about this, but I have not yet taught him that command.

In The Female Quixote, Arabella’s cousin and suitor agrees to read her favourite books at his peril – it just so happens her favourites include the (still) longest fiction book published, all 13,000 pages of it.

A thought from The Nakano Thrift Shop worth mulling over:

When it comes to old things, whether buying or selling, why is it that people act so cautious?… With something brand new, they have no problem just ordering it from a catalogue, no matter how expensive.

This is another occasion wherein paraphrasing the quotation just won’t work. Here it is in full, from The Underground Railroad:

Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man’s equal.

And lastly, as I mentioned on Wednesday, if you travel to 1740s Scotland, as one does, remember that disinfectant doesn’t yet exist. Failure to remember may result in a humorous exchange not unlike that experienced by one Claire Randall, an Outlander, whose requests for various disinfectants resulted in blank stares until she asked the clansmen for alcohol and received a jovial response.

In the next few days I’ll be setting out my reading goals for the year. I’m looking forward to more historical fantasy – I might currently be eyeing up the George R R Martin box set that’s on the desk beside me.

What was on your best of list for 2018?