Barbara Erskine: Sleeper’s Castle – I’ve never read Erskine before; had always planned to; listening to her speak at Hay and reading a sampler had me putting it on my Christmas wish list.

Elizabeth Chadwick: The Autumn Throne – The last of Chadwick’s Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy; loved the first book, not yet got to the second…

Helen Irene Young: The May Queen – Set for an April review, this is a historical novel with a great premise; to be honest, the cover likely would’ve been enough to grab me, it tells you a lot.

Hiromi Kawakami: The Nakano Thrift Shop – So excited.

Josephine Johnson: Now In November – A 1930s novel that I hadn’t heard of before but is apparently rather well-known; I’ll be reviewing this in a few weeks.

Lauren Owen: The Quick – I may not get to this for a while but I’ve been wanting to read it for ages.

Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel – Another older novel that has been republished; rather looking forward to reading it.

Meelis Friedenthal: The Willow King – The cover had me very excited and I haven’t wanted to look too closely at the premise for fear of spoiling it but I think it’s more present-day than historical.

Nicola Cornick: The Phantom Tree – Cornick’s previous, House Of Shadows made my top 7 in 2015; I believe the genre of this new one is the same.

Sally O’Reilly: Dark Aemilia – Having read Elizabeth Fremantle’s The Girl In The Glass Tower I’ve been particularly interested in this because both are about the same Aemilia; Fremantle concentrated on Aemilia’s later life and wove her into Arbella Stuart’s story, O’Reilly’s book looks at her life in the context of Shakespeare.

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar – It’s been a long time coming; I’m ready for what I hear is a difficult book (I haven’t wanted to read too much about it).

Tom Connolly: Men Like Air – A study of relationships, this follows a few different characters.

Tony Grey: The Tortoise Of Asia – Historical fiction based on a legend, this is about a Roman soldier who is taken prisoner and ends up battling for the Huns.

I have a personal problem with my own concept of reading by month in accordance with my blog. (I hope that makes sense.) That the problem is entirely of my own creation; nevertheless it’s hardly unheard of to talk of books you read in any one month – book clubs are based around months – and so I know this might strike a chord with many of you or at the very least form a fair discussion.

I feel, in terms of my own reading and blogging life, that it’s cheating if I finish a book in one particular month having read the majority of it the month previous. I read 75% of Anna Karenina in the months… years… preceding the one it was included, round up wise. And often this can happen in multiples so I’ll have a month where I’ve read a lot overall but only finished two books, say, and then because I finished the remaining books on the 1st of the next month, it looks like I read a lot in that next month. I know it’s silly, especially as it all works out in the end, and especially because a month of few and a month of many achieves the same result – talking year by year now – but I continue to struggle.

So the extremely first-world problem is effectively balanced out by the fact the month in which I read most of the book isn’t included.

This post, though brewing for years, was written up because I was inspired by Stefanie’s descriptor, ‘The Middles’. The Middles is that time when you’re in the middle of a few books. It can feel like you’re not getting anywhere and of course you are getting somewhere but the more books you have on the go, the harder it is to make noticeable progress. Your reading time is diluted, even if you concentrate – once you’ve noticed there’s a problem – on getting one finished at a time. You get to that place where September saw you finish lots of books but October saw none.

I think it’s time I put more emphasis on books I have on the go.

Have you ever thought something similar?

I did quite well this half of the year. In August I thought, ‘ahh, now, I’m always forgetting to watch films from this point in the year onward’ and made a concerted effort. December rolled around and the fact it was the season, together with with the thought, ‘last month of the year!’, led to more films. Catch-up television is incredibly useful – I owe much of this list to iplayer – as are subscription programmes.

Here are the films I watched for the first time during the second half of 2016. My opinions here are a lot more subjective than my book reviews.

The Bishop’s Wife (USA, 1947) – Feel good semi-comedy. We could do with Cary Grant in our films today.

The Black Cauldron (USA, 1985) – It’s easy to see why it’s a largely unknown Disney. The voice acting of the lead, the story line – the spark of an idea but not realised. We found out after watching that the film was hack-edited – one of the higher people in the company decided to do it himself, ruining it, and this caused a group of the animators to go and form Pixar.

Carol (USA, 2015) – A very good film. I liked the quietness that fit the situation.

Far From The Madding Crowd (UK, 2015) – Perfect, super, casting. But no development, progression, epic end section rendered average…

Holiday Affair (USA, 1949) – A film of the times (bit of a brash hero) but this turned out to be pretty charming and, in some ways, ahead of its time (very confusing, I know!)

Into The Woods (USA/UK, 2014) – A few of the lyrics are good and on occasion it’s funny, but it’s mostly a non-event.

The Lady In The Van (UK, 2015) – You can’t really go wrong with Maggie Smith, nor Alan Bennett.

The Lego Movie (USA, 2014) – Fantastic; barmy and hilarious.

Snow White And The Huntsman (UK, 2012) – Pretty good, very much ‘based’ on the story rather than following it.

Miss Potter (UK, 2006) – Found the animation a bit silly but otherwise it’s a lovely film.

What films did you watch for the first time in 2016?

This year I read 71 books, completed two I’d started late 2015… and I’ll be carrying over the now-always-carried-over Vanity Fair (begun in 2012; I’m hoping to restart it) and two others. I made a big effort on the general diversity front, aiming for more male writers, more writers of colour (a number I’ve noticed has gone down since I started blogging), more older books and more translated fiction. I have to admit that this time that latter category was boosted by review copies. Around early autumn I decided to start keeping numerical stats and applied them both to this year’s list of books and retrospectively. It’s proved a good decision so far – it’s reminded me to read my own books. I’m looking at writing a stats post for the past few years’ worth of books.

In forming this list I’ve had the opposite difficulty to every other year – each December I find myself with a lot of ‘best of the best’ books to choose from. Last year I had so many I decided to just list them all. This time, I’ve had trouble. Whether it’s due to a natural personal reading progress, particularly in context with reviewing, or whether it’s down to the books themselves… I’m inclined to think it’s a bit of both with an emphasis on my ratings. Have I given less books 5 out of 5 this year due to ever more experience? I think I may have. I do feel a lot more in tune with literature in general than I did 6 years ago, and then there’s the inevitable thing where when you’ve read a lot of books, new ones that tread the same ground won’t seem so ground-breaking. Whatever it is, the fewer books on the best of list are ones without compare, if I may use some flowery language, and I think they’re absolutely awesome.

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

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: One Night, Markovitch – A man with an unremarkable face and his friend with the amazing moustache decide to join men heading to Germany to save Jewish women from the Nazis and bring them home to Israel. Full of humour, this is no less a book with a lot to say. It was even better than I’d hoped.
Cathy Rentzenbrink: The Last Act Of Love – The story of the event and aftermath of the author’s brother’s accident as a victim of a hit-and-run. A superb book.
Dan Richards: Climbing Days – Discovering his great-great-aunt was a mountaineer, Richards sets out to learn more and follow in her literal footsteps. Utterly superb.

5

• Linda Stift: The Empress And The Cake
• Keith Stuart: A Boy Made Of Blocks
• Marie-Sabine Roger: Soft In The Head
• Marie Sizun: Her Father’s Daughter
• Philip Pullman: Northern Lights
• Philip Pullman: The Subtle Knife
• Sara Taylor: The Lauras

4.5

• Abubakar Adam Ibrahim: Season Of Crimson Blossoms
• Andrew McMillan: Physical
• Dan Richards: The Beechwood Airship Interviews
• Elizabeth Fremantle: Watch The Lady
• Jessie Greengrass: An Account Of The Decline Of The Great Auk According To One Who Saw It
• Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland
• Magda Szubanski: Reckoning
• Nicholas Royle and David Gledhill: In Camera
• Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes: breach
• Paula Hawkins: The Girl On The Train
• Philip Pullman: The Amber Spyglass
• S J Watson: Before I Go To Sleep
• Samantha Sotto: Love & Gravity
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika: Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun
• Susanna Kearsley: Mariana
• Tahmima Anam: The Bones Of Grace

4

• Alex Pheby: Playthings
• Amy Liptrot: The Outrun
• Ashley Stokes (ed.): The End
• Benjamin Wood: The Ecliptic
• Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: Designing Your Life
• Elizabeth Fremantle: The Girl In The Glass Tower
• Elnathan John: Born On A Tuesday
• Frédéric Dard: Bird In A Cage
• Jonathan Ames: You Were Never Really Here
• Lucy King: Say It With Diamonds
• Mavis Cheek: Dog Days
• Max Porter: Grief Is The Thing With Feathers
• Midge Raymond: My Last Continent
• Rachel Elliot: Whispers Through A Megaphone
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: Harmless Like You
• Sue Gee: Trio
• Suzanne O’Sullivan: It’s All In Your Head
• Thomas Hardy: Far From The Madding Crowd
• V H Leslie: Bodies Of Water
• Zadie Smith: Swing Time

3.5

• Alan Titchmarsh: Mr Gandy’s Grand Tour
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson: Violets And Other Tales
• Cheryl Strayed: Wild
• Chigozie Obioma: The Fishermen
• Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford
• Jemma Wayne: Chains Of Sand
• Kate Walker: Indebted To Moreno
• Kirsty Moseley: Worth Fighting For
• Louisa Young: The Heroes’ Welcome
• Pamela Hartshorne: House Of Shadows
• Paul McVeigh: The Good Son
• Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, and Dan Richards: Holloway

3

• Claire Watts: Gingerbread & Cupcake
• Colette Dartford: Learning To Speak American
• Elizabeth Chadwick: Shields Of Pride
• Helen Slavin: Crooked Daylight
• Holly Black: The Darkest Part Of The Forest
• Jo Bartlett: Somebody Else’s Boy
• Rick Yancey: The 5th Wave
• Shan Sa: Empress
• Xiaolu Guo: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers

2.5

• Ben Fergusson: The Spring Of Kasper Meier

1

• Xiaolu Guo: I Am China

My Personal Favourites

This year has been very different. Happenings have resulted in my reading a lot more literary fiction, literary non-fiction, and so on. It’s made me think back to that first year I documented my reading, 2009, and those first couple of titles I read that were literary fiction – not knowing about that category at the time I labelled them historicals and I wasn’t keen. I didn’t understand them. It’s funny to think that I appreciate them now.

In regards to my retrospective stats, I’m going to write a comparitive post within a month or two so I won’t go into too much detail here, but my reading skewed towards women a little less this year which I’m very happy about and will be working to improve further this new year. New-to-me authors ruled the year; the vast majority of books I read were by authors I hadn’t read before. Some great new finds but I do feel I need more balance. The oldest book I read was Cranford – published as a serial between 1851-53. The newest book I read, Samantha Sotto’s Love & Gravity, is set to be published early February.

Quotation Report

I found it hard to write up this quote in my usual style, so here’s the extract from the book, The Subtle Knife, concerning Lyra’s first impressions of Will:

She tiptoed to the window. In the glow from the street lamp she carefully set the hands of the alethiometer, and relaxed her mind into the shape of a question. The needle began to sweep around the dial in a series of pauses and swings almost too fast to watch.

She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy?

The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer.

When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once. He could find food, and show her how to reach Oxford, and those were powers that were useful, but he might still have been untrustworthy or cowardly. A murderer was a worthy companion.

Do not tell Deborah of Cranford that women are equal to men because she will not listen – she believes women are superior. And if you join Joseclin and Linnet’s household, from Shields Of Pride, you will find yourself playing medieval football with a pig’s bladder and it will be messy.

Yaacov Markovitch of One Night, Markovitch is pleasantly surprised to learn his visa-wife is a fan of agricultural literature – she’d said she’d read a great deal about Israel’s oranges. What he doesn’t realise is she’s read a four-line stanza.

If you wish for people to not visit, take a leaf from Dan Richards’ relative – mentioned in Climbing Days and wear a hat whilst in the house so you can say you’re off out… though it might not work in our present day so much.

Getting beer in stock either for the babysitter or the kids is absolutely fine when you’re absolutely desperate for time away with your wife, or, at least, so thinks Matt from A Boy Made Of Blocks.

In the next few days I’ll be posting my film round-up and goals for the year.

What were your favourite books from those you read last year?

Happy new year! It always seems strange having this round up just before my yearly one, but without it a few books would get completely lost and – in many ways more importantly – I want to shed particular light on this month because the books were particularly great.

The Books

Non-Fiction

Fiction

Claire Watts: Gingerbread & Cupcake – Simon hoped to travel over the summer, Lily hoped for a last ‘summer of love’ but when both plans fail and Simon’s family tearooms take a dive in the ratings, they find themselves spending time with each other. A nice fairly short young adult book.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: Harmless Like You – After the death of his father, Jay must go looking for his absent mother; Yuki struggled with who she was meant to be, falling into bad relationships, always hoping to be a good artist. A good book about identity, art, race, and family.

Samantha Sotto: Love & Gravity – The cracks in the wall start happening in Andrea’s single digit years and although no one believes her she comes to look forward to the rare sightings of the historical boy, a budding scientist, on the other side of her wall. A great time slip/travel novel that makes use of a mystery box of letters recently found amongst Issac Newton’s possessions to tell its story.

Zadie Smith: Swing Time – A nameless narrator tells us the story of her life; her on-off best friend and their jealousies and triumphs, the work she did for a western celebrity with an idealised project for ‘Africa’, and a childhood with a mother determined to better herself. This book is a bit too packed full of subjects, structured in a strange way, and has a disappointing non-ending, but the reading experience is pretty awesome.

Being December, I had more time for older books and books from my shelves. I had been wanting to read Buchanan for a while and Sotto’s book, whilst a review copy, was one I’d been looking forward to ever since I finished her previous in 2011. Watts’ book, too, I’d looked forward to – I’m still to review her previous book, that should be happening February or thereabouts; it’s stunning. My favourite? The Sotto just about wins.

Quotation Report

None this time.

Here’s to good books helping us all get through that post-Christmas dullness!

Which of your last 2016 reads were favourites?