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?