This year I read 47 books in total, and have three books carrying over into this year. It’s not a particularly high number, but I’m happy with it. The nine books in November really helped, as did re-reading. (I’ve had a number of re-reads this year, many of which made the best of list for the year I first read them. For this reason I’ve excluded re-reads from this years’, though I’ve included them on my list of personal favourites below.)

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

• Raymond Antrobus: The Perseverance – A collection about the poet’s life as a Jamaican Brit, a person in the deaf community, and various related historical and contemporary stories. Utterly fantastic.
• Samantha Sotto: A Dream Of Trees – As Aiden waits to die he is joined in his hotel room by a stranger, a lady who wants to help him by taking him to his ‘rooms’ in the period between life and death. It’s incredibly hard to sum up this book in one sentence, not least because there is so much mystery involved – it is an incredible and very moving fantasy/magical realism story of souls and unfinished business told with an immense amount of heart.

5

• Anne Brontë: Agnes Grey
• Birgit Vanderbeke: You Would Have Missed Me
• E T A Hoffman: The Nutcracker And The Mouse-King
• Gail Honeyman: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
• Jane Austen: Sanditon
• Julia Armfield: Salt Slow
• L M Montgomery: The Blue Castle
• Louisa May Alcott: Good Wives
• Nancy Bilyeau: Dreamland
• Nicola Cornick: House Of Shadows
• Orlando Ortega-Medina: Jerusalem Ablaze
• Phillip Lewis: The Barrowfields
• Seishi Yokomizo: The Honjin Murders
• Sofie Laguna: The Choke

4.5

• Anne Melville: The House Of Hardie
• Eloisa James: A Kiss At Midnight
• L M Montgomery: Anne Of Avonlea
• Louisa May Alcott: Little Women
• Maggie O’Farrell: This Must Be The Place
• Naomi Hamill: How To Be A Kosovan Bride
• Orlando Ortega-Medina: The Death Of Baseball
• Samantha Sotto: Before Ever After
• Samantha Sotto: Love And Gravity

4

• Anne Melville: The Daughter Of Hardie
• Meike Ziervogel: The Photographer
• Michelle Obama: Becoming
• Nancy Bilyeau: The Blue
• Nancy Bilyeau: The Crown
• Nick Alexander: You Then, Me Now
• Nicola Cornick: The Woman In The Lake
• Sally Rooney: Conversations With Friends
• Stein Riverton: The Iron Chariot
• Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway

3.5

• D H Lawrence: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• Dolly Alderton: Everything I Know About Love
• Eloisa James: The Duke Is Mine
• L M Montgomery: Anne Of Green Gables

3

• Elizabeth Chadwick: The Irish Princess
• Eloisa James: When Beauty Tamed The Beast
• Gabrielle Malcolm: There’s Something About Darcy
• Maria Edgeworth: Belinda (3rd ed.)
• Sara Ramsey: Heiress Without A Cause

2.5

• Ali McNamara: Secrets And Seashells At Rainbow Bay
• Guy Stagg: The Crossway

My Personal Favourites

I did well on the classics and older decades front – I’ve 13 books noted for ‘pre-1970’ and they are all from the 1940s or earlier which is good. (1970 was the date I chose for the ‘split’ but it nevertheless often seems too young.) I could certainly have done better on the gender front. I did okay on my goals, which I’ll discuss next week. Certainly the biggest change was in the re-reading statistics; I’m happy with the way it’s changed my reading. Beyond the natural consequence – learning more about a book the second time around – I’m also finding I re-read quicker, which for me is excellent as I’m naturally pretty slow.

Quotation Report

In Anne Of Avonlea a woman, so fastidious about her house, lays newspaper down not only on her floors but all the way down the garden path, and requests her visitors to wipe their feet before treading on it. And, unrelated to this, a little boy wonders why male angels can’t wear trousers; he’s the very same boy who later pulls up his plants by the roots to see how they are getting on at the other end. Unsurprisingly, his twin sister’s garden is more successful.

Lawrence, on the changing nature of England:

“I consider this is really the heart of England,” said Clifford to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February sunshine.
“Do you?” she said, seating herself in her blue knitted dress, on a stump by the path.
“I do! This is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.”
“Oh yes!” said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the eleven-o’clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery. Clifford was too used to the sound to notice.

In The House Of Hardie the irony of women having the strength to get through multiple births is noted alongside the expectation that they also be completely afraid of mice. Noted also is the fact an education is important in moving up in the world, and that novels ending with wedding ceremonies doesn’t account for the wedding being a beginning.

I’m going to leave this as is. From Good Wives:

Gentlemen, which means boys, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind regardless of rank, age, or color.

In Conversations With Friends, the narrator ponders the idea of kindness, whether it’s more about being nice in the face of conflict, and whether she only wonders whether she’s kind because she’s a woman. Whilst in This Must Be The Place, a teenager, new to the age group, discovers one of the changes that come with moving away from childhood, that lack of total oneness of self and the innocence of a child in regards to the rest of the world and life.

Next up is my film round up post. I’ll be thinking about goals next week and I’ll have a review for you, too.

What was on your best of list for 2019?