Tag Archives: Books Of The Year

Books of the Year 2022

by Andrew | Leave a comment

I can’t pick a single book of the year, so I’m choosing five that really left a impression on me in 2022:

* Annie Ernaux, The Years (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Julia May Jonas, Vladimir
* Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
* Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus

A few patterns emerge: campus novels; middle-aged women having affairs with younger Russian studs; natural history and geology; the house of Fitzcarraldo; the truth of closely observed details – of crazy obsessions, of everyday life in the suburbs, of wild birds in remote valleys I’ll never visit.

If I were to round out to ten books of the year, I’d also include:

* Lauren Groff, Matrix
* Ocean Vuong, Time Is A Mother
* Robert Macfarlane, Underland (narrated by Roy McMillan)
* Katia Oskamp, Marzahn, Mon Amour (translated by Jo Heinrich)* Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead

Other notable reads in nonfiction: Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Tim Flannery’s Europe, Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, Helen Gordon’s Notes From Deep Time, Cat Jarman’s River Kings, Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks and The Old Ways (both narrated by Roy McMillan), Francis Rose’s Wild Flower Key, Henry Shukman’s One Blade of Grass, Stanley Tucci’s Taste, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, and Boel Westin’s Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words (translated by Silvester Mazzarella).

And among works of fiction: Junior Burke’s Buddha Was A Cowboy, Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City (translated by Anton Hur), Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, Sarah Tolmie’s All The Horses of Iceland, and Camila Sosa Villada’s The Queens of Sarmiento Park (translated by Kit Maude).

Special mention goes to short stories by Mavis Gallant – this is an ongoing project in reading, not rushed as I’m taking her advice: ‘Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.’ I imagine a volume or two of hers might appear among books completed next year, or the year after that. Another excellent story collection I’m working through is Florida by Lauren Groff.

Maybe I’ll keep another list for specific short stories and poems next year – alongside nonfiction, short fiction and poetry certainly outclassed novels for me this year. So much product from the spoon-feeding cookie-cutter hard-sell school of creative writing is either not to my taste or just plain boring. Don’t waste my time with high-concept formulas and cheap reveals: gimme voice, gimme character, gimme setting, gimme mood.

Telly is a bit of a blur, and a lot of tv reviewers need to find new jobs. Off the top of my head, a highlight was the Star Wars prequel Andor. What a wonderful slow burn that series achieved. Again, gimme character and setting and mood – gimme depth – and while we’re at it gimme wardrobe too: so much of that mood in Andor was achieved through the costumes. And after so frequently looking up details for its UK broadcast, I’m very much looking forward to the second season of Reservation Dogs. Oh – and incoming, incoming: last night we very much enjoyed the movie of White Noise – what a good adaptation.

I also enjoyed the Masterclasses of Amy Tan and Joy Harjo. I guess learning can be a form of entertainment too. Another profoundly good book-adjacent experience was the Introduction to UK Natural History that I took with the Natural History Museum. How exciting that natural history is going to become a GCSE subject on the national curriculum – let’s hope it will be available in all schools.

Another fascinating foray: the Druidcraft Tarot. I’m not sure I’d have chosen this deck myself, as these are not cultural associations I was particularly drawn to, but it was given as a gift, and it’s turned out to be a remarkably powerful and rich resource – and now I am making sense of those cultural associations too. There is perhaps something in that idea that special tarot decks are given to us, rather than purchased. I also discovered Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change this year – highly recommended.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Substacks this year too – though the cheerleading in some of the writing ones gets a bit wordy and cheerless for me (are they paid by the word?!). But ones worth following include: Austin Kleon, Chuck Palahniuk’s Plot Spoiler, Lincoln Michel’s Counter Craft, and Anne Trubek’s Notes from a Small Press. In podcasts I enjoyed various interviews with Tim Ferriss, as well as anything with Kara Swisher, the sort of feisty, well-informed advocate anyone wants on their side in a culture war.

Digital subscriptions to the New York Times and the New Yorker are perhaps my greatest indulgences, but they feel well worth it – in particular the NYT’s coverage of the war in Ukraine shows the value of real reportage. I’m tired of British newspapers and the space they devote to property and panic-mongering, though maybe they are just reflecting their readers. The Cooking newsletter from the New York Times is perhaps the greatest joy in my inbox: great recipes, but also a lot of first-rate cultural writing.

Also, as a final note: praise be for libraries! They saved me a lot of money this year, and saved my bookshelves (and floors) a lot of space, and I also listened to numerous audiobooks on library apps. And in visiting the library in person I made a few discoveries too. I end the year giving thanks for libraries and librarians.

Books of the Year 2021

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Some old, some new, some rereads – my books of the year, roughly in order of reading:

Raven Leilani, Luster
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
Natalie Goldberg, Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home
Nora Krug, Heimat
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence
Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog

There were other good reads – Ash Before Oak, Three Simple Lines, Gathering Moss, Everybody, Just Kids, Miss Iceland, Red Love, Dragman, Second Place, The Weekend, The Promise, Oh William!, The Luminous Solution, Moonstone. Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up The Ghost was an excellent reread for book club. And this morning I finished The Fifth Season – what an introduction to the imagination of NK Jemisin, but maybe I need to let it linger a bit. If I’d finished listening to English Pastoral I suspect that might have made my selection too.

But the titles in the list above are the ones that really cast the greatest spell over me: drew my curiosity, got under my skin, fired me up, touched my heart, or equipped me with strength during what turned out to be a difficult year.

My standout read of 2021 is probably The Sentence. Before I read that, it would have been The Night Watchman. Clearly the year of Louise Erdrich. I love her. I just love her. Funny. I love that she is so funny. I love her characters: Tookie, Patrice. I love her political engagement. A couple of readers thought parts felt rushed, but to me that very rush of energy – the anticipation of what was coming – provided much of the pleasure of this book about books and book people set in a bookshop.

Enjoy this YouTube of Louise Erdrich’s launch interview held at Birchbark Books, which also provides the setting for The Sentence. ‘Sentences that bring people solace and comfort’ – just heard her utter those words again. And the thing about books is that you ‘can be alone but in the most splendid company’: another gem. UK readers: The Sentence comes in January.

If I had to ration myself, the other books I’d press on readers would be The Power of the Dog (clever western! fantastic prose! such pacing! such detours! see the movie too!), The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (its mood! its mystery! its sense of place!) and Luster (the voice! the sheer bravura! the sheer lustrousness!). And Small Things Like These for an exquisite quickie, and Empire of Pain to fill you with fury and make you want to change the world.

There were a number of books I was looking forward to but their moment hasn’t come yet. The TBR piles teeter and totter.

And, as usual, hype (publisher/reviewer/social media) mars the experience of reading. Each to their own, etc., but! You *really* didn’t mind all those plot holes? You really fell for all that high-concept gush? I got the appeal of The Appeal – its format and its humorously observed characters were fun to start. But the closer you look, the less it makes sense. Surely those characters would be sending texts rather than emails, wouldn’t they? And don’t those insertions of additional evidence to the case seem a bit convenient? And those law students really hadn’t encountered this unusual legal case in the press: come on!? The foundation of the story’s drive starts to wobble, and isn’t this all getting a bit grating and silly now … But what do I know? It was book of the year here, a chain selection there, some notable blurbs. Are we really so easily pleased? Though I might not have cared so much if I’d not been led to expect something better. The hype: it was a problem.

And then Crawdads: insert horror emoji. It just didn’t add up for me – not least, one narrative prop is a poetry anthology that contains poems written maybe thirty years later than that book would have been published. A small detail – it’s not so much that it’s factually incorrect (I’m not that much of a purist), but it’s tonally off, and felt sloppy. At that point I started looking for flaws, and found many in the plot and the characterisation. I was no longer suspending disbelief that that child could have raised herself like that.

And then there was Kate Clanchy’s memoir, which in some ways is the book of the year in terms of how it generated, for me, so much thought about what constitutes good writing and good publishing. We can do better.

I sometimes feel bad about expressing criticisms of books. I mean, someone went to all that trouble, and authors can be sensitive souls (don’t tag them!). But I am a booklover, goddesssdammit, and making books better is part of my job. I task the writers I work with on ways to improve their manuscripts, but certain published books – and sometimes, it seems, whole genres – seem so mediocre that I wonder why I bother. Just rustle up a high concept that will satisfy the marketing department, then flesh out a synopsis (how I’ve come to dislike that word ‘twisty’), and hone a first page that will grab the attention of an agent or a judge. That sounds cynical, but so is publishing.

I really enjoyed Parul Seghal’s The Case Against The Trauma Plot in the New Yorker this week (27 December), not least as she seems to share my taste: Reservation Dogs was one of my favourite shows of the year. I like how this article identifies how trauma can provide too easy or tidy an explanation within stories:

The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forget it, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing, about the unscripted dimensions of suffering, about the odd angularities of personality.

Hanging on ‘twisty’ reveals that milked shocked responses to characters’ suffering, the trauma plot was what spoiled It’s A Sin for me on tv too (I’m clearly going against some grains of popular taste this year). Ooo, and trauma porn reminds me that the follow-up to A Little Life is out soon. I promise to read with an open mind, honest! But I retain the right to judge harshly.

Many of my favourite books this year did in some way or other go to the heart of suffering and injustice, but they did so without implausible contrivances and mawkish stitching. They worked their magic with humour, with affection, with complexity, with an awareness of mystery, with a sense of negative capability. They usually had well-crafted sentences and paragraphs, and a voice. A personality.

Though I carefully observe professional boundaries, I am giving a special mention to Jo McMillan’s The Happiness Factory, coming in January 2022. I read earlier drafts, and perhaps am biased, but it gives me great joy to see this very funny and bittersweet novel make its way to publication, and from the esteemed indie Bluemoose too. The premise is fantastic: an estranged daughter uses an inheritance to buy a sex-aid factory in China just as the country is opening up to the global economy. And the concept is matched with a real voice and plenty of heart.

I vowed to blog every month this year – and I did that, and even managed the first of the month most of the time. This one: the end of the month, an hour to go. Because. Sometimes these things become chores, and sometimes we need to move along a bit. I am going to blog this coming year only if/when I have something that requires the longer form.

Blogging, is it over?! Should I be doing a Substack? Newsletters are an exciting format, though I find I don’t actually have the time to read various of the ones I’ve subscribed to, and some are quite mansplainy. Austin Kleon’s is one I always find time for.

But what do I have to add? And everyone’s a teacher now, everyone has an offering. Masterclass does it so well. I loved the David Sedaris one recently, and we’re working through Shonda Rhimes currently – both are funny, both are practical.

One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there are lots of people with lots of things to say, but sometimes there’s a value in quiet. I’ve muted and unfollowed a lot of people this year. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded at the end of 2021. ‘Just sitting: what a relief in this busy world’ – something Natalie Goldberg said as she led us in meditation during a virtual retreat earlier this month.

The solace of sitting and sentences. Maybe that’s something to aim for in 2022. And tulips! And crocuses, and daffodils. More to plant this weekend while I continue listening to English Pastoral. Priorities.

You can also find me at my new Andrew Wille Writing Studio account on Instagram, which seems an easier place for engaged interactions. More there, and Happy New Year! I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem from Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: Eagle Poem.

Books of 2020

by Andrew | 3 Comments

My stand-out read of 2020 was a brilliant work of nonfiction. If you have not read it, you have to:

  • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is graceful, attentive, urgent, and supremely intelligent in her exploration of our relationships with the world of plants. The best sort of nature writing, and with messages we can’t ignore: about interdependence, consumption, reciprocity. I highly recommend the audiobook – the author is wise and good-humoured company, and her prose has a gorgeous tone. Also look out for podcasts with Robin Wall Kimmerer, such as this one from Emergence Magazine with Robert Macfarlane.

My other essential reads of 2020:

  • The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes fired me up! A book about land, and who owns it, and who gets to share in its riches. Another essential read, particularly as Brexit brings into question any number of power relationships for the English. Resist, my friends, resist!
  • Letters from Tove, by Tove Jansson. My hero! Edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson, and seamlessly translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. It consumed me, I consumed it, and I shall be rereading. (There’s no audiobook yet … that would be perfect.)
  • Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart. My novel of the year. I KNEW it would win the Booker Prize! There is outright literary justice.
  • Surrender, by Joanna Pocock. Again, nonfiction exploring our relationship with the land, though here we are in the American West. I loved her curious mind.
  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. I first read when I was thirteen, and it made a powerful impression on my emerging political consciousness. It came as a timely reread at the start of a year in which economic inequality and ecological degradation would be even more sharply obvious. CAN WE EVER LEARN?
  • The Beautiful Room Is Empty, by Edmund White. Why hadn’t I read this before? Because it was waiting for the hot summer of 2020, I guess.
  • Stasiland, by Anna Funder. Because East Germany. Very excited that we are getting Deutschland 89 in February.
  • Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up In America, by Natalie Goldberg. I took her online Writing Down the Bones course again this year. What a treat, what a grounding dose of sanity, what an honour to share the freshly composed writes of complete strangers. Natalie’s memoir is exceptional in showing how the practice of writing can wake us up to the unexceptional magic around us. I also read The Great Spring and The True Secret of Writing. More Natalie to come in 2021.
  • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Because I love craft books, I love St Ursula, and I LOVE the essential idea here and how it challenges conflict-driven theories of the world.
  • The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo. This novella is a real feat of imagination.
  • My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci, in a translation from the Finnish by David Hackston that really captures a gorgeous tone in the telling. Because I love love LOVE it when works of literary fiction introduce the magical in not so everyday ways too. I’m reading his Crossings at the moment, and LOVING it.

Other notable reads:

  • Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk. A different sort of book from Drive Your Plow, and perhaps not so obvious, and less accessible. But many of the best things require a little work, and this is one of them. I love her – love her intelligence and her spirit. St Olga joins my shrine.
  • Ash Before Oak, by Jeremy Cooper. I’ve yet to finish this – I’ve been reading a few entries of this long novel in diary form at bedtime. On the surface it’s about the aftermath of the renovation of an old house in the country, and has some exquisite nature writing. Below, there is another sort of renovation taking place.
  • How to Wash a Heart, by Bhanu Kapil. Yes, she is a friend! And that is why I am so thrilled this fierce long poem has been such a success.
  • A Bite of the Apple, by Lennie Goodings. Another friend! I’ve recommended it to many writers already for its generous insights into publishing and the book business.
  • Germany: Memories of a Nation, by Neil MacGregor. Lessons in a nation coming to terms with its history.
  • A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit.
  • Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain.
  • The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins – whose audio narration of her own book is superb.
  • The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Wood.
  • Fierce Attachments, by Vivian Gornick.
  • Supporting Cast, by Kit de Waal.
  • Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
  • Dune, by Frank Herbert. Another reread, and another incomplete – I was rushing before the new movie, which I am MOST EXCITED ABOUT. And now we have to wait. Disappointment 🙁 I paused at a suitable pause halfway, and I shall resume. Another of those classics that’s so timely.
  • Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann. Yet another reread, and yet another incomplete, but I am COMPELLED to list it here as Jackie and Neely and Anne and Lyon have been the BEST company as narrated by Laverne Cox while I’m planting tulip bulbs for next year (some daffs still to go). Also, this was the last book I published in-house. Just sayin’.
  • Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. BECAUSE FINALLY! Ably helped by the Ahoy Me Hearties narration of William Hootkins.
  • Cook, Eat, Repeat, by Nigella Lawson, not least because she is devoted to pleasure. I’ve never cooked so much from one book or tv series so quickly. That gingerbread! That red cabbage! THAT RICE PUDDING CAKE!

I did other things in 2020. In addition to Natalie Goldberg’s class from Shambhala, I took another excellent online course – a training in Mindful Compassion – and I’ve just started a fascinating series of online classes on Buddhist history, philosophy, and practice; both come from my beloved alma mater Naropa University.

I watched lots of enjoyable tv. Highlights: Watchmen, Eastsiders, The Mandalorian, Unorthodox, Drag Race Canada, Mrs America, Disclosure, and Bridgerton. Schitts Creek was a particular treat; we watched four specially selected episodes on Christmas Day.

I cooked a lot, and baked, and gardened, and rediscovered Paper Mate pens. Way back in February I led workshops – in person! In London! In Cambridge! Closer to home, I tended to my friendships with tulips. I Zoomed, and FaceTimed with my mom as we walked the dog. We stayed close to home. I wore a mask, and so should you.

And I read a lot. Those above were the good books! The ones I enjoyed most. I do note that many of the books that left the strongest impression on me this year were works of nonfiction. Just as the first lockdown began, I started to read a novel I’d been waiting for, but somehow the mating habits of Manhattanites felt trivial. A lot of fiction felt trivial this year!

I know we can separate writing from writer, but I also fell a little out of love with a once favourite children’s book series for its author’s muddled yet insistent failings of imagination and empathy. It’s disappointing. The world changes, and so can we. This episode left me questioning the healthiness of feeding kids simplistic tales of good vs evil.

I craved nonfiction this year: the complexity, the rawness, the lack of sheen and artifice. The luminous truth of Tove Jansson as it shone through the voice in her letters. I did read some very good fiction, but even then Shuggie Bain and The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Grapes of Wrath are rooted in autobiographical and documentary realities. A lot (A LOT) of other novels that I am not mentioning here felt overwritten, half-finished, and overhyped by their publishers or oversqueed on social media.

Of course, even nonfiction has blurrings, and so much of the reality we are fed is made up. The culture secretary wanted Netflix to issue a health warning that one of its tv shows is fiction, but as The Economist noted: ‘Does it matter if The Crown fictionalises reality? It is more truthful than the story the royals sold.’

And how about the lies and delusions sold to us by politicians who’d be in prison for fraud if they were in business? I type this as the UK finally tonight leaves the EU. I feel this is heart-breaking, not least as it was achieved so duplicitously; it feels as if people who don’t read are burning down the library. Part of me feels we’ll be back, but another part of me feels that the English with their entitlement don’t deserve it (and I say that as someone who’s 100% English). So instead, let’s hold them to their promise of a Global Britain.

Some of the most engaging writing I have read this year came in unfinished manuscripts, and I sincerely hope that this work makes progress to finding a publisher. A lot of the writing really does show a lot of promise. Though, too, I always say that publishing is not the most important thing about writing. There is a special spark that comes in reading works-in-progress and talking about writing with writers.

During the dark moments of this year it’s been important to shine a light when we can. Something else I often say, quoting a line from the musical Rent: the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.

Thank goodness for dogs and dog walks and gardens and plants and cooking and books – and a big thank you to all the doctors and nurses and teachers and drivers and other essential workers who’ve kept the world running this year.

Create! Resist! Create! Wear a mask! And shine a light when you can.

Books I Enjoyed Most In 2019

by Andrew | 1 Comment

I read a lot of good books in 2019. I am never sure about the idea of Best Books, or giving them scores out of 5. I mean, who are we to judge, and sometimes good books are simply no fun. So I like to think in terms of the books I enjoyed most, and for whatever reason: the ones that got under my skin or touched my heart or tickled my fancy or lifted my spirits in some special way. In 2019, these were:

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 
Edward Carey, Little
Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Mathias Enard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants, translated by Charlotte Mandel
Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds, translated by Anya Migdal
Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Larry Mitchell, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
Nora Ephron, Heartburn
Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, audio narration by Patrick Lawlor
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, audio narration by Richard Armitage
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, audio narration by Michael Page
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, audio narration by George Guidall
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Anthony Briggs

The stand-out has to be Ocean Vuong. Consider the sheer scale of the stories in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: stories of migration, stories of families, stories of trauma. A love story. A working-class story. The great Vietnam War novel we hadn’t read yet. And then there is his gorgeous and often mysterious prose! And he only learned how to read at age eleven! And he’s only thirty-one now! It was also a real treat to see him talk about his book at the Southbank in July too; he sang a hymn to us as well.

Olga Tokarczuk was another notable discovery, and I’m looking forward to exploring more of her work. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is quite something, gnarly and magical and surprising, if you’ve yet to have the pleasure.

I was reading Edward Carey’s Little this time last year, and I finished it early in 2019, and I knew I’d be writing about it today as one of my faves. This fictional life of Madame Tussaud is rich and immersive storytelling at its best.

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephantsis a gem of historical fiction that transported me to Constantinople in the sixteenth century. And it nearly beat Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead to best title of the year.

The Friend moved me immensely, and not just because of the dog; it just gets the tone right, and goes to show that obvious plotting isn’t everything (even for a reader who loves a juicy plot).

I vowed to read more sf and fantasy in 2019, but I didn’t. However, in a smug and thoroughly unexpected breakthrough I did read three and a half (and counting) monster works by dead white males that have been taunting me from my bookshelves for decades. For various reasons – mostly: too many books, and not doing English A level – I’ve been a latecomer to various classic authors. And I’m enjoying catching up. (Just remembered: I used the hashtag #deadwhitemales on Instagram, and it seemed to lead to me being unfollowed! Be gone, unimaginative followers, and while you’re there get some schooling in irony.)

Reading Tatyana Tolstaya’s salty stories set me towards finally embarking on War and Peace. Philip Hensher is right: it can be read in ten days! If you are on holiday, and not doing much else. And it really is a great novel, the great novel. Other than the epilogues (one dull, one disappointingly reactionary), I loved it. The Briggs translation was the one I read, but I did also dip into three others, as I love comparing different renditions into English. I guess I could learn Russian, but.

This was, in addition to the year of Ocean, the year of the audiobook. Not least, this was the way I finally cracked some of those omissions on my TBR shelves. I finally read (and loved) Portrait of a Lady (on the fifth or sixth try), and I finally understood the big-hearted and nutty brilliance of Charlies Dickens, in no small part because of the fantastic narration by Richard Armitage of David Copperfield, which bowled me over. Armitage gives the characters regional accents – the Micawbers are Brummies! And of course Dickens works so well when you’re listening to a talented performer. I feel set up for watching the forthcoming movie – and also excited for the colourblind casting that will for sure confound the unimaginative. (‘Racism is fundamentally a failure of the imagination’ – discuss. I hate binaries.)

The Left Hand of Darkness was a reread. I love rereading via a good audio narration. That trek across the snow! And just everything about this book, everything. Now I know again why I call it one of my favourites. And a terrible and crushing admission: this year I reread Wizard of Earthsea too, book form, and though there is much to love in the world-building I found the pacing a bit stodgy and the characterisation a bit dry. Maybe I should have tried the audio.

So: audiobooks are just wonderful. One has currently guided me 59 per cent of the way through Moby-Dick, which is about twice as much ground as I ever made on numerous attempts before. The narration, by William Hootkins, is very Ah-ha, me maties, and I feel confident I’ll finish it early next month. Shan’t I feel smug?! (Jury is still out on Melville’s masterpiece, though. I mean, on the one hand. But on the other. Check this space this time next year.)

Some lessons and virtue signalling: a good balance of men/women. A goodly number of works in translation. A number of indie presses. Could probably make a bit more effort with live hetero males as well as the dead white ones? Virago publishes good books. I like being taken elsewhere – other times, new places, fresh angles.

There are plenty of books I didn’t like or didn’t finish. Nowadays I tend to give up on books I’m not enjoying; life’s too short, etc. Others I might finish one day, if: time, mood. Hype certainly got in the way of others. A couple of sequels were disappointments. Perhaps this says something about me and sequels, or maybe it’s about publishers being publishers (that thing they have with more of the same).

Olive, Again was fine in the actual reading, but with hindsight it was pretty forgettable; I only read it last month, but I remember little other than the fact it depressed the fuck out of me. Which was also, I realised, how I had felt about Lucy Barton and its sequel (whose title I forget), which I read a couple of years ago. But how I had adored Olive Kitteridge! That book surprised me when I read it a few years ago, and it’s a book that withstands rereading. Yet despite this author’s command of craft and tone, somehow these others of her books lacked the wit of OK. They had, for me, an overriding grimness, and though I’m no pollyanna I’m getting too much of that in the news and on Twitter.

Find Me read like fan fiction written by the author. Which is fine, as why shouldn’t an author love their own work. But all those bisexual intergenerational relationships among the multilingual metropolitan culturati felt interchangeable and unbelievable and self-indulgent, and I ended up wishing I’d never read it. Find Me succeeded in the impossible by undermining the charm of Call Me By Your Name and my love for Out of Egypt. You can have too much of a good thing – I should have read another Henry James, shouldn’t I?

I decided to read The Testaments next year, after the hype has gone down and when I’m not so irked about the copout of the ‘unanimous’ (don’t believe it!) sharing out of the Booker Prize (ffs!). I’m very keen to read Bernardine Everisto’s Girl, Woman, Other and Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance, and I’m saving a few other books I had my eye on (ear out for?) in 2019 for audio reads. (Which take time! And dog walks.)

I am sure I have forgotten some other reads, including books on the craft of writing. I did find myself reading/rereading Natalie Goldberg and LOVING her more than ever. Oh, and Lynda Barry’s Making Comics! It’s missing from my photo above – but then again I have about ten pages left so perhaps I shall add to next year’s list. Everyone should read Lynda Barry, or just watch this. I also found Charlotte Wood’s Mind of One’s Own series of podcasts on writing really engaging.

On telly, I loved the second series of the adaptation of Big Little Lies until the last episode, which I really didn’t like, and then I read about the production and began to hater on it. Game of Thrones: the ending was just great by me, loved it, but I wish it had had a much better build-up, and I wish one actor had been treated like a grown-up and at least been given a glimmer of their character arc some seasons ago. And after giving up after watching the first three Witchers slack-jawed at clunky writing weighed down with info dumps, we’re now LOVING the new adaptation of Watchmen. My fave tv of the year though has to be the five series of Peaky Blinders. Dodgy Midlands accents aside (big caveat), it’s a cracking piece of drama, and it made me wonder if/who is writing big ballsy blockbuster novels in that mode nowadays.

I attended some good events (some certainly better than books they were promoting). I was very happy to attend Eleanor Anstruther’s launch for A Perfect Explanation. I also attended some super salons from Words Away. Another event that stood out was the series of panels organised one summer evening by Hachette Pride at a crowded Waterstones Piccadilly. Not least, they fit seventeen speakers into a couple of hours! It made me proud I used to work there in another century’s incarnation, and also pleased to see how far the world has come with LGBTQ+ rights and reading. I was particularly engaged by the panel with trans writing and writers; so much to take in. Let’s also pay heed to Patrick Gale’s warning about rights that were earned and rights can be taken away.

‘The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.’ That line, from ‘La Vie Bohème’ in the musical Rent, reminds me that in tough times we have to forge our own alternatives. One book whose playful and utopian impulse inspired me is Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, whose author, Andrea Lawlor, teaches a class in utopian literature, which led me to the peculiar book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, which is whimsical and hard to classify, but then the best things often are.

And I mustn’t forget Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, which was salve during tough moments when our dog was ill. Laughter is the best medicine (except for steroids, which saved his life).

So: this was Ocean’s year. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is one book I shall certainly be rereading on audio. And some more Dickens. And I can’t wait for the new novel by Garth Greenwell, or the memoir by Carmen Maria Machado, or Chuck Palahniuk’s book on writing.

Happy New Year! Off to watch more Watchmen.

Books of 2018

by Andrew | 2 Comments

In approximate order of reading, and including books published in other years, the books that I most enjoyed reading this year were:

Zoe Gilbert, Folk
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body And Other Parties
Xiaolu Guo, Once Upon A Time In The East 
Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
Tommy Orange, There There
Alexander Chee, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel 
David Sedaris, Calypso
Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows
Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Swan Song
Lucia Berlin, Welcome Home
Anna Burns, Milkman
Sally Rooney, Normal People

Other mentions go to: Denis Johnson, Train Dreams; Kit De Waal, A Trick To Time; Carys Davies, The Redemption of Galen Pike; Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad; Bartholomew Bennett, The Pale Ones; Armistead Maupin, Logical Family.

I’m still reading other contenders: Richard Powers, The Overstory; André Aciman, Enigma Variations; the most recent Lucia Berlin collection, Evening In Paradise. Sometimes I just have to take my time with a book – why rush something that’s good and meant to be savoured? And I only just started Edward Carey’s Little. It is witty and well paced, and I am already halfway through this captivating story about Madame Tussaud, but I doubt it’ll be finished before 2019 comes in. I’m also currently listening to Claire Danes’s fleet rendition of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey: another one for 2019?

Other books shall remain permanently unfinished, I suspect, and I still won’t get back the time or remove the bad taste in my mouth, despair in my soul, or bewilderment in my brain that came from lasting to the bitter end with a few unmentionable duds. I have said it before, and I am sure I shall say it again: are there any limits to publisher hype and social media twysteria, is there any accounting for taste?!

No matter. I like books with a dark tinge, clearly. Other common threads in what I did enjoy: voice (especially Toews, Sedaris, Burns, and Rooney); the intensity of personal stories (Guo, Chee, Sedaris, Berlin, plus various fictionalised accounts); creating community from art and politics against the epic backdrop of historical events (Great Believers, Lacuna); unworldy world-building (Zoe Gilbert’s Neverness, the stories of Carmen Maria Machado). My read of The Lacuna was certainly expanded by the marvellous Frida Kahlo exhibition at the V&A, and I particularly enjoyed Alexander Chee’s interest in gardening and tarot, and his experiences as both student and teacher of creative writing.

A special mention for well-received Xmas pressies: Anissa Helou’s Feast: Food of the Islamic World, and the celebration of Palestinian food in Joudie Kalla’s Baladi, and The Writer’s Map by Huw Lewis-Jones (which I must work into the setting session of the masterclass I’m teaching next month). And the Blue Peter craft book Here’s One I Made Earlier was a real blast to the past, especially the wizard puppet made from a Jif lemon and a dishmop.

I attended many engaging literary events in 2018. I loved seeing André Aciman, Sharlene Teo and Madeline Miller at the London Literature Festival, and look forward to reading Sharlene and Madeline’s books as soon as I can. An event at Foyle’s for the fortieth anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics was a real celebration where I was lucky also to meet Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott for the first time. And I gained much from Zoe Gilbert’s insights into writing at both workshops as well as a Words Away salon. I’m sure I’d have loved their books without meeting them anyway, but knowing someone can really deepen a connection to a book. (Sometimes! It’s not always the case.)

But an advance notice for Eleanor Anstruther’s A Perfect Explanation, which is coming in the spring, and is based on the most extraordinary true story. In 2019, I’m also excited to read Julie Cohen’s Louis & Louise, Fiona Erskine’s The Chemical Detective, and Trevor Mark Thomas’s The Bothy. I know or have had professional connections to all of these writers, so I add not only that disclaimer but also an observation that it’s good to see talent, application, and good storytelling rewarded with success in publishing.

This was also for me the year of the audiobook. The two most profound reading experiences of 2018 for me were in fact listening experiences. One was Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s Swan Song. I loved the narration of its collective third-person We: gossipy, intimate, confessional. Voice is probably the aspect of craft that draws me most of all into a story, and the voice in this novel about Truman Capote and his high-society muses especially worked its magic as narrated in audio form by Deborah Weston. This book took me somewhere else, and there’s little more I want from a story.

A very good year for very good books, but if I had to pick one that stood out for me it’s probably Milkman by Anna Burns. First, it has the most remarkable voice, in the audiobook brought to life by narrator Bríd Brennan with great force: sarcastic, funny, relentless. Maybe my experience of the audiobook gave me a seamless experience, as I was bemused by commentary on the book’s apparent difficulty. I easily find that works described as challenging can be opaque, pretentious, or dull. But I loved loved LOVED Milkman for its great looping paragraphs, and its rootless refusal of placenames, and the no-names of its characters: the wee sisters, maybe-boyfriend, longest friend, the real milkman, the unreal milkman. Again: that sarcasm, the tone, the gossipy style of storytelling. This is how people talk, right? Nothing difficult about that. (If you have any doubts: do the audiobook.)

Second, I loved Milkman‘s crafty politics: its critique of patriarchy and matriarchy and class, its depiction of the violence of borders and the madness of authoritarianism, its cry for freedom – especially (and indignantly) the freedom to read while walking. I realised that something I particularly liked about this book is that it’s basically a dystopian novel – one of my favourite genres, and right now, as we prepare to face the consequences of Brexit, most cleverly and claustrophobically rendered. (I return to a line from the musical Rent: the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.)

Milkman is one of my favourite novels of the last ten years, and it’s one I shall return to, and examine more closely – it will be interesting to see how my feelings about it evolve. Above I loved its beauty: the beauty of sunsets and French lessons, the beauty of reading while walking and camaraderie in running, the beauty of lists, the beauty of its sentences, the beauty of its fury, the surprise of its acts of compassion and creation, and, despite all the darkness, the sense of love and hope and healing it left me with. 

On that note: a Happy New Year! May 2019 again see good books and literary friendships bringing light into the world.