2020 - Best of the Books

 

A year in books

Well what a year 2020 ended up being. It started so well with some great plays (and accompanying days out in London) and then we just managed to have our whole holiday before flights were cancelled and travel banned. Our holiday seems such a distant thing now that I have to pinch myself hard to remember that it was only 10 months ago...

We came back from holiday and instantly started working from home, due to having returned from (at that time) a higher risk area. I'm not sure I'd have believed you if you'd said that this would continue for the rest of the year, and then well into 2021. It has been 44 weeks since I was 'in the office' but as I am lucky enough to still have a job, and one that I can do from home I am not complaining about this.

Not being furloughed (and indeed working my hours over 5 days not 3), plus spending more time outside means that I didn't really increase the amount of time I spent reading. Oh and like a lot of people my concentration span has been as variable as the tiering system!

Not many books stuck out for me this year as being ones I had to shout about to all and sundry (except Leonard and Hungry Paul) and I did have to go through my reading journal a couple of times to get this list, but for what it is worth...

Top Fiction (in no specific order)

• The Cat and The City by Nick Bradley (Atlantic Books)
• The Autumn of the Ace by Louis de Bernieres (Vintage)
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin)
• The Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue by Anna Fargher (Macmillan Children's Books)
• Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian (Bluemoose Books)
• The Readers' Room by Anotoine Laurain, trans. Aitkins, Boyce & Mackintosh (Gallic Books)
• A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Scribner Books)
• After the War by Tom Palmer (Barrington Stoke)
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, trans. Philip Gabriel (Transworld)
• The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, trans. Lucy Rand (Manilla Press)

Fracture by Andres Neuman, trans. Caistor & Garcia (Granta) just missed the cut too.

From this list I can see that fiction set in Japan was a common thread to my reading with 4 of these 11 set wholly or partially there. I'm also pleased to see that translated fiction features so much (4) along with independently published titles (5) and that two children's books made the list.

Non fiction (in no specific order)

• Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes (Simon and Schuster)
• One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake (Harper Collins)
• Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury)
• Limitless by Tim Peake (Cornerstone)
• Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink (Pan Macmillan)

The Biscuit by Lizzie Collingwood just missed out on the top 5 here.

My best re-read of the year was Victoria Hislop's The Island and the novella One August Night was  in my top 20 fiction reads.

The book that I read that I can't wait to talk about more is Winter in Tabriz by Sheila Llewellyn and I think that the book I am most eagerly awaiting is The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay.

Overall not a bad year for books, and here's hoping that 2021 is a good reading year - it has started well as I've begun the highly acclaimed The Missing Half  and have Where the Crawdads Sing up after that.

I haven't really set myself any specific reading goals as I so rarely manage to reach them but I will continue to name the translator and the publisher in reviews as well as looking to continue reading more independently published books as these two targets really do expand my reading incredibly.

Micro Review 2

Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem

Since the whole Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak started the one thing I have discovered about myself is that water and water landscapes are very important to me. The three months of serious lockdown became the longest time I have ever not seen the sea, and I think that I would have gone stark staring mad if we hadn't found some riverside walks close to home.

Similarly a visit to London that doesn't include sight of the Thames also feels wrong to me and I can only image Maiklem's relief at being allowed back on the foreshore again.

This book is split in to sections, generally divided by the bridges and Maiklem talks if her finds and the history of each area specific to the river bank. For a mudlarker there are certain things that are 'holy grail-like' it seems as well as each person having their own special treasures, patches and stories to tell.

At a time that you can't travel this is a wonderful read, and it makes me want to comb the banks of the Thames at low tide next time I am on the Southbank with some time to kill.

When we were younger my sister and I did a little mudlarking of our own when visiting our aunt and uncle who lived by the coast in an area that was once a brickworks. The foreshore there was full of curiosities, pieces of china and glass and when the tide (and mud) were right we would comb the area looking for bottles and the like. This book brought back those happy memories too and so another reason why I see this one ending up in my top reads of the year in a few months time.

As I was writing this post a Tweet scrolled by saying that Mudlarking has won the non-fiction Indie Book Award 2020 a fact that has made me very happy!

Put to shame by Kentishbookboy's reading!

Ooops!

Oh dear, the idea of how great the Coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown will be for catching up on books, films and TV series couldn't be more wrong for me. I am busy than ever at work and working my hours over five days and not three which somehow doesn't leave me as much time or mental space for reading.

The Kentishbookboy is having more luck than me but as the weather recently has been glorious and it was the school Easter 'holiday' he's been doing a lot more outdoor things related to science, nature, technology and inventing.

Also as he'd completed his school reading challenge I think that he enjoyed reading and not having to think about writing it up!

A new review did drop into my inbox recently and he's managed to tick of the 'poetry' square on his bingo card with this great summary:

His enthusiasm for poetry was obviously rekindled by this book as he gave his mum and dad an Easter gift poem, something that he'd composed in secret so really gave them a nice surprise.

I can also say that I am able to tick off the poetry box on my bingo sheet as a friend surprised me by having a copy of White Ink Stains by Eleanor Brown delivered to me and I've had this beside my bed and dipped in and out of an evening before sleep.  I don't think that I am ever going to become a huge poetry fan but in approaching this volume like it was full of short stories and knowing that not all of them were going to be for me, and that it is ok to just read one and then stop was definitely the right approach for this volume.

Here's hoping that work calms down enough that I can find more time and energy for reading and that the nice weather returns so I can sit in the garden with a book...I think that Carrie's War might be next on the agenda as KBB is studying WW2 this half term...