Better late than never: a 2017 round-up

I’ve never done my annual round-up of reads QUITE this late in the year, and I don’t know how it’s April already. But in the spirit of better late than never, I thought I’d tell you a bit about what I read last year. With some STATS. And with some comparisons with my stats for 2016.

Number of books read
I read 107 books last year – which is seven more than I completed in 2016, and one more than I read in 2015. The only reason I can give for the slight increase is living on my own giving me a bit more time for reading – and perhaps the fact that I had more holidays than usual, with the extra leave time my new job gave me!

Male/female authors
I read 47 books by men and 60 books by women, which is about the usual ratio for me – though I read 44 fiction books (novels, stories, plays etc) by women and only 21 fiction books by men – with the ratio weighted towards men in the non-fiction category. Huh. It’s also the first year for a while where I didn’t read any books written by a man and a woman.

Fiction/non-fiction
65 of the books I read were fiction, and 42 were non-fiction. It did feel like I read quite a lot of non-fiction last year, but I’m still surprised it was quite that high. Still more fiction, of course, and I doubt that will ever swap around, but… watch this space?

Books in translation
An all-time high of eight books last year – so how did I do in 2017? Well, I read six – My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (from Italian), Closely Observed Trains by Bohumil Hrabal (from Czech), Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig (from German), The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Ayme (from French), and Letters From Klara by Tove Jansson (from Swedish). So, not a huge number – but I do like that they were all from different languages.

Most-read author
There was never going to be any doubt about this. 2017 was the Year of Beverley, and I read six books by him. At least that number still waiting for me on the shelf, thankfully!

Re-reads
I re-read six books in 2017 (one more than 2016), and nearly all of them were either for the podcast or for book group. And, again, I’m pretty happy at keeping the re-read number down – so I can get through the tbr piles.

New-to-me authors
In the past two years, I’ve read 47 new-to-me authors. Have I kept to that number?? Er, no. But pretty close – 53 of the books I read were by authors I hadn’t read before, so it’s still very much on the half/half cusp. Again, I’m pretty happy with that ratio.

Most disappointing book
Probably the Elena Ferrante, because so many people had told me how good it was. And it found it rather so-so and a bit boring. But I’m often a bit bored by books about childhood, so perhaps I should persevere with the next one at some point… or perhaps I shouldn’t. We’ll see.

Oh, wait, it’s got to be The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I’ve had it on my shelf for 14 years, and found it enormously too long, and quite tedious. Sorry! Looking at my list, there were quite a few disappointments… but I won’t linger over those.

Most delightful non-Beverley discovery

All this fuss about Beverley Nichols, it’s important to remember that I also read Emily Eden for the first time. Her Semi-Attached House and Semi-Detached Couple are well-crafted delights that bear comparison with Jane Austen.

Most deceptive mention of an author in a title

I loved Nina Sankovitch’s memoir about reading a book every day for a year – Tolstoy and the Purple Chair – but only one of them was Tolstoy, and it was such a bizarre idea to call the book that. It can only have put off readers fearful of Tolstoy-heaviness, and disappointed Tolstoy fans.

Most deceptive mention of a book in a title

Does Jacob’s Room is Full of Books by Susan Hill count? I don’t know if I can get over my frustration that the title doesn’t work on two levels in the way that Howards End is on the Landing did.

Most horrifyingly racist book

The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells took a rather unexpected and vile racist turn towards the end. Ugh.

Favourite comparison

Reading two novelised accounts of the Bywaters/Thompson murder case back to back – F Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin To See the Peepshow and E.M. Delafield’s Messalina of the Suburbs – was extremely rewarding and interesting. It also led to one of my favourite podcast episodes.

Animals in book titles
There are always some, somehow. I never think about this until I get to the end of the year (ahem, or April) and find that a whole bunch have turned up again – so which were there in 2017? Mostly birds, oddly. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson, Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell, The Pelicans by E.M. Delafield, The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, and Swans on an Autumn River by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Strange things that happened in books this year

Always my favourite section – and everybody else’s too, as far as I can tell from the comments. Here’s a selection of this year’s oddities – a man travelled through time to medieval England; a man slept for decades and found he was the leader of a revolution; time was rationed based on wealth; a servant was reincarnated as a peacock; the Brontes popped up in Woolworths; a man walked through walls; a hearing trumpet opens up a surreal world; a couple thought they might be father and daughter; a couple were brother and sister; someone got murdered in the theatre; someone survived suicide to be murdered; an ape went loose in London; boating rights somehow led to communism.