A whole bunch of non-reviews

It’s that time again, where I blitz through a whole bunch of books I’ve read or listened to in the past few months. Think of it like that viral guy on Instagram who rates outfits at awards events in one or two words (too niche a ref?)

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
I listened to this short Japanese detective novel for my book group, and it was fun – about a quarter of the total was the ‘reveal’, which did feel a bit imbalanced, but there was a likeable, unusual ‘detective’ character and a culturally specific spin on the locked room mystery. I particularly enjoyed the references to other classic crime novels, including A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, which seems to be perpetually getting reprinted and never quite making it to mainstream awareness.

On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior
A non-fic that somebody here recommended to me, I think? It goes through different virtues and relates them to classic literature – from Persuasion to Huckleberry Finn – as well as a couple of more modern books that I didn’t know about. It’s quite an unfashionable idea, that we can learn to be better people from the books we read – and KSP is writing from a specifically Christian perspective – and I found it fascinating and edifying (which is another unfashionable compliment). She writes very well about literature, and equally well about moral behaviour.

Heap House by Edward Carey
This young adult trilogy is free on Audible at the moment, and my love of Carey made it a no-brainer. It’s a world where everyone connected to an exclusive family have ‘birth objects’ that range from a safety-pin to a huge piece of furniture – and there is one boy who can hear objects endlessly repeating mysterious names. There’s a whole lot more lore that I don’t have time to write, and the chapters alternate between this nervous boy and a charismatic girl – it’s very Carey in its oddness, and perhaps a bit more enveloping in its world creation than some of my favourite books of his.

Weird But Normal by Mia Mercado
I love a book of personal essays, particularly when they link individual experiences to wider cultural phenomena, and do it well. I’ll be honest, this collection was very good and immersive, but I now don’t remember any of the specifics (unlike, say, Emilie Pine’s Notes To Self or Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, which are still with me many months/years later).

The Purgatory Poisoning by Rebecca Rogers
Since there are endless murder mysteries written (all branded to look like Richard Osman’s series), I suppose it was inevitable that one of them would be set in purgatory eventually? In Rogers’ novel, the protagonist has been murdered and has to work out from purgatory who did it. There’s a very likeable angel character, and it’s well written for this sort of thing, but the characters are quite annoying and the solution very obvious (and somehow, simultaneously, nonsensical). It won a prize for humour, but it wasn’t to my taste, humourwise.

Into the Dark by Jacqueline Yallop
I got this from the Big Green Bookshop’s clever idea of giving two strangers the same book, based on some criteria you send in. I loved the idea of Yallop’s book, looking at a cultural and scientific history of darkness, prompted by her father’s dementia. And it is fascinating. Into the Dark is so wide-ranging that often I wish she’d spent a bit more time on certain areas, and I would have liked more memoir/more about her father in it – but it is still a very good, interesting, unusual book and I’m glad the Bookshop chose it.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
I loved this long novel about the longstanding friendship between a man and woman who are obsessed with video games – turning that obsession into a successful professional life. I’ve never played a video game, but was fascinated by Zevin’s exploration of their creation and development. Above all, this is a novel about friendship, which is an overlooked relationship in the history of literature – which, of course, has always privileged romantic relationships first. The only reason I haven’t written more about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow on here is because it’s so well-known already that I don’t have anything to add to the wider discussion. But it’s brilliant (and a gift from my dear friend Mel, who proves how important friendship is).

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
A young girl suddenly discovers that she can taste the feelings of a baker/cooker in the food they have produced. It’s a brilliant conceit that sort of spirals too far from its origin, and I enjoyed the book but not as much as I would have done if Bender had kept more tautly to the initial idea.

Project 24: Book Three

We’re halfway through February, and that means I’m due another book under Project 24, right?

I was in London for a couple of days, and remembered about a lovely little bookshop called Walden Books, in Camden. I’ve only been there once before, in 2017, when I was also doing Project 24. Top of my agenda for 2026 is making sure I go there when I’m not restricted in my book-buying, as there seems to be a really good range of affordably priced books.

But I did not come away empty-handed, of course.

Jane Seth-Smith wasn’t a name I recognised, but I love the set up of multiple generations living together – and the copy was signed by Jane Seth-Smith, which is a fun bonus.

And then I discovered that Scott had reviewed this one a couple of years ago! It has tempered my expectations – it seems to be a fun novel, rather than a brilliant one – but perhaps exactly right for a certain mood.

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

Well, thank GOODNESS January is finally over. I can’t believe it was only a month. I feel like I’ve lived lifetimes in January, and none of them very good. Some of that I will share in due course, and other bits can be swept under the rug (and some is just things like spending a fortune on dentistry, which I suppose is all part of life when it’s impossible to find an NHS dentist). On the brighter side, I’ve read some wonderful books recently, none of which I have yet reviewed.

I hope your year has started better than mine! Though the world is feeling quite a dark, scary place at the moment. I’m largely deciding to go for denial and hiding this time around, as all the anger and sadness didn’t really help me or anybody else last time.

As ever, we can turn for some mild solace to a book, a blog post, and a link:

Three Men in New Suits by JB Priestley

1.) The blog post – I loved Rohan’s take on one of the more recent British Library Women Writers titles, Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts. And not just because she says nice things about my afterword!

2.) The link – this is actually another blog post, but I’m including as the link because it feels so much MORE than a blog post. Victoria/LitLove at Tales From The Reading Room has posted the first of (hopefully) a series of personal essays, and it’s simply extraordinarily good. This one looks back at her teen years, and it makes me very much hope a book comes eventually.

3.) The book – the Imperial War Museum emailed me recently about an upcoming reprint that sounds really interesting – J.B. Priestley’s Three Men in New Suits, about men returning from war. It’ll be out in April. They also have a backlist that I know very little about and which looks very interesting. Any recommendations?

Unnecessary Rankings! Daphne du Maurier

While trying to think whom to cover for another Unnecessary Rankings! post, I was looking around my bookcases and alighted on Daphne du Maurier. She was prolific, and I’ve read quite a few of her books. But I am slightly wary – because I also haven’t read a fair number of her books. And there’s always the danger someone will reply “You haven’t read Jamaica Inn??” or something similar. Well no, dear reader, I have only read 10 of du Maurier’s books. And yet here we go, I’m going to rank them…

10. The Progress of Julius (1933)
Later reprinted as Julius, this novel about the rags-to-riches of a selfish, cruel man is fairly well-written – but I’ve put it last because I hated reading it. The whole thing just felt so antisemitic and I ended up feeling dirty reading it.

9. The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
There’s a reason you seldom hear anybody talking about this one. I found this story of two brothers getting to re-know each other in a beautiful Italian city interesting for the scenery, but otherwise pretty boring.

8. The Rebecca Notebook (1981)
The title essay of this slim collection is an outline of Rebecca and gives the sort of insight into its writing history that you wouldn’t normally get. It’s fascinating. But the other essays in the collection are more or less padding, and Daphne du Maurier doesn’t have a lot of interest to say about religion, but says it a fair few times.

7. The House on the Strand (1969)
The narrator, Dick Young, takes an experimental drug that transports him to the 14th century – where he follows the man who lived there then, Roger, and Isolda, married to a powerful local knight. Given my distaste for historical fiction, this was very much a mixed reception for me. I loved all the sections set in the present day, and was bored rigid by the 14-century stuff.

6. Short stories (various)
I’ve grouped all of these together, even though I’m sure there are some I haven’t read, as I’ve read a few collections and can’t remember what was where. ‘Don’t Look Now’ is deservedly famous, and I like all her stories that use creeping discomfort to create a gradual terror.

5. Frenchman’s Creek (1941)
This novel caused an infamous disagreement between me and Our Vicar’s Wife (aka my Mum) – when I reviewed it in 2012 and my Mum had a post the following day, defending the pirate! I maintain that the heroine and hero of this novel are horrible people, as she abandons a kind, good man to have an affair with a selfish man for whom ‘toxic masculinity’ could have been invented. But I can’t deny that it’s a very compelling and enjoyable read nonetheless.

4. Gerald: A Portrait (1934)
Daphne du Maurier’s biography of her father is an absolute delight. It is incredibly subjective, of course, and many of the passed-down anecdotes about his early life are probably apocryphal – but what makes it wonderful are du Maurier’s beautiful writing and the way we are immersed into Gerald du Maurier’s life as an actor and theatre manager. Daphne du Maurier brings the theatrical world alive, and the whole book is a lovely, fascinating tribute.

3. The Scapegoat (1957)
You do have to swallow quite a lot of disbelief in the premise of this novel – an English man is forcibly swapped with his French doppelganger, and nobody in the strange new family seems to suspect anything – but, after that, it’s worth it. As a novel of mistaken identity it is great fun – as a novel about the legacy of France’s occupation, it is very moving.

2. My Cousin Rachel (1951)
Did she or didn’t she? No novel does ambiguity better than My Cousin Rachel, which has – at its heart – the culpability or otherwise of a young widow, in the eyes of the deceased man’s cousin, Philip. His mind goes back and forth, putting him deeper and deeper into indecision and torment. Du Maurier walks a tightrope with impeccable judgement, and it is the perfect book group book.

1. Rebecca (1938)
If I were feeling all contrarian, I’d put something else at the top – but the reason Rebecca is the best known is because it’s the best. The unnamed Second Mrs de Winter comes to Manderley as the much-younger new bride of Maxim de Winter, who throws her to the wolves in the form of du Maurier’s greatest creation – the haunting, formidable housekeeper Mrs Danvers. The twists and secrets keep you guessing, and it’s the perfect updating of the gothic novel – still as chilling and engaging now as it was all those decades ago.

What do you make of my rankings? And which of her other books should I prioritise?

O is for Oyeyemi

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

How has it been 2.5 years since I last added to this series? Time – and this is a thought I’d just come up with myself – flies. Anyway, as a reminder, I am very, very slowly going through the alphabet in my shelves, picking out an author I like an talking a bit more about my collection of their books. Some take up a lot of space (Leacock, Milne, Nichols having been a prolific run) – others are in rather shorter supply.

How many books do I have by Helen Oyeyemi?

As things currently stand, I have seven books by Oyeyemi – looking at my shelves, they are PeacesMr FoxThe Icarus GirlThe Opposite HouseWhite is for Witching, Boy, Snow, Bird and Gingerbread. Which just goes to show that I might alphabetise my shelves, but I’m not very good at putting books in publication order.

How many of these have I read?

VERY out of character, but I’ve read them all! I’ve even read a seventh book by Oyeyemi – her short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, but decided not to hold onto that one.

How did I start reading Helen Oyeyemi?

While The Icarus Girl came out in 2005, a couple of years before I started book blogging, I was pretty sure I was sent it as a review copy… maybe I got The Opposite House (2007) and asked for her first novel to be added too? Since then, she has been one of the rare living novelists that I’m a completist for – though have yet to get or buy her latest.

General impressions…

…having said the above, I’m not really sure where I stand on Oyeyemi now. I LOVE Boy, Snow, Bird and it is the book that comes to mind most often when people ask me to recommend a book to read – why that one is top of mind, I don’t know. I think Mr Fox and The Icarus Girl are brilliant. And all the others… I find a bit too confusing. Oyeyemi, for me is always hovering between interestingly experimental and totally baffling. To be honest, I thought I’d given Peaces and Gingerbread away, and I might do that now… I simply had no idea what was going on for most of the time I was reading those. In fact, this will be the first entry in this alphabet series where I end up with fewer books than when I started. Someone cleverer than me will enjoy those two books, and they’re heading now to my charity shop pile. I’ll keep the Oyeyemi books I love or like, and have some chance of re-reading.

Project 24: Books 1 and 2

Project 24 is in full swing! If you missed it, it’s a year where I only buy 24 books for myself. This must be the fourth time I’ve done Project 24, at least, and it’s always a fun experiment in (a) seeing what priorities I make and (b) going slightly mad. I’ve already started dreaming about buying books. I wish I were joking.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to spot that 24 books in a year is two books a month – though, of course, sometimes a trip to a bookshop can use up a few months’ worth in one fell swoop.

As it is, we are nearing the end of January and I’ve already bought my first two books for the year – here they are:

First up is Latchkey Ladies by Marjorie Grant. It’s been on my wishlist for a long time, ever since Handheld Press republished it – and it might have stayed there for a long time, except the Handheld Press closing down sale made me realise I’d better leap quickly. In a non-Project-24 year, I might have bought far more in the sale. Their catalogue is so wide-ranging that I never knew whether or not I’d like a book they published, but some of their choices were excellent and I have high hopes this will be among them.

And I wasn’t planning on getting The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick, an author who was only on my horizons as a guest on the Unburied Books podcast… but then Jacqui reviewed it. Well, if you can read that review and not order it immediately, then you’re a stronger person than me. I’m very into books in vignettes at the moment, and Daunt Books are always a safe bet for excellently chosen books – wide-ranging too, but impeccably picked. I instantly ordered it to my local Waterstones and here it is!

Normally I prioritise secondhand books during Project 24, because the chances of coming across particular books is obviously less guaranteed than if I can just order it from a bookshop next year – but I’m sure you can see why these two books HAD to end up my shelves.

I’ll keep you posted with my Project 24 choices, and I look forward to getting through some of the many hundreds of unread books on my shelves.

Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul

I first came across Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul simply by browsing in Waterstones Piccadilly. It was on one of those display tables, and I was struck by how beautiful it was. Jonathan Cape have done a lovely job. It’s a chunky hardback with thick paper, and a striking photograph on the front from Celia Paul’s studio. Everything about it feels luxurious and artistic and interesting – but I didn’t know anything about Celia Paul or Gwen John, and so I felt I couldn’t indulge.

A few blog posts and instagram posts and whatnot later, it was firmly on my wishlist. My friend Clare bought it for my most recent birthday – and it was the perfect book to read in the period between Christmas and New Year. I absolutely loved it.

If, like me, you’re not familiar with Paul or John – Gwen John was an artist who lived 1876-1939. She grew up in Wales and later studied at the Slade School of Art, becoming one of the foremost female artists of her generation – indeed, many would argue simply one of the foremost artists.

Celia Paul, meanwhile, is an artist who is still painting today. She grew up in a vicarage and, like John, studied at the Slade School of Art and is (according to her author blurb) ‘recognised as one of the most important painters working in Britain today’. Importantly, she was born twenty years after Gwen John died – and so Letters to Gwen John is not a collection of letters as we might be most familiar with the concept. Rather, Paul is writing to a kindred spirit who will never read the letters or write back. It is an imagined sisterhood between women with a great amount in common.

Besides their profession, there is a significant commonality that Paul writes a lot about in this book: both women were associated with more famous, male artists. Gwen John’s brother, Augustus John, seems to have been very supportive – and she was in a relationship with (and model for) Auguste Rodin, who was 35 years older than her. Paul, meanwhile, had a ten-year relationship and a son with Lucian Freud – starting when she was 18 and he was in his mid-50s. This is not overtly a ‘me too’ story from Paul, but it’s hard to imagine any sexual relationship between an 18-year-old and a 55-year-old that doesn’t have, at the very least, a severe power imbalance.

Paul doesn’t shy away from the non-painting elements of their lives. Or, rather, much Letters to Gwen John explores how these preoccupations and the demands of powerful men can interfere with the main purpose of your life: your art. There is something both refreshing and shocking about the way she is clear that nothing – including her son – is allowed to interefere with her art. The brutality of her determination shouldn’t feel any more shocking because she is a woman – Lucian Freud certainly didn’t let paternity interfere with his work – except that she also fixates on the maternal guilt she feels.

I devoted myself to him at these times. I think he might have preferred it if I had been less intense and more casual, like the other mums he observed when he went round to friends’ houses, who spent a lot of time speaking on the phone or were preoccupied with housework. I didn’t spend much time on either of those things. My mother mostly shopped and cooked for us all. Generally the mothers of his friends didn’t leave home to go to work. Most of them didn’t work. I felt ashamed of my ambition, and I felt ashamed to be a single mum, I was ashamed of being younger than them. I couldn’t explain to most of them what my work involved. When I told one of them that I was a painter, she said, ‘That must be very relaxing.’ I know you were indignant when people reacted to your work with similar incomprehension. I didn’t feel indignant; again, I felt only shame. How could I excuse myself by saying that I often lay curled up on the floor of my studio, just thinking and planning and trying to quiet my soul, until I was focused enough to start work?

I appreciated the total honesty with which Paul writes. It felt genuinely like letters to a friend – letters that expose the soul, that are stumbling towards a philosophy. She exposes her self and her decisions with a mix of determination and uncertainty. Paul is sure that her art has been worth sacrificing everything to – and yet, simultaneously, unable to escape guilt. As she writes of John, in the sections between letters that are more exploratory biography: ‘Despite her apparent timidity, Gwen was always certain of her talent.’

This is the personal side of Letters to Gwen John – but what made me love the book so much was the way John treats her writing as the meeting of minds. There is so much about the artistic process in here – about the choices that can make or break a painting; about the rationale behind decisions and what composition or colouring are intended to convey. She writes often of the fear of ‘killing’ a painting, or of a painting ‘coming to life’. I loved how she combined very practical concerns – the exact paint colours she uses, and the techniques – with something much more nebulous.

I mixed Prussian Blue, Chrome Green, Vandyck Brown, Payne’s Grey and Brilliant Yellow and spread it in a thin layer across my willow tree. It already suggested water. But then I started to feel haunted by the loss of my tree, and I scraped off the grey layer of paint with this scraper that I’d bought from a hardware shop. It left horizontal lines across the image, suggestive of water, and my willow appeared like a ghostly reflection. I thought maybe I’d discovered a mystical new interpretation to a way of painting. I want to do more paintings of reflections in water. I thought I needed to intensify the gleaming highlights of the watery streaks across the tree. I couldn’t leave it alone, and I fear I may have killed it. It took all my courage to take it off the easel and place it, stretcher side out, against the wall. I’ll look at it again after a while.

One of the most special things about the luxury of this book is how many paintings – both by Paul and John – are reproduced. Often they are placed next to each other in a way that feels like a conversation between images. Paul’s self-portrait by John’s, for instance, or two domestic interiors. More paintings are discussed than included, unsurprisingly, so I did turn to Google images often – but it’s wonderful to have so many of the paintings that Paul writes about available to see in between chapters.

I enjoy painting sometimes but am certainly not an artist – yet I loved this glimpse into an imagined community, a sorority of artists who have had to battle forces external and internal – and who remained totally committed to their integrity and purpose as creative artists. Paul writes beautifully (annoyingly well for someone who is only latterly a writer!) and Letters to Gwen John is a special gem of a book.

A final haul before Project 24

Have I said on here that I’m doing Project 24 again in 2025? I think I’ll do it ever two or three years, to try and stem the flow of books into my house – and to read more books from my shelves. For those not in the know, Project 24 is simply a self-imposed rule to only buy 24 books throughout the year. Well, for myself. I can buy books for other people, and I can get books as gifts.

Before that kicked off, I did go to a couple of bookshops in Bristol – and got some books as Christmas presents from friends and family. Here is my December pile (actually with a couple missing, because I’m currently reading them – being the Taskmaster book from my brother, and The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons from my parents).

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

On Boxing Day, we were in Bristol city centre to a (very fun) escape room. While we there, I thought I’d check if any secondhand bookshops were open – and came across Second Page. It’s on the top floor of one of those rather dispiriting shopping centres that many UK cities and towns have, where everything is neglected and sad – except for this wonderland of a shop. The prices were pretty high, but the selection made up for it. Some really lovely, interesting stuff in there. I’ve been meaning to read some Didion – all the more since she featured in the 1970 Club – and, when I saw these waiting to be priced on the counter, I jumped at the chance.

Homesick by Jennifer Croft
From the same shop – this was mentioned by someone in answer to my request for more books told in fragments/vingnettes.

The Gutenberg Murders by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning
Also the same shop – how had I not realised that more than one book was back in print by Bristow & Manning? A few years ago, their brilliant murder mystery The Invisible Host was one of my best reads. I’m intrigued to see whether lightning strikes twice.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
This came from the other bookshop I visited – the always-reliable Amnesty charity shop on Gloucester Road. The prices are very affordable and the selection is pretty interesting. I’ve seen this Yagisawa in lots of front-of-store piles in bookshops, and always willing to take a gamble on a book set in a bookshop.

Kinds of Love by May Sarton
I’ve fallen in love with Sarton’s non-fiction, but not yet found her fiction that really captures me – but, having tried a few, definitely want to keep hunting.

Bookshops by Jorge Carrion
The first of a few gifts from my parents, from my wishlist. I put this on years ago, when I got a copy for a friend and wished I’d got one myself.

Why Women Read Fiction by Helen Taylor
Also on my wishlist, though I can’t remember how it got there. Flicking through, it looks slightly scholarly, though I will read any book about reading.

Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
Another wishlist title from my parents, and I don’t know how I managed to resist grabbing a copy myself. It’s about the Jane Austen fandom – having really enjoyed All Roads Lead To Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith, about teaching Austen in Latin America, I think this could be of the same ilk.

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
I keep stockpiling Cather. I must be nearing the end by now?

Those Fragile Years by Rose Franken
I have bought SO many of Franken’s Claudia series despite (a) having not read any, and (b) not owning the first in the series. I figure I’ll get them all and then work out whether or not I like them?

Remind Me Who I Am, Again by Linda Grant
This 0ne has been on my peripherals for a very long time – it’s Grant’s non-fiction account of her mother’s gradually worsening dementia. Will need to read when I’m feeling resilient…

Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent
A gift from my dear friend Lorna – if you don’t know Susie Dent, she is the beloved ‘dictionary corner’ co-host of Countdown, and she’s now turned her hand to a murder mystery. I have higher hopes for hers than for many celeb murder mystery writers, and the world of lexicography is certainly up my street.

William Morris: The Story of His Life by Giancarlo Ascari and Pia Valentinis
A graphic biography of Morris (the painter rather than the car guy) – a flick through and this looks really beautiful.

I would say ‘where should I start?’, but I started immediately with the un-pictured Taskmaster and Stella Gibbons books. So… where would you go next?

2024: Some Reading Stats

Happy new year, everyone. As has become an annual tradition for so many of us in the book blogging world, let’s take a look back at 2024 in reading stats! (Hopefully you’ve already spotted my favourite reads of the year.) As ever, I’ll be comparing to my previous year’s stats post – 2023 stats are here.

Number of books read
I read 189 books last year, which is nine up on 2023. Not a massive increase, and 12 fewer than 2022, but it helped that my eyes weren’t too bad throughout the year. I think my days of reading voraciously without thinking about my eyes are over, but an army of eyedrops are making things very doable.

Number of audiobooks
Somehow this continues to increase – I think probably due to Spotify offering their 15 hours of audiobooks per month, which started towards the end of 2023. I listened to 71 audiobooks (compared to 67 in 2023) – meaning I read 118 print books (compared to 113 in 2023).

Male/female writers
It wasn’t until a while after I finished my top 10 list that I realised they were all written by women. And, as ever, women dominated my reading: 118 books by women, 65 by men, and 6 by men and women together or authors whose gender I didn’t know. Having said all that, my 64% female reading is the lowest for a long time – down from 69% last year.

Fiction/non-fiction
I read 138 works of fiction and 51 works of non-fiction. It’s a slightly lower ratio of non-fiction, but it seems to usually hover around the 25% mark. After one year of anomaly in 2023, I’m back to my inadvertent trick of reading more non-fiction by men than by women (though only 26 vs 24, and one by a man and a woman).

Books in translation
Matching the total of 2023, with 10 books in translation. They were from Japanese x2, Italian x2, Spanish x2, French x2, Czech and Swedish.

Re-reads
I think this is my biggest year for re-reads ever, at 18 titles (it was 14 in 2023). That includes three books – Passing by Nella Larsen, Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts, and The Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning – that I read twice in 2024.

New-to-me authors
I was pleased to see that eight of my top 10 books were by new-to-me authors, but did that represent a trend for the year? Well, 78 of the 189 books were new authors to me, making it 41% – last year it was 38%, so it’s a small increase.

Most disapppointing book
As ever, it’s the books you have the highest hopes for that end up being the most disappointing. I was sad that Mollie Panter-Downes’ At The Pines wasn’t more interesting, and was surprised by how bad I found George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter, given his usual reliability. Perhaps the most disappointing, given how long it had been on my shelf and how much I expected to love it, was the dull Spinster by Sylvia Ashton-Warner.

Most surprisingly good book
After having a range of responses to Margaret Kennedy’s novels, from DNF to liking, I was surprised by how much I loved The Oracles. And, for book club, I didn’t expect to find Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang such a fun, thought-provoking page-turner.

Short stories
It feels like a year where I read a lot of short story collections… but, looking back, it was only seven. Isn’t it funny how something can feel like a theme of the year, until you look back. Still, more than usual!

Seeing myself in books
I very seldom read to see myself reflected – much more likely to empathise with a 1930s housewife than with someone like me. But a handful of non-fiction books this year really spoke to my heart – particularly Caroline Crampton’s A Body Made of Glass about health anxiety and How To Be Multiple by Helene de Bres about the philosophy of identical twins.

Authors who died this year
Two authors I love died this year – I read a couple of Lynne Reid Banks’ books after she died, partly in tribute, but when I read Trespasses by Paul Bailey I marvelled that he was still with us – until that was sadly not the case a few months later.

Book by 2024’s Booker winner (but not that book)
After Samantha Harvey’s book appeared on A Good Read, I hastened to the audiobook and found it fascinating – but this was before she won the Booker, and it wasn’t Orbital – it was The Shapeless Unease, her non-fiction work about insomnia.

Animals in book titles
Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce, The Grasshoppers Come by David Garnett, The XYZ of Cats by Beverley Nichols – and that was it this year. What to make of the drop from 14 to 3? Probably… nothing much.

Shortest Title
A re-read of Day by Michael Cunningham, with Back by Henry Green and 2084 by John Lennox close behind.

Persephones
I always intend to read a lot of them, and I always seem to fail – just two this year, A Woman’s Place by Ruth Adam and a re-read of They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple. Well, I suppose Diary of a Provincial Lady is also a Persephone, but I didn’t read the Persephone edition.

Strange things that happened in books this year
A man meets his dead parents, a woman’s doppelganger commits murder, a woman’s doppelganger gets radicalised, two men claim to be Lord Lucan, a duchess disappears, a baron lives entirely in the trees, a couple tell devastating truths in a power cut, a woman follows her shape-shifting lover around the world through clues in periodicals, a violent dystopia takes over Britain, dead people dance on a Scottish island, people believe they are made of glass, a mirror is a portal to the past, a woman on a psychiatric ward travels to the distant future, and a girl cannot leave a Norwich theatre without dying.

#134: Our Top 10 Books of 2024

Happy new year! In episode 134, Rachel and I share our favourite books reads in 2024 – counting down from ten to one. And we each pick one of the other’s top 10 to read for our next episode!

Thanks so much for everyone who listens to the podcast and gets in touch. It means such a lot to us.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are below – but if you want to avoid spoilers for our favourite books, then don’t read this list too carefully!

Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul
The Years by Annie Ernaux
The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner
The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis
George Orwell
Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
My Darling Villain by Lynne Reid Banks
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
The Farthest Away Mountain by Lynne Reid Banks
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
The Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Weather by Jenny Offill
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton
Foster by Claire Keegan
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
Antarctica by Claire Keegan
Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Wifedom by Anna Funder
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Oracles by Margaret Kennedy
The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola
Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett
Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Spring House by Cynthia Asquith
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
A Clergyman’s Daughter by George Orwell