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Hopefully you’ve already seen my Top Books of 2020 – and now its time to do one of those fun reading stats posts, that delight other bloggers and blog readers and probably totally baffle normal people. Along the way, I’ll be comparing with my stats from 2019.

Number of books read
I read 147 books in 2020 – up from 133 last year, though down from 153 in 2018. The telling thing there, though, is that in 2018 and 2019 I did ’25 Books in 25 Days’ projects, which bolstered the total. 2020 was still a bumper reading year for me – thanks to the pandemic.

(My own mystery illness meant I couldn’t read for a bit, but thankfully my eyes have largely been ok since the summer. Other symptoms ongoing, and hoping for a diagnosis in 2021. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.)

Male/female writers
92 of my 147 books were by women, with 53 by men and 2 by women and men. That’s 62.5% of my books by women – it’s usually about 55%. The difference is probably explained by all the reading I’ve been doing to find new titles for the British Library Women Writers series.

Fiction/Non-fiction
I read 97 fiction books (69 by women, 28 by men) and 50 non-fiction (23 by women, 25 by men, 2 by both). All of those stats are pretty similar to 2019’s. It’s funny how these things work out.

Books in translation
2019 was my all-time high for reading books in translation, at 11 – 2020 took a hit, at only five. They’re from Greek/Hebrew (guess that book!), German, and three from French.

Most-read author
Three authors tied for first, with me reading four books by them – E.M. Delafield, Beverley Nichols, and Marilynne Robinson. All big favourites of mine – though only two Robinsons and one Delafield were first-time reads.

Re-reads
Speaking of, I re-read 15 books in 2020, which is much more than usual. A few were pandemic-propelled comfort reads (Austen), some were Marilynne Robinsons because of Jack coming out, but almost all were connected with British Library Women Writers series.

New-to-me authors
I usually read about half new-to-me authors, but this year only 63 of the books I read fall into this category – 43%. Not my lowest ever, but apparently I needed some reliables this year.

Number of audiobooks
I thought all those government-mandated walks would have amped up my audiobook total, but I only read eight books that way. Some of them were very chunky though.

Shortest book title
A few four-letter titles: Home and Jack by Marilynne Robinson, Emma by Jane Austen, and Them by Jon Ronson.

Strangest author name
It’s not a strange name in itself, but reading Love, Interrupted by Simon Thomas was quite a surreal experience – glancing down to see my own name repeatedly.

Most disappointing book
I think Mr Kronion by Susan Alice Kerby. I’d loved Miss Carter and the Ifrit so much, but this one wasn’t in the same league at all.

Worst book I read
This wasn’t really a disappointment, because I was expecting it to be rubbish and it was: Self-Leadership and the One-Minute Manager by Ian Blanchard, that I read for work. Management books are not at all my cup of tea anyway, and they never will be if they’re all as appallingly written as this one.

Word that came up a lot unexpectedly
Three of the novels I read this year had the word ‘Citadel’ in the title – The Citadel by A.J. Cronin, Proud Citadel by Dorothy Evelyn Smith, and Citadel of Ice by my mum, Anne Thomas (you can order it here!)

Persephones
Last year I said I wanted to read more Persephones from my shelf, after reading three in 2019. Last year I read… one. Patience by John Coates, which was very good.

Names in book titles
After I read 72 books with names in the title for Project Names in 2019, I thought it would be interesting to see how many I managed when I wasn’t trying – well, it clearly made a difference, as I only read 20 in 2020.

Animals in book titles
Only three in 2019, which is lower than usual. In 2020, there were The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier, All the Dogs of My Life by Elizabeth von Arnim, The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellie, Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons, A Summer Bird Cage by Margaret Drabble. Apparently I was mostly drawn to birds last year.

Strange things that happened in books this year
A stepping stone tested chastity, two women swapped bodies, a husband and wife swapped bodies, three women stole identities, a serial killer tried to win a title, someone pretended to write a biography of Byron, a husband disappeared, two cities inhabited the same space, patients woke from comas, a man hunted the devil in Cornwall, someone gave birth in the Blitz, a body was found in a sealed tunnel, chairs were made of human skin, a shark crashed through a roof, and a borrowed overcoat led to abduction.

Thanks to everyone who entered my Christmas giveaway of British Library Women Writers titles – I’ve done a draw via random.org, and the winners were Neva L, Margaret L, and Deborah V. I’ve emailed you to ask for your addresses.

I really hope the winners enjoy their books!

In 2019, Rosemary joined me in #ProjectNames – one of the most rewarding reading projects I’ve done. Last year, she decided to keep going with #ProjectPlaces. I asked if she wouldn’t mind sharing her experiences – and she has kindly written the guest post, below. You can find Rosemary’s blog at Scones and Chaise Longues.

Most of us haven’t been further than the Co-Op this year (not that I’m complaining, as I’m privileged to have beautiful countryside on my doorstep – and the ladies in my little local Co-Op are lovely..)   By some happy chance, however, I decided in January to set myself a reading theme, and having so much enjoyed Simon’s #projectnames in 2019, I hit upon #projectplaces.

Reading only books already resident on my sagging shelves, I would choose titles that either were, or included, the name of a place – though as you’ll see, I interpreted that requirement rather liberally to say the least. So throughout these strange stay-at-home seasons I’ve been to France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, North America and even once round the world.  The majority of my travels were, though, in the UK, from Cornwall to Cumberland and the Hog’s Back to the Highlands and Islands. It’s been great.

I didn’t set out to choose mainly English locations, but when I think about it, it’s hardly surprising that my preference for certain types of novels kept me firmly in the villages of everyday and the country estates of days past. I went with Angela Thirkell to Pomfret Towers and (Christmas at) High Rising, to (The School at) Thrush Green with Miss Read and to Turnham Malpas with Rebecca Shaw (Trouble in the Village, Whispers in the Village, The Village Newcomers.) Turnham Malpas is a bit like Midsomer without the murders; there’s always some intrigue going on, whereas I’ve lived in my fair share of villages and, much as I love them, intrigue is not their USP – or maybe I just don’t notice.)

Beginning, though, in my beloved Scotland and one of my very best reads of 2020: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker;

‘Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, oddly attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw…’

I’d never even heard of Barker before, and without the project in mind this strange and compelling story of Janet, a misfit child growing up in Auchnasaugh, the remote Aberdeenshire home of her eccentric, dysfunctional family – a place where eagles fly and hogweed flourishes – would probably have languished, ignored, for evermore. Now I recommend this haunting novel far and wide. (My full review is here) and I was delighted to find that it is being reprinted by Orion in October 2021

Still in Scotland, the project encouraged me to take up Compton Mackenzie’s Monarch of the Glen, which may have been the inspirations for the TV series, but is quite unlike it. (And no it’s not, as my husband, ventured to suggest, ’the book of the film’…) Persevere with Mackenzie’s slightly convoluted style and you will be rewarded with a light and entertaining story, one that is very much anchored to a time, and especially to a place.

I often find short stories frustrating – ‘What happened next?’ is my plaintive cry – but Thomas Clark’s Selkirk FC vs The World proved the exception. Selkirk is a Borders football club struggling in the middle of serious rugby country, and in 2015 – for reasons impossible to fathom – it appointed Clark its first ever writer-in-residence. The result was this outstanding collection of stories and poems.  Clark captures the cynicism, resilience and grimly morose nature of the area perfectly; some pieces are funny, some sad, and there is even an outstanding science fiction story, The Keys of Paradise – definitely something I’d never have looked at without the project to take me there.

The US provided me with comedy (Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon Summer, 1956), black history (Margo Jefferson’s eye-opening Negroland), sagas (Joan Medlicott’s Covington books, and even Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove series – yes, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not proud…) and academic intrigue in the form of my much loved Amanda Cross’s The Theban Mysteries. Set not in Greece but New York City, this is another outing for Kate Fansler, professor of English, lover of Austen, ardent feminist and (usefully) rich as Croesus.  In the 1970s Virago published many women crime writers, and I have to say some of them did not deserve this honour – but Cross (pen name of Carolyn Heilbrun, first ever female professor of English at Cornell) was one who did, and I still re-read her books with great joy.

Back in Europe I went to Florence with the late Diana Athill, and to Lake Garda with Rumer Godden’s Battle of the Villa Fiorita. The Black Forest Summer by Mabel Esther Allan may be a 1950s children’s book, but it changed my ideas about Germany, a country of which I have seen only Berlin. Now I want to visit Freiburg, the setting of this perhaps unlikely but most enjoyable story of an orphaned London family being rescued by their father’s affluent brother.

Irish writers seem to have a particular talent for the short story, and so it was that I read William Trevor’s brilliant, memorable collection The News from Ireland. And although Maeve Binchy may not be in Trevor’s league, she remains one of the great tellers of tales, with a perfect ear for her native speech; I enjoyed Dublin 4 immensely.

The British Library Crime Classics were, of course, a great source of place-name titles. I can’t say I enjoyed them all, and I do wonder if the ‘Golden Age of Crime’ is really my thing, but I still travelled to the South Downs with John Bude (The Sussex Downs Murder) and with Freeman Wills Crofts to Surrey (The Hog’s Back Mystery.)  Better reads for me came in the shape of the ever-excellent Mary Stewart’s Rose Cottage, Jennifer Ryan’s The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, Elizabeth Taylor’s At Mrs Lippincote’s and Miss Read’s School at Thrush Green.

And finally, off I went with Phileas Fogg in his attempt to go Around the World in 80 Days. I’d always thought of Jules Verne as a ‘difficult’ writer – goodness knows why, as this tale of adventure positively flies along. Great and unexpected fun.

Three books stand out: the aforementioned O Caledonia, Marghanita Laski’s wonderful, quiet, beautifully observed The Village (review here) and (predictable to all who know me) Kenneth Grahame’s story of humble Mole, clever, kind Rat, sage and sensible Badger, jolly Otter and impetuous Toad, living their rural lives through the changing seasons on the riverbank and in the Wild Wood. In a year in which comfort has been needed more than ever before, The Wind in the Willows gave it in abundance:

‘As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough , in their way, to last for a lifetime.’

I’m addicted to reading projects now; they are such a great way to focus my wavering attention. I’ve already thought of one for 2021, and this week I spent a glorious hour sorting out the books to fit it. So thank you again Simon, for setting me on this happy path.

You don’t need me to tell you that this has been a weird and sad year, and it’ll be a weird Christmas. I don’t know what the restrictions are where you are, but this will be the first Christmas I haven’t spent with my parents – though thankfully only because of the restrictions. I know there are others who have a much sadder reason.

I will be able to spend it with my brother, though, because bubbles are still a thing – and the main thing is that we all stay as safe as possible. And we can celebrate the birth of Jesus every day of the year!

I know Christmas isn’t just about gifts, but I thought I’d put something on the positives scale for 2020. You probably know that 2020 has seen the launch of the British Library Women Writers series, for which I’m the series consultant. And I’d like to offer a British Library Women Writers title as a Christmas present to three people!

In the comments, just let me know which of these you’d pick if you won (it is one each for 3 people) – and I’ll draw three names out the hat.

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex
Father by Elizabeth von Arnim
Chatterton Square by EH Young
My Husband Simon by Mollie Panter-Downes
The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair

This is open around the world! I’ll be off the blog for a few days – have a very lovely Christmas, despite the circumstances.

Mini reviews – you know the drill. Let’s do this.

Limbo by Dan Fox

I bought this from Fitzcarraldo’s enviable essay series because it starts with mention of the 25-foot shark that seems to be flying into the roof of a house in Headington, just outside Oxford. I used to live a couple of streets from this shark-house, and it was always fun being on the bus and watching the reactions of people who weren’t expecting it to appear.

From here, Fox looks at different types of limbo – the sort of word that English academics get very animated about, and I daresay the same is true in many disciplines. But it isn’t all philosophising – there’s some great autobiography in here, from his relationship with his often-absent brother to his experience as one of two passengers on an otherwise commercial ship. It’s a very slim volume, but jam-packed with thoughtful ideas and is the sort of book that will doubtless warrant revisiting.

Them by Jon Ronson

I love Ronson’s funny and courageously researched books into strange worlds – from bizarre FBI techniques to psychopaths to, my favourite, his exploration of mob justice on social media in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. This earlier book, Them, looks at many different types of extremists – including those who actively hate Ronson for being Jewish. Central to the book is the conspiracy theory that all powerful people in the world meet together in secret. Which it seems… they might do.

It’s as informative, odd, and enjoyable as ever. My only qualm is that Ronson surely can’t be quite as nonchalant and blasé in all these extraordinary, often dangerous, situations as he seems to be? And he finds the humour in any event or person – I think the idea is showing how ridiculously normal issues still face extremist groups, like not being able to organise an event properly. But sometimes I wish he had been a little less objective. Some of the people he meets are truly determined to harm many other people, and I’m not sure I want to laugh at that.

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

It’s no secret that I love Oliver Sacks – and this is probably his most famous book after The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It covers a group of patients who survived the sleeping-sickness epidemic of the ’20s, but had post-encephalitic illnesses to various degrees of severity. Some were hardly able to move, while others had severe speech restrictions, and there is a huge range of other symptoms. Sacks is head of a trial of a new drug L-DOPA – and, again, the range of reactions is dizzying. Some recover immediately but then get worse. Others develop a whole new series of symptoms affecting their movement, speech, and fundamental character. It is all extraordinary, and must have been difficult to know how to organise it. Sacks does it by patient, writing about their lives before the illness, as he always does – seeing them as people, not medical cases.

In this early book, Sacks has yet to develop the tone for the layman – sentences like ‘She appeared to have a bilateral nuclear and internuclear ophthalmoplegia’ meant nothing to me – and Awakenings hovers somewhere between scientific paper and accessible account. The stories of many of these patients pop up elsewhere, such as in his autobiography, and he has found the tone then. Structurally, by going patient-by-patient, Sacks hasn’t quite nailed the idea of an overarching arc – and I don’t think I’d recommend Awakenings to Sacks newbies. But, yes, truth certainly is stranger than fiction in this one.

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

If you know any internet memes, chances are you’ve seen the ‘Clean ALL the things!’ image that Brosh came up with on her blog ‘Hyperbole and a Half’. She was very big about a decade ago, and wrote a great graphic book under the same name as her blog. Her pictures are done in Paint or something like that, deliberately crude but with deceptive amounts of time put into getting the right expressions etc.

Her earlier book was mostly very funny, and Solutions and Other Problems has a lot of that same observational, slightly surreal, humour. I laughed a lot when she wrote about her dogs. But life has certainly been tough to Brosh since her first book. We are also given access to her debilitating depression, the death of her sister and her reflections on their strained relationship, and more. It all holds together really well, and I’m so glad Brosh is back writing.

I haven’t felt much like writing book reviews recently, but my pile of books to review keeps piling up – so I’ll do another couple of mini round-ups. For some reason, I feel like I have to review all 2020-read books in 2020, but I suppose there’s no intrinsic necessity for that…

Mr Kronion by Susan Alice Kerby 

This novel from 1949, isn’t very easy to get hold of – but I went on a Kerby spree after loving Miss Carter and the Ifrit, republished by Dean Street Press under their Furrowed Middlebrow series. Well, I can see why they chose that one. Mr Kronion is about a Greek deity coming to live in a house in England – the title relies on you knowing that Kronion is another name for Zeus, which I did not, and indeed only just learned by googling it.

There is some fun to be had in his fantastic appearance, not least in the interactions with the professor who is acting as something of a guardian for him, but Kerby doesn’t make the most of it. Instead, there are all sorts of secondary characters and romantic subplot that take up too much of the novel’s space. This one ended up being rather a baggy disappointment.

The Picnic and other stories by Walter de la Mare

I’ve had this for many years, but picked it up when I read praise of his story ‘Miss Duveen’ somewhere. I forget where. Thankfully, the story is indeed in this collection, which is something of a ‘best of’ – and it’s a rather moving story about a young boy’s encounter with an eccentric local lady, and the waxing and waning of their friendship. Many of the stories in The Picnic are poignant – from the title story, of a woman whose one big romantic experience was a picnic where she was stood up, to stories of failing marriages against the backdrop of a childhood illness.

De la Mare is best remembered for his poetry – perhaps entirely for ‘The Listeners’ – but his short stories are good. He doesn’t have the piercing brevity of, say, Katherine Mansfield – but they manage to stay the right side of sentiment, often showing the strange and saddening moments in ‘uneventful’ lives.

This Other Eden by E.V. Knox

E.V. Knox, once known as ‘Evoe’ in Punch, shows that he is quite similar to many other comically grumbling essayists of the early 20th century, and that’s no bad thing. In this collection from 1929, he turns his attention to such commonly-used topics as golf, ‘modern woman’, motoring, and a spoof of the detective novel:

Mr Ponderby-Wilkins was a man so rich, so ugly, so cross, and so old, that even the stupidest reader could not expect him to survive any longer than Chapter 1. Vulpine in his secretiveness, he was porcine in his habits, saturnine in his appearance, and ovine in his unconsciousness of doom. He was the kind of man who might easily perish as early as paragraph two.

The only drawback to read This Other Eden almost a century after it was published is that nothing seems as frighteningly new as Knox believed. He is anxious about the idea of ‘talkies’, wonders how the world will adapt to the motorcar, and writes about women’s independence in a way that probably seemed progressive in the 20s, but certainly doesn’t anymore. I suppose they fulfilled the purpose of the time, and I still enjoyed reading them, but perhaps the key to longevity with the essay is making sure you don’t consider your own period to be the last word in futurism?