Hello and welcome to the first blog post of 2016. I could bang on for a paragraph about how this year I'm going to blog more frequently and stick to a regular upload schedule, but since when have I ever manged to do that for more than a couple of weeks at a time? Never. Exactly. Lets just assume that 2016 will be just as shambolic as previous years and that way neither of us can be disappointed when I go AWOL for a couple of months.
Last year I decided I wanted to read more. I was in the final year of a literature degree and was frustrated that despite spending my time writing about books, I wasn't really reading any. In an attempt to rectify this I attempted the Goodreads' 50 Book Challenge aaaaaaaaaand failed it. I got so close and yet so far! It's a little frustrating but I did read more because of it so I guess that's a win really.
Anyway, here is my 2015 in books.
1) Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
2) Blonde Roots, Bernardine Evaristo
3) There But For The, Ali Smith
4) Trumpet, Jackie Key
5-11) Harry Potter Series, J.K. Rowling
It was the Easter holidays, I'd just submitted my dissertation, I had absolutely no intention of doing any of work towards my final essays, Harry Potter was the perfect solution. I spent two weeks at home curled up in bed and on the sofa reliving my childhood, it was lovely. I had forgotten how much I love these books, I'd not reread them for a good few years and I'd forgotten how funny they are, so I laugh and cried my way from beginning to very end. I've read them so many times that my copies are incredibly worn and battered but comfortingly familiar. Also, please can we have a moment of appreciation for book Ginny who is amazing and my favourite and whose character got torally destroyed by rubbish film Ginny and I might never get over it (I have a lot of feelings about book Ginny OK, its probably best we leave it there for now).
12) Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
13) The Drowning of Arthur Braxton, Caroline Smailes
14) The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, Vaseem Khan
15) My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Her Apologies, Fredrik Backman
16) The Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan Stradal
17) The Mountain Can Wait, Sarah Liepciger
18) Finding Audrey, Sophie Kinsella
19) Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
I have been wanting to read this for sooooo long. By the time I eventually got around to it I'd already had the plot twist spoiled for me (kinda my own fault for leaving it so long) but it was still a bloody good read. Its just so clever! In a way, reading it knowing what was going to happen made me realise just how clever and well written a book it is. I just need to get my arse in gear and see the film now.
20) An Abundance of Katherines, John Green
21) Will Grayson Will Grayson, John Green and David Levithan
22) Ghost Moth, Michele Forbes
23) The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Tom Rachman
24) The Two of Us, Andy Jones
25) A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Emir McBride
Without a doubt one of the best books I read this year. I'll admit I wasn't convinced at first, McBride's style is complex and it took me a while to settle into the narrative voice, but once I did it was most certainly worth it. Its shocking, intimate, incredibly brutal, and takes a stream of consciousness to a whole other level. In fact, in his review, John Sutherland claims that the term doesn't really fit as their is no 'stream' and no 'consciousness' instead stating that "the fact is, we don't, as yet, have a term that [fits] what McBride is doing" and I'm inclined to agree with him. For someone like me who is attempting to write, McBride's style and technique is wonderfully inspiring and yet terrifyingly intimidating in how clever and effective it is.
26) The Woman Who Stole My Life, Marion Keyes
27) The Debt and the Doormat, Laura Barnard
28) The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, Jonas Jonasson
29) No-one Ever Has Sex in the Suburbs, Tracy Bloom
30) The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
I read O'Farrell's Instruction for a Heatwave a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it so I had high hopes for this and was not disappointed. Set in Edinburgh, the narrative switches back and forth between the 1930s and the present day, weaving together the lives of Esme Lennox and Iris Lockhart. Once again, O'Farrell excels at her use of interweaving timelines and subtle hints. A very clever and very touching book.
31) Burial Rites, Hannah Kent
32) Shaking Hands with Death, Terry Pratchett
33) Look Who's Back, Timur Vermes
34) Yes Please, Amy Poehler
35) The Road Beneath My Feet, Frank Turner
I have been a massive Frank Turner fan since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (although considering how short I am that could mean yesterday) and have been wanting to read this from the moment it was published. I really enjoyed that it wasn't written like a typical biography and was instead snapshots of specific stand-out gigs throughout Turner's career. I also loved how open he was about the reservations he had about writing the book. Its a very honest account of the highs and lows of a life lived on the road. Well worth a read.
36) Anthropology and A Hundred Other Stories, Dan Rhodes
37) Leaving Times, Jodi Picoult
38) Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither, Sara Baume
39) The Shepard's Life, James Rebanks
I am in love with this book. I'm not sure I can effectively articulate how much I am in love with it but I will try. If you've had any contact with me over the month or so you're probably already painfully aware how obsessed I am with it and would quite like me to stop going on about it, unfortunately for you I'm not going to, so tough. Anyway, it is one of the most moving, educational, and life-affirming books I have ever read. Rebanks is the Lakeland farmer behind the @herdyshepard01 twitter account which provides an honest account of farming in the 21st century. In The Shepard's Life he takes this a step further a paints the history of the landscape and that specific way of life in a eloquent yet educational manner. I am in love with this book from the way its structured by season and how Rebanks seamlessly jumps between the his past and present, to the hauntingly beautiful description of winter that genuinely made me a bit weepy because apparently that's the sort of person I am these days.
I haven't felt this way about a book for so long and I just want everyone else to love it as much as I do. Its got to the point that I get a tad overexcited when customers buy a copy at work. I have developed a tendency to talk at them at great length about sheep and hills whilst they desperately try to back away from the till and leave the shop as quickly as possible. A guy came in the other day and was unsure whether to buy The Shepard's Life or Rebank's second book (see no.45) and I got so terrifyingly animated about both books he ended up buying both. Potentially more out of fear than genuine interest but I'm sure he'll thank me in the end.
40) Grace and Mary, Melvyn Bragg
41) On the Road, Jack Kerouac
42) The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey
43) The Ladybird Book of the Hangover
The new Ladybird Books are all hilariously funny and I have spent a lot of time flicking through them at work when I should actually be doing something else, like working. The Hangover is one of the funniest in my opinion, it is scarily accurate and hilarious because of it. It also functioned very nicely as a useful checklist of symptoms the morning after the work Christmas party, but the less said about that the better really.
44) A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
45) The Illustrated Herdwick Shepard, James Rebanks
Round Two of 'Oh My God I Love James Rebanks and sheep and mountains and things'. This is the second book by Rebanks and I am as in love with it as I am with the first. Everything I said about The Shepard's Life can be applied to this but with the added bonus that this book has pictures. When I say pictures, I mean bloody gorgeous photographs that make me homesick for the Lakeland Fells (incidentally I wrote a post about Homesickness, you should read it, (ahhh a nice subtle plug for myself there, classy, well done me)).
Anyway, the book is absolutely stunning, the photographs are beautiful and the anecdotes are funny, moving, and bloody wonderful. You need this book in your life purely because everyone needs to own at least one beautiful book and I think you should make yours this one. I'm aware that it is essentially a book about sheep but it is a thing of beauty and I will gladly fight anyone who dares suggest otherwise.
46) Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson
47) We Go To The Gallery, A Dungbeetle Book
A Christmas present from me to myself. I have been eyeing this up at work for month and finally caved and bought it. Like the new Ladybird books is a spoof rewriting of the old school "How Does It Work" book and it is hysterically funny. I can't explain it, you'll just have to read it yourself. Go on, off you go.
So there we have it, my 2015 in books. It wasn't quite the successful 50 book challenge I had planned, but there's always this year.
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