So I returned to blogging four months ago and already I’m being reminded of all the reasons I loved it and all the reasons why I gave it up. On the positive side I’m getting a lot more out of my reading because I’m paying more attention to books, thinking about what they’re doing and how I feel about them. My reading horizons have broadened considerably, and I’m much more aware of new books coming out that would otherwise have passed me by. I’m now often tempted to try novels that are outside of the old comfort zone because I trust the reviewers and the accuracy of their accounts. It’s also been an unexpected joy to find so many of my blogging friends still writing. It feels to me like the book blogosphere hasn’t shrunk in the intervening years so much as condensed down into the richest of online soups, with the bloggers here representing the most skilled and committed literary reviewers. It’s a pleasure to be back in such company and reading such high quality posts.
On the negative side, my TBR is already completely out of hand. Despite the fact that I read much less than I used to, I’m stubbornly acquiring books (mostly 99p Kindle and cheap secondhand) at the rate of my most intense reviewing days. It seems that my book greed has not abated over the years and my hopes of what I can achieve remain consistently out of line with reality. Ah well. I daresay there are worse vices. I made a dismal showing in the community events although I really wanted to take part. In fairness, most happened in November, when we had my nephew’s wedding, my son’s birthday and a couple of visits to my parents, so there wasn’t much free time for reading. I’d also promised myself I wouldn’t do so many straight reviews as I did before; the aim was to spend more time on new ways of writing about books. But here I am, sliding back into the old routine of reading and reviewing because it’s sort of obvious and logical. Again, that’s up to me to find a bit of discipline next year.
So, to books of the year, waters which I muddied by posting a Best Books of the Past Four Years when I wasn’t blogging. Several books from the start of 2024 appear on that list and I don’t want to repeat myself. So this list is just about the second half of the year.
Best new literary fiction: Hope Never Knew Horizon by Douglas Bruton. I’m intending to review this between Christmas and New Year. It’s a gorgeous meditation on hope in the form of three braided narratives about three acts of creation. Historical fiction, I suppose, but unlike anything I’d ever read before, and quite stunning.
Best sheer entertainment: Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans and You Are Here by David Nicholls. These novels share a certain DNA in my mind. Both are comfortable rescue novels, in which initially miserable protagonists sort their lives out in amusing ways. Both have low-key romances going on, but that’s not really what they’re about; resolving past history, adapting to imposed change, these are the essential themes. And they are both wonderfully written – funny and poignant and completely engrossing. I loved them.
Best modern classics: The Years by Virginia Woolf and Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark. These two books probably couldn’t be more different! The Years is Woolf’s innovative take on a family saga, dropping in on the lives of her extended family over the course of almost 50 years. Loitering is one of Spark’s snappiest, wittiest, serious satires on publishing, featuring a classic Spark heroine who is prepared to fight tooth and nail for her first novel against an onslaught of slightly surreal threats.
Best crime fiction: Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson. This is really a general shout out for Upson’s series that features Josephine Tey as her informal detective. When I read the first novel in this series, I didn’t like it all that much. But then, many years later, I returned to read a much later novel (London Rain) and found to my surprise a highly detailed historical portrait of the 1930s, immersive storytelling and an intriguing mystery; since then I’ve been going backwards and forwards through the series (I know! I don’t mind doing that but some readers will be horrified). In truth, the crime element is arguably the least important part of the books, though Nine Lessons bucks that trend, featuring a killer intent on decimating a group of M. R. James’ former students in ways that echo the great man’s horrific stories. Eerie, unsettling and literary.
Best Nonfiction: O My America! by Sara Wheeler and Lowborn by Kerry Hudson. The Sara Wheeler I reviewed quite recently and just loved it. Five intrepid women travellers, heading to America in the hope of a second act of life, all wonderfully narrated by Wheeler following in their footsteps. Lowborn was one of those books I picked up on a whim and then thoroughly enjoyed. Kerry Hudson had an appalling start in life, moving from pillar to post with her impulsive mother, and this memoir details her determined journey out of poverty and into a good life. All essentially thanks to her ability with the written word, much in evidence in this lucid, unfussy, evocative narrative.
