Bonne Année de Londres

Well that was the year that was. Some are much of a muchness and others you know will stick in the memory. 

2018, with it's mix of brilliant sunshine and stormy politics, will be one that sticks, so fingers crossed that we've all landed safely and know where we are by this time next year. It's the moving of goalposts that seems so unfair.

But I'm here to talk about books. 

I'll get onto favourites later but here is the more or less complete alphabetical list of all the books I read in 2018 (feel free to scroll past, I mostly put this here so I can erase all the titles in my sidebar): 

A is for Alibi - Sue Grafton

A Blunt Instrument - Georgette Heyer

A Few Green Leaves - Barbara Pym

A Life Less Throwaway - Tara Button

A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle

Absolutely On Music - Murakami and Ozawa

Affluenza - Oliver James

An Education - Lynn Barber

Ariel - A Literary Life of Jan Morris - Derek Johns

Artists in Crime - Ngaio Marsh

B is For Burglar - Sue Grafton

Bats in the Belfry - E C R Lorac

Behold, Here's Poison - Georgette Heyer

Bliss - Peter Carey

Bond Street Story - Norman Collins

Browse. The World in Bookshops - edited by Henry Hitchings

Calamity in Kent - John Rowland

Coast to Coast - Jan Morris

Confabulations - John Berger

Confessions of a Ghostwriter - Andrew Crofts

Death at the Dolphin - Ngaio Marsh

Death in a White Tie - Ngaio Marsh

Death Makes a Prophet - John Bude

Death of a Busybody - George Bellairs

Death of a Ghost - Margery Allingham

Death of a Gossip - M C Beaton

Death of Anton - Alan Melville

Death-Watch - John Dickson Carr

Don Among the Dead Men - C E Vuillamy

Envious Casca - Georgette Heyer

Eva Trout - Elizabeth Bowen

Every Eye - Isobel English

Fruit in Season - Anthony Thorne

Grave Mistake - Ngaio Marsh

Green for Danger - Christianna Brand

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino

Inside the Nudge Unit - David Halpern

Lament for Leto - Gladys Mitchell

Landscapes After the Battle - Juan Goytisolo

Life, the Universe, and Everything - Douglas Adams

London, A Traveller's Reader - Thomas Wright & Peter Ackroyd

Maigret in New York - Georges Simenon

Man vs Money - Stewart Cowley

Messy - Tim Harford

Metroland - Julian Barnes

Municipal Dreams - John Boughton

Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie

Murder in the Museum - John Rowland

Murder on Christmas Eve - Ellis Peters, Julian Symonds, et al

Mysogynies - Joan Smith

Nest of Vipers - Gladys Mitchell

On Photography - Susan Sontag

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe - Agatha Christie

Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie

Patrick Butler for the Defence - John Dickson Carr

Plan Now, Retire Happy - Alvin Hall

Poirot and Me - David Suchet

Put on by Cunning - Ruth Rendell

Quick Curtain - Alan Melville

Rain - Four Walks in English Weather - Melissa Harrison

Saplings - Noel Streatfeild

Sick Heart River - John Buchan

Singing in the Shrouds - Ngaio Marsh

Slade House - David Mitchell

Sober as a Judge - Henry Cecil

Stuffocation - James Wallman

Summer at Gaglow - Esther Freud

The Beckoning Lady - Gladys Mitchell

The Black Stage - Anthony Gilbert

The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins

The Bridge - Geert Mak

The Camomile Lawn - Mary Wesley

The Dark Tower I - IV Stephen King

The Disinformer - Peter Ustinov

The Division Bell Mystery - Ellen Wilkinson

The Flaneur - Edmund White

The Grand Babylon Hotel - Arnold Bennett

The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance - Brett Scott

The Inevitable Gift Shop - Will Eaves

The Last Station - Ben Aaronovitch

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C S Lewis

The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson

The Mitfords, Letters Between Six Sisters - Charlotte Mosley

The Notting Hill Mystery - Charles Felix

The Secret Lives of Colour - Kassia St Clair

The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin

The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst

The Theory and Practice of Lunch - Keith Waterhouse

The Venetian Empire - Jan Morris

The Woman in Black - Susan Hill

Things - Georges Perec

Trent's Last Case - E C Bentley

Utz - Bruce Chatwin

Verdict of Twelve - Raymond Postgate

Ways of Escape - Graham Greene

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

Who Moved my Cheese? - Dr Spencer Johnson

Working with Structuralism - David Lodge

The first thing that jumps out at me is the amount of titles starting with 'Death' - of 102 books read fully 38 were crime. Many were authors new to me, which I'm quite pleased about. Some I loved (Verdict of Twelve, Green for Danger, Death of a Ghost) some I found distinctly odd (A Blunt Instrument, Lament for Leto) and some slipped down like ice cream and left no impression at all. 

Some stats: At 102 books (I'm counting the 4 Stephen King's separately, but only put them once in the list as it's all the same story) I'm up almost a quarter on last year's total - but again my non-fiction reading has barely altered - 34 this year, as against 32 last. 

That leaves 64 fiction works (counting SK as one this time). Men well ahead of women this year - 59 books by men and 38 by women, and one by a mixed group. 

5 books in translation, which I'm cautiously pleased about. Usually it's none. 

Five Favourites: 

1) Bond Street Story by Norman Collins, which was delightful, although there was a slight subtext of  'stay with us so as you'll be looked after' which made me uneasy. My brother lost his job when Arding and Hobbs went under - hard enough for him as a junior manager, but for those who'd had a lifetime of loyalty to the company and whose pensions and social life were all wrapped up in it (as they are in Rammell's Department Store in this tale), it was absolutely catastrophic.  You could see, in Bond Street Story, how people in the 50s - especially working men - thought they had a job for life, a social contract, that has largely been reneged on. Small wonder some are angry. 

*coffs* but, as I said, I'm here to talk about books. 

2) A close second favourite is The Mitfords, Letters Between Six Sisters. They really did know everyone didn't they? In a way it was a bit of a curse - if they hadn't been who they were they wouldn't have been right at the epicentre when the second world war broke out. That they did mostly manage to keep in touch was a marvel of sisterly solidarity.

3) Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham. I did review this briefly here, so I won't repeat myself.

4) The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin. Which I also reviewed as part of my 'Reading the 80s' project at this link here.

5) The Flaneur - Edmund White. Again, there's a link here

And What will I read in 2019? 

I should be resuming my OU course this Spring, so I suspect my reading will dip again. I hope to finish the Dark Tower series - although King can be a bit grim, so I really do have to be in the mood to enjoy them - and I'd definitely like to read more Bruce Chatwin, who I basically discovered this year. 

Sadly there isn't that much more to read because he died in his 40s, and so I'm torn between reading the lot or holding off and eking it out.  

What I don't think I'll be doing is diving much further into the British Library Crime Classics (and if my reading is going to drop that seems the sensible thing to drop) but I would like to read more Christianna Brand. 

I'd quite like to read Trent's Own Case - the sequel written over 20 years after Trent's Last Case by E C Bentley. 

I was tempted to do 'reading the 80s' for a second year, but I don't think taking on even a nice easy project like that is going to fit well with work and the OU, so perhaps I'll come back to it 2020.

And I'll leave you with this lovely thing from the library in Liverpool, where I went for the punk exhibition and then the Bonfire Night fireworks (a short holiday that also took in Chester, Flint Castle and Port Sunlight), and with my best wishes for 2019 and beyond.