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.
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