New Year 2023

Happy New Year. 2022 was another year where things didn't quite get back to normal, and it felt like 'normal' shifted yet again, with energy in particular shooting up in price, the invasion of Ukraine, post-Brexit and not-yet-post-Covid still a drag on economy and spirits, and on a personal level both my holiday in May and my Christmas plans disrupted by sickness and quarantining. 

Books, on the other hand, there have been plenty of. 

The full list for 2022:

A Carribean Mystery - Agatha Christie
A Murder of Quality - John LeCarre
A Peaceful Retirement - Miss Read
A Pocketful of Rye - Agatha Christie
A Rose for Winter - Laurie Lee
A Short Book about Painting - Andrew Marr
A Stranger City - Linda Grant
Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch
Arthur Conan Doyle - John Dickson Carr
At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie
Black Teacher - Beryl Gilroy
Bloody Murder - Julian Symons
Bump in the Night - Colin Watson
Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett
Castle Skull - John Dickson Carr
Cheaper by the Dozen - Frank and Ernestine Galbreth
Christian Dior by Christian Dior
Coffin, Barely Used - Colin Watson
Come, Tell Me How You Live - Agatha Christie
Crime on the Coast and No Flowers by Request - The Detection Club
Death and the Dancing Footman - Ngaio Marsh
Death in the Tunnel - Miles Burton
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
Everything and Less - Mark McGurl
False Value - Ben Aaronovitch
Free Lunch (new edition) - David Smith
Get Carter - Ted Lewis
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Hag's Nook - John Dickson Carr
Hidden Lives - Margaret Forster
Hopjoy Was Here - Colin Watson
In the Teeth of the Evidence - Dorothy L Sayers
Jingo - Terry Pratchett
London is a Forest - Paul Wood
Love Lies Bleeding - Edmund Crispin
Making Money - Terry Pratchett
Manhattan 45 - Jan Morris
Maskerade - Terry Pratchett
Mastering the Process - Elizabeth George
Miss Marple's Final Cases - Agatha Christie
Money, a User's Guide - Laura Whateley
Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett
Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie
Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie
Newton and the Counterfeiter - Thomas Levenson
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett
On Writing - Stephen King
Our African Winter - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - Barbara Comyn
Payback - Debt and Shadow Side of Wealth - Margaret Atwell
Portraits in Fiction -  A S Byatt
Prater Violet - Christopher Isherwood
Prelude to a Certain Midnight - Gerald Kersch
Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson
Safer than Love - Margery Allingham
Scarp - Nick Papadimitriou
Settling Scores - Martin Edwards (ed)
She Died a Lady - John Dickson Carr
Simisola - Ruth Rendell
Skelton's Guide to Domestic Poisons - David Stafford
Ten Day's Wonder - Ellery Queen
The 4.50 from Paddington
The Adventures of Sally - P G Wodehouse
The Age of Scandal - T H White
The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell
The Bleak Age - J L and Barbara Hammond
The Body in the Dumb River - George Bellairs
The Brutal Art - Jesse Kellerman
The Case of the Constant Suicides - John Dickson Carr
The Child's Books of True Crime - Chloe Hooper
The Courage to Create - Rollo May
The Dagwort Coombe Murder - Lynn Brock
The Deductions of Colonel Gore - Lynn Brock
The Detection Collection - ed Simon Brett
The Hollow Man - John Dickson Carr
The Holly-Tree Inn - Charles Dickens et al
The House by the Thames - Gillian Tindall
The House of Green Turf - Ellis Peters
The Kink - Lynn Brock
The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett
The Liquid Continent - Nicholas Woodsworth
The London Adventure or the Art of Wandering - Arthur Machen
The Lost Gallows - John Dickson Carr
The Mendip Mystery - Lynn Brock
The Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie
The Mystery of the Yellow Room - Gaston LeRoux
The Patient at Peacock's Hall - Margery Allingham
The Plague Court Murders - Carter Dickson
The Powlett Murders - Lynn Brock
The Sailors' Rendezvous - Georges Simenon
The Savage God - Al Alvarez
The Secret Body - Daniel M Davis
The Secret Life of Money - Daniel Davies and Tess Read
The Service of all the Dead - Colin Dexter
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton
The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie
The Slip-Carriage Mystery - Lynn Brock
The Truth - Terry Pratchett
The Two-Way Murder - E C R Lorac
They Have a Word for It - Howard Rheingold
Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
Thrones, Dominions - Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh
Thud - Terry Pratchett
Tread Softly for you Tread on My Jokes - Malcolm Muggeridge
Trent's Own Case - E C Bentley
Witchcraft - Nigel Williams
Work Won't Love You Back - Sarah Jaffe

As always plenty of crime, including Lynn Brock, whose Wickham Gore books I was hoping to finish by the end of the year, and two excellent modern riffs on golden age crime fiction - The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and Rules for Perfect Murders. 

Also a small Terry Pratchett re-read, which is still ongoing. 

Stats: 108 books, 69 by men, 33 by women and 6 by a team of both. Figures skewed by Pratchett and John Dickson Carr, I suspect. 

34 non fiction, 74 fiction. A lot of the non fiction seems economy or finance related. This was also the year I started listening to 'Wake Up to Money' on the radio, and became more aware of the impact of macro economics on daily life. As did everyone else, I suspect. 

Stand out books - I enjoyed Christian Dior by Christian Dior far more than I expected to and was pleased to find Going Postal by Pratchett was as much fun as I remembered.

Plans for next year - I still have my last 80s book to read, and was contemplating a David Lodge readathon. First though I will finish and post my thoughts on Brock's central protagonist Wickham Gore, who is one of those tec's who have breakthroughs by getting conked on the head or shot and yet always survive until next time.