WHAT I READ: THE LAST DECADE -

As a new year’s resolution in 2010 I thought I’d try and blog everything I read for a year. I expected I might make it till about say February, new year’s resolutions being what they are. Ladies and gentleman: I’ve made it an entire decade. 10 years, 508 books.

In that ten years I’ve changed countries three times (UK/Kenya/South Africa/UK again), and spent long periods in lots of places outside of those (Zimbabwe/Nigeria/Sierra Leone/Ethiopia/Luxembourg). I have changed careers (majorly). I have lost my father and my cousin.

But that’s all in my real life. My other life, in books, is in this blog. To my surprise, I think it’s comprehensive: I don’t think I’ve missed more than 3 or 4 books the entire 10 years.

It’s been uneven. Some years I read a lot – 100 books in 2011, (17 in June alone, not unrelated to who I had lost); other years not so much – just 39 in 2013. I thought briefly about in celebration trying to re-read the whole blog, but I don’t think I will. It would take a lot of time, for one thing, and for another based on a few samples I’ve taken here and there, it’s a very weird experience. It’s a bizarre time travel to old versions of myself and often opens up strange memories; because I find, startlingly, that often with a book comes a memory of where I was when I read that book, or of what I was avoiding. Last year when I rounded up what I read in 2018 I put it quite well:

It’s very strange to look back over this blog. I’m like: who is this person who wrote this blog? She seems to have a lot of energy and a lot of free time. Also, she has a lot of funny things to say. I guess we each have our own sense of humour, so it makes sense that reading what I wrote, I often think: that’s exactly what I would have said! What is really disconcerting is to read a blog post about a book I have entirely forgotten. It’s like time travel to a former self, and offers the rare opportunity to look at myself at a strange kind of remove.

Other books I remember well, and reading the blog takes me back not just to the book, but to where I was when I read it. SOMETHING IN THE WATER, I’m sick in a hotel room in Napa. GRANT I’m on the beach in Mauritius. NORMAL PEOPLE it’s the sofa of my living room in the middle of the night If I ever re-read this post, let my future self note: it’s a hotel room in Wisconsin at 4am.

I did re-read my very first post, on Vikram Seth’s A SUITABLE BOY. Apparently I had spent the night in a treehouse in Kenya (?). In some ways I am different – I learn that back then I ‘never bought books online’ – while today I always do; but in some ways I am quite the same – apparently ten years ago I still had a lot to say about colonialism in literature. I wonder I’m not tired of myself yet.

To celebrate I’ve recorded below all 508 books. I have to laugh at some of it – who was the person who thought she should read the textbook ECONOMICS: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE (Standish et al)? And I was surprised to learn today that apparently I read THE BLUE FLOWER twice, five years apart, without noticing, but both times quoting the same section on eating cow udders. I’ve also added the summary from each year of my favourite books, which is a tour through ten years of highlights.

Onwards: to another year; maybe another ten years. If I’m spared. I should note I have started a new version of this blog, on Instagram, a service that didn’t even exist when this blog began. (Neither, by the way, did e-books). If I make it to 2030, who knows what I will be using? Perhaps I’ll just hand it all over to my AI.

Enjoy the two pics; the one here from last week; the one above from some time in 2010. Two countries, two modes of transport, two hair colours. Time passes but let it be known I still own that T-shirt.

Best of the blog

2010

Back then, I didn’t summarize my end of the year, but I’ll go ahead and say my best were THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; and .I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith

2011

ABSENT by John Eppel, a hilariously sad satire of contemporary Zimbabwe, and that rarest thing, a coherent account of white African identity

FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen, a fabulously Victorian novel of contemporary America

THE BRIEF AND WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz, a brilliant and funny account of a multinational dork’s life
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell, an oldie but still a goodie
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather, on the romance of the Midwest
PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth, on masturbation as a major philosophical event.

2012

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens: how did I live this long without ever reading this?

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW by Anthony Trollope: it’s so absorbing, it’s like an anaesthetic for your actual life. I also enjoyed non-fiction for perhaps the first time ever this year: highlights include STANLEY by Time Jeal and THE GUN by CJ Chivers.

2013

PERSUASION BY Jane Austen

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P by Adelle Wadman

2014

Highlights were GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson, a truly astonishing, almost oppressively wonderful book; A MAN IN LOVE by Karl Ove Knausgaard, which began my love affair with his massive autobiographical project; and MOTHER’S MILK, by Edward St Aubyn, a book that made me look forward to my own midlife crisis.

2015

Best of the year is obviously lead by Austen. But it’s hardly fair to put her in the race, like running a horse against chickens. So the best of the rest: the quartet from Elena Ferrente of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, THE STORY OF A NEW NAME, THOSE WHO LEAVE AND THOSE WHO STAY, and THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD. It’s a magnificent series on a pair of friends from Naples in the early twentieth century. In a sign that it truly is the end of days, the publishers have felt it necessary to brand this major literary achievement as chick lit. I pity those who buy it as chick lit, as they will be horrified – its all about how boring your children are and how to abandon old friends who aren’t working for you anymore. REUNION by Fred Uhlman is a wonderful novella about the effect of the rise of the Nazis on a pair of high school boys; THE KNOWN WORLD by Edward P Jones is a fantastic huge story of slavery in the American South; and A NOTABLE WOMAN by Jean Lucey Pratt is a set of real life diaries covering fifty years in the life of an ordinary woman that had me blubbing in Luxor airport.

2016

What’s the best of the year? There were not any huge standouts, as has sometimes happened, but lots of books I really enjoyed. I have a huge fondness for THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN by Christina Stead, which this person who wrote my blog described as ‘like drinking family life from a firehose’. I also enjoyed SOME RAIN MUST FALL by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the fifth book in his wonderfully dull saga of his life; THE GO-BETWEEN by LP Hartley, an unusual coming-of-age story, and PROBLEMS by Jade Sharma, a fun story of heroin addiction and sex work.

2017

Particularly: CALL ME BY YOUR NAME by Andre Aciman, a fantastic story of adolescent love and adult loss; CAPTAIN SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION by Robert Falcon Scott, a transfixingly wonderful account of his journey to the Pole, which ended in full ugly-crying on the Gatwick Express (for me, not for him; he was dead, I was just coming back from Cyprus); and THE CAZALET CHRONICLES, by Elizabeth Jane Howard, a fabulous 3000 pages on civilian life in WWII. Then there’s INSTEAD OF A LETTER by Diana Athill, a story about a really, but really, bad break-up; JG Ballard’s EMPIRE OF THE SUN, which is really remarkable account of a Singaporean prison camp, and, though it hardly needs me to give it the nod, LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding, which is even better than I remember it in high school. And then I can’t help but mention LIFE AND FATE by Vasily Grossman, a story about who of his friends and family he sold out to survive the Stalinist purges.

2018

Best of the blog: CONVERSATIONSWITH FRIENDS by Sheila Rooney, a story of love and friendship I’ve read three times this year already; EARLY WORK by Andrew Marr (just getting in under the bar as I read it in December), which is a hilarious tale of infidelity and procrastination;LESS by Andrew Sean Greer (give him another Pulitzer); and MEMOIRS OF ANINFANTRY OFFICER by Siegfried Sassoon, a memoir of the First World War it is not one’s business to like or dislike but just to respect.

2019:

BAD BLOOD by Lorna Sage, a sizzlingly angry memoir of teenage pregnancy

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH by Vera Brittain, a diary of a nurse in WWI, but mostly a love letter to her dead boyfriend

I was going to give you the full list of all 508 (of which 44% women by the way), but it is 11 pages of Word document So here’s just 2019.

7. MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER by Oyinkan Braithwaite

10. COUSIN BETTE by Honore de Balzac

11. THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE: A TALE OF THE LAKE DISTRICT by James Rebank

12. HAPPINESS BY DESIGN: FINDING PLEASURE AND PURPOSE by Paul Dolan

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