Looking back on a year of reading 2022 edition

Time for my annual look back at what I’ve been reading – primarily for fun – this year. Reading has continued to be an important part of my life, despite recurring flares in my neurological disease throughout the year. I read mainly on my Kindle with an utterly gargantuan font. But that way I can get through a lot of books.

This year I finished 75 books, just over 20,000 pages read. For the full list see my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challenge page, which the following image shows part of:

5 of the books I read were set in Japan and another 2 in other southeast Asian countries. Some of these came from the patron book club run by a book YouTuber I follow, Christy Anne Jones in Australia. But others were from the TBR paid recommendation service I signed up for a year of. Here you answer a probing questionnaire about your reading tastes, and a professional bibliologist recommends books to you. I’ve so far finished 5 of the 6 books TBR recommended to me this year, and some were really really strong, and all a delight. I was particularly keen to read books from other perspectives, other parts of the world, the LGBTQ community etc. Good stuff.

47 of the books finished were fiction, 28 non fiction. I tend to read multiple books at the same time. As usual fantasy was a huge part of my reading. I read very little sci-fi, despite being a huge fan of Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Fantasy fiction is a huge draw for me though, and I read many big ones, including three more in The Wheel of Time series, and smaller ones too. Another significant genre was historical fiction, and I also read a good number of children’s books and crime novels. Not so much horror this year. I think having been bereaved mid year it wasn’t so appealing this time around. And just a few graphic novels.

Generally the books I read this year were enjoyable. I left a few unfinished, but most that I finished were a good read. I’d like to highlight a few particular highlights, all books that were new reads for me this year. I also reread quite a few old favourites. Very good comfort reads.

My favourite book of the year was Babel by R.F. Kuang. This historical fantasy / alternative history book is set in the 1830s, largely in Oxford, and is a potent mix of academia, thriller and a vivid look at colonialism. It’s been a social media sensation this year, but it’s one of the strongest novels I’ve read new for a long time, and thoroughly deserves the praise it has earned. Highly and unquestionably recommended.

Another wonderful new read for me was Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. This is a lost fantasy classic, that I have long wanted to read, after hearing Neil Gaiman praise it. But only got to it when Christy read it – also prompted by Neil – and reviewed it on her YouTube channel. It’s a curious mix of a strange fantasy world, reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s own Stardust, but also with a strong feel of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

A popular British children’s classic that I finally got to is Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, the first in the Chrestomanci series. I don’t know why I hadn’t read this years before. It’s delightful. Sort of similar in feel to Lud-in-the-Mist actually, but with elements of Edith Nesbit books, Harry Potter and much more besides.

Another standout book that I got to via Christy’s channel, this time through her patron book club monthly reads, was The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa. This was a potent tale of memory loss, mathematics and deep emotional connections. I didn’t expect to be so moved. And it raised many questions.

The last book I’d like to highlight as a standout new read for me was Hello, World! Opinion columns from the Daily Princetonian by Brian W. Kernighan. Yes the same man better known to former computer scientist me as a Unix pioneer and author of a definitive C language programming text book I relied on so much in my undergraduate years! This is a collection of his columns for the Princeton University student newspaper. And it’s a delightfully varied mix of academia, computer science, and just life and stuff.

So yes, a fun year of reading! I look forward to reading more next year.

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My top 10 favourite books

Prompted by recent tweets I thought I’d draw up a list of my favourite books. I thought about widening beyond fiction, but in the end I’ve gone for the easier option of just favourite fiction books. Note that I’ve excluded “Complete Works” or complete series.

The list is generally not in order apart from the first book in it, which is by far my favourite. This was republished in a single volume soon after publication of the final third, so I think I can include it in its entirety:

• The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

I first read this when I was too young to borrow books from the adult section of Hawick Public Library. So my Mum borrowed them for me. It has been a regular reread ever since.

The remaining 9 books are not in any order. They almost look like a best of from many favourite authors, with no author in the list twice. But for each author’s work there is a book I especially cherish. Here they are:

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (the first book of that title in the series)
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens – despite my concerns re one particular aspect of the plot. But rereading it every few years is a constant delight.
• Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett – the first in the Watch sub series, and the best for me still.
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny – I reread this every year in the run up to Halloween.
• Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (the second book in the larger 5-book sequence)

That’s a really satisfying set of books for me. All ones that I adore, all ones that I reread with delight. There are many other books that I am extremely fond of. But these are the standout top 10.

I was lucky to do a PhD on historic Scottish reading habits and studied the books that many individual Scots were reading in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But there were virtually no records of individual readers’ favourite books, though it’s quite a common thing to ask nowadays. I think that it can provide an interesting snapshot view of a reader’s interests.

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Thoughts on World Book Day, childhood reading and having done a PhD on reading habits

Today is World Book Day 2022, a celebration of reading in the UK and Ireland, targeted especially at children and young people. It is a day for celebrating the power of reading, but also for showing youngsters how they can access it and benefit from it. And I am a big fan.

I was an enthusiastic childhood reader, with early visits to Melrose public library, and still remember borrowing Enid Blyton books and Tudor history. Then when we moved back to Hawick I devoured first the children’s basement floor of the Hawick public library – a grand Carnegie library with lovely architecture – and then was allowed to borrow from the “grown ups” section. There I devoured masses of Agatha Christie books, science fiction and fantasy, as well as doing research into my family history in the research part of the library. I also borrowed books from primary school and secondary school libraries, and the Wilton church Sunday School small library.

Years on reading is much harder for me, thanks to a progressive neurological disease that struck in 1994 when I was just 22. Soon I could no longer easily manage print for extended periods, even large print was troublesome. But then eBooks came along, which I could adjust to have a quite ginormous font, and I was reading again. I adore reading, and on my Kindle usually have a couple of novels on the go, as well as various non fiction books. All read with a gargantuan font that lets me keep reading. I pick up a lot of bargain eBooks in sales, and also read free ones from Project Gutenberg.

However World Book Day has a special significance for me now because between 2003 and 2010 I completed a part time PhD at Dundee University on Scottish reading habits between circa 1750 and 1820. This was a surprising route to take. I’d studied first computer science at university until my illness struck. Then I retrained as a historian. But I was not in any way a literature student.

I worked part time as a research assistant 2003-4 on Bob Harris’s Scottish Small Towns Project, working on the pilot study in Angus. And among other things this introduced me to the history of reading and book history, as I uncovered the history of cultural activity in Angus in the 18th and early 19th centuries, including the spread of libraries, newspapers and bookshops. I discovered that library borrowing records existed rarely in Scotland (though since then more have turned up, all welcome!) and how researchers like Paul Kaufman had showed these could be analysed. And I was entranced.

At the same time I was completing a taught MPhil degree and pondering if I wanted to try for a history PhD. And I couldn’t get away from wanting to research reading habits more. Bob Harris agreed to supervise me, and I started a self funded PhD, though later won funding from AHRC for the rest of my part-time PhD. My approach was very much social and cultural history rather than literary, as I got to grips researching what Scots were reading and how they fitted this into their lives in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Magic, though with my own reading problems due to illness/disability I was frequently envious of how “my readers” in the past were managing to access books!

My PhD thesis is online and freely available for all to read. In a nutshell though it showed how reading was growing in Scotland in this period, and how important reading was as an activity throughout the country and at all levels of society. A very positive thumbs up for reading.

So whenever World Book Day comes around I think back to my historic research in this field, while at the same time looking forward to my future reading. I am so lucky I got to complete a PhD on this topic. And so grateful I can still read, albeit with considerable adjustments, and a gargantuan font, thankfully helped hugely by adjustable eBooks.

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Looking back on a year of reading 2021 edition

Coming to the end of another year, and I’ve recently finished the last book I’ll finish this year, my 105th of 2021. I do have other books I’ll continue reading, but I won’t finish any more before New Year. So time for my annual recap of reading!

This year I finished 105 titles, accounting for just over 25,000 pages reading in total. For the full list see my Goodreads 2021 Reading Challenge page, which the following image shows part of:

I am astonished and delighted that I managed to read so much. This year was if anything even harder for me neurologically than last year when I also read in adversity. I have had 3 Covid vaccines already this year, with a 4th to come just before the New Year (I needed an extra 3rd primary one in September because I am severely immunosuppressed, so had a very poor vaccine response to vaccines 1&2). Each Covid vaccine pushed my auto immune neurological disease to flare badly, with dramatically increased neurological symptoms, taking up to 3 months to recover from each time.

But I kept reading, primarily with my Kindle and an utterly gigantic Ladybird book style font. Rereads were a major element for me this year, with 23 books, including ones by JRR Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll and Agatha Christie. I think I was often wanting to turn to books that I knew I’d enjoy, that were a guaranteed good read for me.

The main category of fiction I read, yet again, was fantasy, but I also read hefty amounts of sci-fi, children’s books and crime. Non fiction was a major component of my reading as well though, with 33 titles, including many ranging over travel and medical issues. Inspired by recent events I also read books by black authors, either fiction or non fiction about black lives matter issues.

There were a number of highlights for me in this year’s reading. and I’d like to single out a few. Firstly, after a very protracted read, I finished the Alan Garner tribute book First Light. This was utterly delightful, a wide ranging engagement by numerous writers musing on topics related to his life and works. Alan Garner is one of my favourite authors.

Another highlight, and one that I wrote a blog post here about, was reading the fictional account Rose Nicolson of the young life of my direct ancestor William Fowler, 16th/17th century Scottish poet, spy and secretary to the Queen. Yes it was very much fiction, but it brought his story to light in a marvellous way. Thank you again Andrew Greig.

Another joy has been discovering William Corlett’s Magician’s House series of children’s books. I am part way through reading these. They were released when I was at university, and though I saw the TV series then I didn’t read the books. Children’s fiction in a classic fantasy vein. I still have a couple more of the books to enjoy reading.

For a slower pace of life I’d like to recommend Michael Williams’s pair of On The Slow Train books (the original and its sequel), which are a marvellous mix of railway history, travelogue and social observation. For someone like me who has been almost entirely trapped at home this year this has been a marvellous glimpse outside my four walls.

And for my last recommendation of this year I’d like to mention Neil Thomas’s Retro Tea Breaks collection of interviews with computing and gaming pioneers. This was a lovely thing to work through, and I recommend it hugely to anyone else interested in computing and gaming history, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. I wrote a full review of it.

I’m not sure if I will manage to read so many books next year! But I look forward to another year of reading ahead, whatever.

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Review of Big Finish’s audio version of The Box of Delights

I’ve been a fan of John Masefield’s magical festive story The Box of Delights since first seeing the BBC TV version in 1984, which led me on to the original book and its prequel The Midnight Folk. More recently rewatching the TV version every year in the run up to Christmas has become a festive tradition in my household.

So it was with great interest to me when Big Finish announced that they were coming out with a full cast audio version of the story. I’ve enjoyed their Doctor Who and other audio dramas for many years, admiring the good stories and listening experience. So it was a no brainer to buy this, especially with the cast.

The audio version of the story runs for 5 hours and has an hour of additional extra interviews on top. The 5 hours of the main story are split into 10 half hour episodes, each with the classic Hely-Hutchinson Carol Symphony music that has become so associated with the tale. The director is Barnaby Edwards, and the story was adapted by Christopher William Hill.

The cast is strong. Cole Hawlings is played by Derek Jacobi. Young actor Mack Keith-Roach takes on the pivotal part of Kay Harker. The chief baddie Abner Brown is played by Mark Gatiss. And other parts are played by a large cast, including acting stalwarts like Annette Badland, Louise Jameson and David Warner.

The story is set in the 1930s, when a young boy returning home for the holidays finds himself unexpectedly in a festive tale of a magic box and its mysterious owner, good versus bad, old versus new magic, and so much more besides.

To get to the point I very much enjoyed listening to the audio. It was refreshing to hear a different version of the story, albeit one that shares much in common with the TV version that I adore. In many cases the audio version was closer to the original book, but significantly it made a number of important changes.

First among these is the role of the character Peter, who is sidelined for much of the original book and TV versions. Here this does not happen, and he plays an important role throughout, alongside Kay. This is an astute choice on the part of the adapter, given the audio medium, and allowing the two boys to describe what they are seeing, and thinking and doing, in a way that isn’t necessary in either the book or TV versions, but that helps audio listeners immensely.

Another wise choice by the adapter was to increase the role and agency of a number of the supporting characters, especially the maid Ellen and the mysterious White Lady. The “Bloodhound of the Law” was also given welcome extra scenes.

I also approved of tweaks to the sleigh ride scene, and a marvellous parting scene at the very end of the story, which was extremely emotional and very effective, and not in either book or TV. Also marvellously acted. Thank you.

Less successfully a number of the scenes needed a more radical adaptation, being difficult to visualise on audio. I’m particularly thinking of the early wolves at the camp scene, which was chaotic to listen to, even for someone who knows the original well. Likewise the later Wolf Guard scene is also tricky to visualise, as to an extent is the action in the cellars underneath Chesters. Though the Wild Wood and ancient Greece/Turkey sections are well handled in audio form.

Of the cast I would particularly praise the Kay and Abner actors, both of which were extremely strong. I enjoyed Derek Jacobi’s performance, and he did sound twinkly, but the very extended running time (5 hours versus TV version 3 hours) meant that it was painfully aware how absent Cole is from much of the story.

The extras at the end are interesting, but feel somewhat indulgent in length. However it was interesting to hear how the story adaptation was approached, and I especially enjoyed the input of the young Kay actor talking about his part.

In terms of cost the audio box is expensive. Currently £44.99 for CD+download version, or £39.99 for download version only. The download is in e.g. MP3 you can download to your computer or play via the Big Finish app. It was lower cost on first release, and the price direct from Big Finish is occasionally lower in special offers. However for something that you can enjoy listening to potentially multiple times in future it is probably not too unfair a price. Certainly being a full cast audio with a very large cast and an extremely long run time would increase the cost, and the CD boxset version is a particularly nice item, perhaps to gift to a friend or relative. Note the 6-disc CD version can be bought elsewhere, e.g. from other online etc. retailers, or ordered via independent booksellers. The download (with or without CD) is exclusive to Big Finish.

I would recommend this audio to existing Box fans as well as to fans of good audios and festive dramas in general. For the former though do go into it knowing that it’s different from the TV and book versions, and enjoy it for what it is. To read more about the audio release see the Big Finish product page for it.

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Attending the Edinburgh Book Festival online rather than in person

This year I’ve been an online attendee of the Edinburgh Book Festival. I thought it might be helpful to blog some thoughts about this, and in particular how it compared for me to being there in person in the past.

I’ve been going to the Edinburgh Book Festival many times since the late 1990s. In the early visits I would travel down by train. More recently, as my neurological disease progressed, my husband and I had to switch to driving down with my wheelchair and staying a couple of nights in a hotel. Much more costly and time consuming, but giving me much valued experiences and memories.

This year the festival is being held in a new venue, and is offering a hybrid in-person/online attendance option. It would not have been safe for me to go there in person this time, being immunosuppressed during a Covid pandemic. The vaccine has fortunately given me antibodies – yay! – but at an extremely low level. So I am still at great risk, and being ultra cautious. But the availability of online tickets for most of the book festival’s events this year allowed me to attend in a different way.

The highlight of the festival for me has always been the author talks. I’ve written here before about attending some of these in person, e.g. in 2013, 2015 and 2018. Usually because I have to travel from a distance I can only see one or at the very most two author talks, depending on the timing options, and what I can get tickets for. But online attendance allows me to potentially attend more events more events spread over more days, even at a distance.

This year I bought online tickets for three events: Helena Attlee talking about the tale of a violin through time (I am a long lapsed violin player), James Robertson talking about his new ghostly novel set in the Angus glens (I live in Angus), and Denise Mina talking about her new novella retelling of the Rizzio murder. I watched the first and third of these live, and the second on catchup in the middle of a neurologically disturbed night. All were watched from bed in my pyjamas, on my iPad with Bluetooth headphones. Definitely a form of access I haven’t enjoyed attending the festival before!

With each event I was able to watch video footage of the author talks, with good camera shots of the authors, interviewers and audience in the room (a very spaced out and masked up audience). The audio was clear, and the experience of watching reassuringly close to being there in person.

In addition to the live video stream online attendees have access to online text chat rooms, where we can share comments, and ask questions to be posed to the speakers. I didn’t ask a question myself, but participated actively in the chats. I was pleased to see the online questions asked by the interviewers on behalf of the online audience members. This was integrated well alongside questions from the audience in the room in Edinburgh.

So yes, positive impressions from watching author talks online. On the downside online participants do miss out on face to face signing events, though some of the author talks had prebookable (days in advance) online signing options. I was more concerned though at how online members could miss out on the festival bookshop. Visiting the festival bookshops – adult and children’s – was always a major highlight for me of attending in person. With a huge range of books on offer, including from publishers I would never normally encounter, I would always come away with unexpected gems.

Yet the bookshop is not promoted effectively in the festival website. Yes on individual events pages there is a link to order book(s) associated with the event. And clicking on that takes you to the bookshop website. But otherwise the online bookshop is not linked as far as I can see from the festival website. Even if you know it exists it can be very hard to find. Google is often the best option! Which is ridiculous. Because when you get there it is possible to browse the shelves well, and find gems. Ok not the same as physically in person, but worth some minutes of your time for many online attendees.

So yes some downsides, but overall I’m really happy I could attend in person. Very grateful in fact. Looking ahead it may be safer for me to attend in future years, but my neurological disease is progressing, and that might simply not be practical. But I’m encouraged that the festival organisers have said that they value the online attendance, and intend to continue to make it part of the festivals in future years. So hopefully I can attend in that way in future years. And maybe the bookshop be better linked too?

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Looking back on a year of reading 2020 edition

I thought it might be nice to look back at the books I’ve finished in the previous 12 months. Others are still in progress, but there are 75 titles I finished reading in 2020, accounting for over 21,000 pages. For the full list see my Goodreads 2020 Reading Challenge page, which the following image shows a snippet from.

Here are two charts showing the numbers of books finished and pages finished per month during 2020.

I find this reading total astonishing, given how ill neurologically I was for much of the year. It’s clear I battled to keep reading, almost always with my utterly gigantic Ladybird book style font in my Kindle. There aren’t many words visible on each screen with such a huge size font, but I gobble up books this way. Reading gives me enormous comfort, and despite the circumstances in which I have to read, unable to generally read conventional print books, or even library large print editions (I find they have too much text on a page for me to concentrate on comfortably), I read eagerly and substantially, as the page count figures show.

The most popular subject for me in 2020 was fantasy (20 books), followed by sci-fi and non-fiction (18 books each), historical fiction (14 books) and children’s books (10 books) – the last including many classic texts. These categories overlap though, so should not be viewed as distinct. Also sci-fi is a little misleading, particularly the multiple Doctor Who books it includes, which fall under sci-fi by default, but in many cases are much more than that. Though to be fair I did read some “hard” scifi this year, with I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, two Star Trek books, and a partial reread of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

Only 9 of the books I finished this year were rereads, for example the Hitchhiker’s books, some Sherlock Holmes, and my favourite reread every year for the run up to Halloween, Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October.

I’d like to briefly mention a number of books which were particular highlights for me in 2020. A non-fiction I enjoyed immensely was Charlotte Higgins’s Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain. This is an account of trips around Britain to visit Roman sites, recounting the history in a thoroughly readable manner. Erudite, educational, but also a page turner and a thoroughly well-written work.

My standout fiction highlight was a classic that I’d never read before, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. I didn’t know the story from seeing the film in the past, if I ever did. Reading the novel was an eye opener. I think it does dip a little mid way, as the location shifts and the cast expands suddenly. But it picks up again, and as a fiction read I found it astonishing. I learned about a period of French history I knew little of, and was wowed by the combination of genres (revenge plot, social intrigue, crime etc.) and rich characters and vivid descriptions throughout. Apart from Dickens this must be one of the longest fiction books I’ve read for a very long time, but I’m sure I will reread it in future.

The last two books that I want to mention are both classic time-slip novels for children, which I’m surprised I hadn’t read before. First up was Alison Uttley’s time-slip children’s novel A Traveller in Time. This sees a 20th century girl slip between her time and the late 16th century, getting caught up in intrigues with the doomed Mary Queen of Scots. I saw the TV version in 1978, and still remember scenes from it. The sense of place and the historical period in the book is strong, but against that I found much of the book a little too convenient, for example how easily the people in the past accepted the modern girl appearing suddenly in their midst. A stronger example of the time-slip genre for me was the other read this year, Penelope Lively’s A Stitch in Time. Again a modern era child makes links to the past, though more subtly handled. I found it quite unsettling in places, but in a good way. By the end I was rather wowed.

So yes, rather a packed year of reading, despite huge health problems, particularly between March and October. I’m really pleased to have been able to keep reading. On to more books in 2021!

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Recreational reading in 2019

I keep track of my reading in Goodreads and last year finished 84 books. Looking back on them there are a number of patterns that emerge, and I thought it might be interesting to blog about overall trends and some specific titles that I particularly enjoyed. Note these 84 titles are just those books I read from cover to cover. I also dip in and out of a lot of academic books – usually it is rarely necessary to read those cover to cover for what I need as an academic historian. But the 84 books were read fully.

Unsurprisingly a high portion, over a sixth, of the books finished were Doctor Who ones. Yes I’m a big fan. Most were fiction, including some of the fairly recent new Target novelisations of Tenth and Twelfth Doctor stories. But I also read older books, both more recent Who full length novels, 1990s ones like Paul Cornell’s Human Nature, and some pre-1989 Targets. A particular highlight among the Who books was the new novel Scratchman, based on a movie script idea by Tom Baker and Ian Marter, and turned into a novel more recently by James Goss with Tom Baker’s help. This was completely bonkers, and a delight from start to end. It also made some fun creative decisions writing-wise, in a similar way to the experimentation that Steven Moffat did with his new Target novelisation of his 50th anniversary episode The Day of the Doctor. Most of my Doctor Who reads were fiction, but I also read some Obverse Books Black Archive books, which analyse individual Doctor Who stories, and are always fun.

After Doctor Who the next biggest chunk of books were classic literature. Non-English titles (read in translation) were Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (which I insisted throughout on referring to as the Muskehounds), Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. All fantastic reads, but the first and third particularly so. From 19th century English literature I read Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (not a single likeable character in there I think!), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (that one superbly done), and reread my favourite Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. From slightly later was EM Forster’s A Room With a View. And I read and enjoyed Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, though more for the adventure and scene setting than the hefty romance novel elements.

I made a deliberate effort to read some Scottish books this year, including Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song which I had never read. I really enjoyed that, though more for the sense of place and impressive presentation of language. Another Scottish book read set in a similar era was Donald S. Murray’s As the women lay dreaming about the Iolaire disaster. And I read and enjoyed David Greig’s play Dunsinane, a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Another Scottish author read was Iain Banks – the scifi “Iain M Banks” version of him! – with his The Player of Games, the first of his Culture novels that I’d read, and an inventive plot based around game playing. Another scifi book read was Michael Moorcock’s steampunk The Warlord of the Air, a theme that continued with a reread of Sterling and Gibson’s The Difference Engine. Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars was a fun scifi alternative history of the early days of space flight. And from the Worldcon scifi convention in Dublin’s panel on Irish fantasy and scifi I learned about 19th century Belfast writer Robert Cromie, and read his The Crack of Doom.

Another recommendation that I picked up from the Dubin Worldcon was Jane Gilheaney Barry’s Cailleach about witchcraft and a family in rural Ireland. Many other fantasy books were read over the year, including Ben Aaronovitch’s first Rivers of London, Diana Wynne Jones Deep Secret, Charles Stross The Nightmare Stacks, Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow, and Andrew David Barker’s The Electric – that last an unexpected joy, a love letter to old films and the magic of cinema.

I’ve mentioned a number of 2019 rereads already. There were others, including Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows, Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills (part 2 of her Merlin trilogy), Susan Cooper’s Greenwitch (part 3 of her Dark is Rising fantasy series), Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, and my annual pre-Halloween reread of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October. For that last one, a Lovecraftian delight, I even treated myself to a first edition copy of the book. I reread it every year, without fail.

I finished many non fiction books. Some were related to my academic research, including Murray Pittock’s Enlightenment in a Smart City and Martha McGill’s Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland. Others were read purely for fun. I greatly enjoyed Mary Beard’s SQPR, a history of the Roman empire. Also Chris Lintott’s The Crowd and the Cosmos, about the Zooniverse project, which was arguably more interesting for its discussions about issues of handling big data and crowd participation than the astronomy content. Other Tolkien books read included Ian Brodie’s The Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook about the films (highly recommended) and two Tolkien books bought in a Palgrave sale, The Keys of Middle Earth (excellent introduction to Old English and Norse etc. studied through Tolkien’s reuse of themes/topics) and the less successful The Riddles of the Hobbit. I also read graphic novels, including Doctor Who actress Jessica Martin’s excellent Life Drawing, and a British Museum manga exhibition book.

Crime novels were also a presence in my reading, ranging from classic crime (including the first Campion and an Agatha Christie) through more modern works (including a Hamish Macbeth and the first Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael – the latter yet another reread), and my first read of Donna Leon’s Venice set crime novels, read just after we came back from a trip to the city. I’m less interested in real life crime or anything too gory, but like books that have a good sense of place and plot. I lean towards older crime novels.

Just three computing books show up on my 2019 list. A fun, quick read was Steven Howlett’s A Diary of an 80s Computer Geek, which recalled 1980s British home computing, albeit with a heavy leaning towards the ZX Spectrum. Far less successful was Cara Ellison’s Embed with Games, which promised interesting insights into game developers, but ended up being far too much about the author’s own life and travails. Far better for me was Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat and Pixels, which gave an often agonising behind the scenes account of the development of a good number of computer games, both small-scale indie ones with a single developer, and huge large studio projects. It did not always end well, but was a riveting read.

Other than this there were some other scattered books. I particularly enjoyed another Obverse Books publication, Paul Magrs’ festive Bowie tale Stardust and Snow. Recommended reading, especially for any David Bowie fan. Another highlight was the reprinted edition of the Usborne World of the Unknown Ghosts book. This book captivated many children back in the 1970s and 1980s, but somehow passed me by. Now rectified!

So it’s been a good year of reading for me. Almost all read on my Kindle with a gigantic font (think the youngest children learning to read book style, including some Ladybird books) that helps me overcome significant reading problems from neurological disease. Next year I think I’ll continue trying to read more word literature books, and already have some lined up waiting on my Kindle. But beyond that who knows! Looking forward to it anyway.

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On rereading Lord of the Rings

I recently embarked on another reread of JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. I considered blogging my way through it, but for various reasons, mainly my health situation, I decided against doing that. However I think it still merits a blog post.

It’s been my favourite book for a very, very long time. I first read it back in the early 1980s. At the time I was still using the children’s library in my home town Hawick, and this title was shelved in the “grown ups” section. So a parent borrowed the volumes for me, in turn. I was gripped. A few years later I got my own single volume paperback copy, on a summer holiday day trip to Dundee. It was bought in a tiny gaming shop (RPGs, miniatures and board games) in Exchange Street in the city centre (long since closed). Little did I know that two decades on I’d be living in Dundee myself …

That paperback copy was read lovingly repeatedly over the following decades. I still have it, and it’s one of my most cherished books, albeit in a “well-loved” state by now! But nowadays I generally read fiction on my Kindle, for disability reasons, and have trundled through Lord of the Rings that way several times over recent years.

The book is an epic tale of little people, of various kinds, fighting against adversity. But it’s also a tale of a vanishing rural idyll. And a world of myths and legends, and magic, all vividly imagined by Tolkien in the fantasy world that he created.

As I reread the opening portion, Fellowship of the Ring again, I’m struck by how many things I don’t recall noticing so much before. For example the opening prologue has a surprising amount of spoilers, albeit easy to miss, for what happens later! Likewise I was enchanted by Elvish names for constellations such as Orion and the Pleiades. It very much makes you feel that the book’s Middle Earth is an earlier version of our own world, and that looking up to the sky today you see, by and large, the same view that the hobbits and the elves did that night in The Shire.

Rereading this book is proving to be a delight, as always, and something that I will continue doing for the rest of my life. It never loses its magic for me, and is always a familiar friend to return to.

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Review of Joli Jensen’s “Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics”

I recently read this book, published by the University of Chicago Press, in their Writing, Editing and Publishing series. It’s a compact paperback, 166 pages long.

The book is divided into 28 main chapters, split across the following core sections:

• Writing in Academe
• Using Tools that Work
• Challenging Writing Myths
• Maintaining Momentum
• Building Writing Support

Of these I found the sections on tools, challenging writing myths and maintaining momentum most effective. The book’s author is nicely to the point, doesn’t mess about, but gives straightforward, honest advice. There’s much that many academics could benefit from, including making time for writing in a busy academic life, dealing with imposter syndrome, and coping with perfectionism. I also found the book had great advice for handling multiple projects at once, and the generally less often discussed challenge of keeping writing fun, in a context in which it might often seem to become a chore.

On the downside I did personally have big issues with the depiction of humanities scholars, presented as people with only one writing task to focus on, and a relatively easier task as a result than scientists. As an academic scientist turned historian this didn’t fit with my experience. Humanities scholars often juggle multiple writing projects at once too. And, perhaps even more crucially, are often single authors, so must handle all the tasks of academic writing, not shared among a group i.e. all of research, planning, writing, revising, editing, submitting, dealing with peer review, and hopefully proofreading and final publication processes. The challenge can be immense. I don’t think the author of the book grasped that at all. Perhaps she was looking back to more halcyon days.

I also found that it was a shame the book avoided commonly used writing terms like procrastination, which can often be such a problem for many doctoral students. The book does have some good writing tips for postgraduates, but is aimed squarely at later stage academics, who have more challenges fitting writing in alongside their other academic workload. Though the book could be of more benefit to part-time postgraduates than full-timers, who must fit vital writing time in around other commitments, including in some cases full-time jobs. I just think that with a few relatively small tweaks and refocusing the book could have been adjusted to help more postgraduate students as well.

So yes I do have critiques. But generally I came away from it feeling very positive. I don’t think that any academic would use every tip and idea in there. But there are lots of good ones presented. And many ideas challenge oft-held unproductive mindsets. It’s also an easy read, well written, that you can dip in and out of. So yes, thumbs up.

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