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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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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