Looking back at a year of reading 2023 edition

End of another year, and time for another end of year reading retrospective from me, looking back at the books I read for fun in 2023. I adore reading, despite my progressive neurological disease meaning that I am often heavily sedated, and struggle hugely with print. Most books are read with an utterly gigantic font on my Kindle. But I gobble up books. I even have a PhD in historic Scottish reading habits, so it’s nice when I can gobble up books myself, and not just stare longingly at past historic readers who in some cases could read more than me!

This year I finished 60 books, almost 20,000 pages read, average 375 pages a week. Of these 42 of the books were fiction, 17 non fiction, and 1 a poetry collection. Here is a link to my full list for the year on Goodreads. And the picture below shows a glimpse of some of the books I was reading over the months.

20 of the books were fantasy genre, and 7 graphic novels or manga or comic books. Fantasy remains my favourite genre by far, and I can still read and enjoy graphic novels and manga despite my neurological problems with print. 8 books I would categorise as historical fiction (with some overlap in cases with the fantasy count), but just 6 were scifi. I read some scifi – especially Doctor Who novels – but am not a fan of hard scifi. Despite adoring since childhood first Star Trek and then Doctor Who, Babylon 5 and others. But reading is mostly about fantasy for me. I also have a fondness for children’s or YA fiction from time to time, and read 9 of those this year, ranging from old classics to modern. Only 5 of my reads this time were horror genre.

In some recent years I’ve reread a lot of much loved novels for comfort. There was less of that this year, though I reread a few, such as my annual pre-Halloween read of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October. I continued my slow Wheel of Time read, with 3 more novels in that series – up to the end of number 7 now, and hoping for another couple next year. Though I’ve tended towards shorter rather than longer novels. I also read some novels for the book club I’m in.

I am surprised by how many non fiction books I gobbled up. I read these alongside fiction, flitting between the two night to night. And I had some really good non fiction reads this year. In fact when I look at my top rated books and think about which books made the biggest impression on me in 2023 it’s 3 non fiction books that stand out most.

The first two were read at the very start of the year. Firstly Mensun Bound’s The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance, which was a very rare in print read for me, after I managed to nab a signed copy from my local bookshop in Broughty Ferry. Even knowing the ending of the story this was still a gripping page turner. And I cried tears at the end. Another tear jerker, though happy too, was Rob Wilkins’ Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography. Which was a deftly written biography of a much loved author, and so phenomenally insightful. I was delighted later in the year when it won the Hugo Award for best related work.

The third standout non fiction book was The Climate Book, written by Greta Thunberg and many many others. This is probably the most important book I have ever read. Certainly the most affecting. It’s devastating in many places, but something I needed to get to grips with. And there are seeds of hope in there. But yes, just read it.

Although my favourite books were non fiction I’d like to mention my favourite fiction books of the year too. Firstly Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, which was a cosy fantasy, combining a traditional fantasy world and characters with the comfort of coffee shop culture. So good! Another standout was Bob Mortimer’s comic novel The Satsuma Complex, another award winning book, which had more than a hint of Douglas Adams about its writing. It felt almost like another Dirk Gently book. And so very very funny. Finally, classic scifi The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison sees a film crew go back in time in a time machine to film a Hollywood blockbuster, with totally authentic scenery and cast – real Vikings! This was utterly bonkers. A joy.

Looking ahead to 2024 I’d like to reread The Lord of the Rings, and also Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens – both some of my most favourite books. And long books, so I’ll be aiming more for quality than quantity. Would also like to get through a couple more Wheel of Time books. And read more books in translation. But yes, just keep reading!

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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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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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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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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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