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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