Reading Review 2014

For me, 2014 was a pretty respectable reading year. I achieved my Goodreads Challenge of finishing forty books, I discovered some exciting new authors (especially Helen Oyeyemi and Evie Wyld), and I even managed to make it through some non-fiction. On my travels, I had the time to tackle a few tomes (Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch), whereas later in the year when I was busier I sped through shorter novels (Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Graham Greene’s Doctor Fischer of Geneva). With only one or two exceptions, I enjoyed everything I picked up – I certainly identified some all-time favourite reads. So below are just a few of the books that especially stood out for me last year.

Best non-fiction: Gossip From the Forest by Sarah Maitland. Maitland's exploration of Britain’s forests is fascinating in itself, but the magic really happens when she connects natural history with the history of fairy tales, and uses what she’s learned to inform her own creative writing.

Best short story collection: The Rental Heart and Other Fairy Tales by Kirsty Logan. There’s been a lot of buzz about Logan’s debut collection - rightly so, as far as I’m concerned, for her short stories are dark, dreamlike and beautifully-crafted. I devoured them all in just a couple of sittings, not because they were easy reads, but because – like faerie –Logan’s world was difficult to leave.

Best children's/young adult book: More Than This by Patrick Ness. I’m reluctant to choose Ness for this because I picked him last year too, but his writing is so bold and unique that I simply can’t resist him. I’m also reluctant to say too much about this story, because the way it unravels is completely unpredictable and best appreciated without so much as a sniff of spoilers.

Best classic: Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery. Why haven’t I read this before? It really is a great book, mainly because Anne Shirley is such a fantastic character. As my pal Joely Badger pointed out, Anne is very much a contemporary of Richmal Crompton's (Just) William, in both her earnestness and her knack for getting into trouble. A lovely read.

Most disappointing book: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I'm a big fan of Gaiman's work, especially Stardust, Neverwhere and his short stories. His ideas are big, his writing is clever, but I thought the plot of this one was rather muddled, even dull.

Best reread: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 and 3/4 by Sue Townsend. After the sad news of his creator’s passing, I revisited Adrian Mole last year, and found his adventures just as bittersweet, just as awkward, and just as likely to cause ugly snorts of laughter as they ever were.

Best book: The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine. I’m not sure where to start with this one. In fact, at some point in the near future, I’d like to write a proper review of it, because Alameddine has given me such a lot to think about - both as a reader and a writer. So for now I’ll try to keep it short. Hakawati is the Arabic word for “storyteller”, and this is a book about stories. On the surface, it tells the tale of Osama, the grandson of a hakawati who returns from the US to his Lebanese homeland after the civil war. But woven within that story are countless others, ranging from the ‘real-life’ tales of Osama’s family to the fairy tales, folk tales and even religious tales told by the hakawati himself. It’s such a rich and complex structure, so inventive and entertaining, that you can practically sense Alameddine’s glee as he tests how far he can push the boundaries of his novel. I thought it was superb, and there’s no doubt it’s the best book I read last year.

I would, however, also like to mention The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, for they too completely captivated me. Now I write this, I wonder whether I enjoyed these books so much because each of their authors – like Alameddine – approached their respective plots in an original, playful way: Miller’s was a retelling of the Iliad, Fowler revealed hers from middle to beginning to end, Wyld related half of hers backwards, while Atkinson told different versions of hers again and again.

So I suppose, if I've learned anything from my reading habits of 2014, it’s that I like a juicy structure; a book that not only tells a good story, but tells it in the best possible way. It’s a discovery that I’ll be keeping at the back of my mind when deciding what to read in the future, and also one I hope will give me more focus when it comes to my writing.

Reading Review 2013

In January, I wrote of joining Goodreads and undertaking the 2013 Reading Challenge. Now, just in time, I have finished the final, thirty-fifth book (Graham Joyce's intriguing Some Kind of Fairy Tale), and so I wanted to review a few of this year's most memorable reads.

  

Best nonfiction: Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest. I found this memoir of mental illness a little meandering, and I would have liked more focus on the therapist character to whom it's dedicated. Having said that, Forrest is a frank, funny and utterly fearless writer, and the book is full of insight and wisdom concerning a subject that, in my opinion, is not talked or written about often enough. For example: Time heals all wounds. And if it doesn't, you name them something other than wounds and agree to let them stay.

Best reread: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. As I wrote in a previous post, I was impressed all over again by Atwood's dystopian classic, and the act of rereading it stirred up a lot of emotions about my teenage years, and the closure of my old school.

Most surprisingly enjoyable classic: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I had heard from various people that they hadn't been able to get on with Heller's satirical World War Two novel, but I was giggling away from page one, and had tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks by the 'flies in his eyes' discussion. Of course, like all good satire, the clever humour ensures the unfolding tragedy hits harder, making this both one of the funniest and most affecting books I read in 2013. (Runner-up: Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy).

Biggest commitment: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. When I worked at Waterstone's, many moons ago, my colleagues were always raving about Murakami. I'm afraid it's taken me this long to pick up one of his books - or rather, three of them, for the surreal and unique 1Q84 was published as a trilogy. Although I did feel the story was stretched too thinly towards the end, I'm not sure I've ever experienced such a bonkers plot being told in such clear, matter-of-fact prose. It's an irresistable combination.

Most disappointing read: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I try to finish each book I start because I truly believe I can learn something from every story, even those I don't like. Yet I found this novel so incredibly pompous and misogynistic, I'm not sure whether I should have struggled through to the end. Awful. (Runners-up: Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child and Robin McKinley’s Beauty. I expected to love these novelised fairy tales, but found neither really had much to add to the stories they were retelling).

Best children's/young adult book: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Having adored the author's Chaos Walking trilogy last year, I had high hopes for his award-winning A Monster Calls, and still the novel completely surpassed my expectations. I've since come to the conclusion that Ness just gets it: he gets teenagers, he gets stories, and he gets that the things that really scare us are more complicated and difficult to confront than any sharp-toothed, long-clawed thing that goes bump in the night. (Runner-up: Unwind by Neal Shusterman).

Best book: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. Recommended by the lovely Elodie Olson-Coons, I took to this novel straight away. I'm a big fan of magical realism, especially when it's used as sparingly and effectively as it is in The Tiger's Wife. I also love how Obreht has structured this ambitious book; the way she has blended the folklore and the fantastical storytelling with a gritty, realist narrative set during the Balkans conflict. Obreht is, I have recently found out, just a few months younger than me. Perhaps I should be envious of her, and the success of her first novel, but I'm not - I'm inspired.

Reading Challenge 2013

Look at any article aimed at new writers and, almost without exception, the advice 'read more' will feature heavily. As a new writer myself, I see it again and again, but of course it's perfectly true. Barbara Kingsolver, author of the magnificent The Poisonwood Bible, puts it beautifully on her website: I learned to write by reading the kinds of books I wished I'd written. 

Last year, I didn't read nearly enough. In my defence, I work with words all day long, so picking up a book in the evening always feels like a struggle. Nevertheless, there was plenty to be learned from the few novels I did manage to make it through. Emma Donoghue's Room, for example, introduced me to the power of a good narrator, while Patrick Ness' wonderful Chaos Walking trilogy impressed me with its meaty themes, so relevant to the young readership at which it's aimed. And after devouring Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden (unfairly labelled a 'summer read'), a fully-fledged fairy tale popped into my head, which I promptly wrote almost all of in one sitting.

Thinking back on this leads me to wonder what would happen if I put a little more effort in and made a lot more time for books that I am neither working on nor trying to write. As such, 2013 will be, for me, the year of reading. A few days ago I joined Goodreads (my profile can be found here) and signed up for their 2013 Reading Challenge, pledging to read at least thirty-five books by the end of the year.

That number may not sound particularly earth-shattering, but I'm hoping to go for a bit of variety with my reading this year, mixing up female authors with male, modern fiction with classics, fantasy stories with reality and maybe even try out a little non-fiction and (gasp!) poetry. Of course, it's not exactly an unpleasant or even academic exercise - I love reading, so mostly it'll just be fun. But perhaps, along the way, I might stumble across something unexpected, as well as many, many books that, inevitably, I will end up wishing I'd written.