New Year’s Reads

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to be doing in this space other than making a single-handed attempt to return the world to the golden age of artisanal handcrafted blog-posts. But last year I kept a record of all the (non-work) books I read on Twitter, and while that was fun in its way, there wasn’t really enough room to say as much about them as I might have liked to have done. So I’m going to try doing it here instead. (Maybe I’ll stretch a point and include some of my work-related reading as well - why not?)

So far this year’s haul includes Allie Brosh’s ‘Solutions And Other Problems’ and Martha Wells ‘Network Effect’, both of which I started before the New Year and finished this morning, along with Barbara Nadel’s ‘A Knife to the Heart’, which I read on either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, and Seishi Yokomizo’s ‘The Honshin Murders’, which I started some time in December and finished just after Christmas. I’ve enjoyed all of them, though I’d have preferred to have paper copies of some of the ones I’ve read in ebook. Paper books are one of the things I’ve been missing the most in the most recent weeks of the pandemic. 

‘Solutions And Other Problems’ is a masterpiece: if you haven’t read it, you should probably see about getting hold of a copy. ‘Network Effect’ was fun, if a little slow-moving - I’m glad I picked it up in an ebook sale the other day, but would definitely have had a print copy (and would probably have devoured it if I had.) I’ve got complicated thoughts about the Barbara Nadel: I’ve been following the characters for so long, I want to see what happens to them all, but ... it all feels as though it takes place in a rather cozy parallel universe with significant, but somewhat superficial resemblances to the real Turkey. (I must admit that I’m also a bit irritated to find characters with misspelt names. If you’re going to have a character called ‘Recep’, go ahead and call him Recep, rather than anglicizing it to Rejep, which just looks weird.) And the Yokomizo was a touch difficult to get through, especially if you’re as bad at visualization as I am, but I was glad I persisted, and I can imagine reading more by the same author if I came across them.

Depending on how you reckon things up I’m currently on track to read either 730 books in 2021 or 183 books by next Christmas. 45 of the ones I read before Christmas will be by men, but none of the 730 that I read by 1st of January will be. So between Christmas 2021 and New Year 2022 I’ll read something like 592 books by women (as well as unreading 45 by men). It promises to be an interesting week...