When I first started this blog some thirteen years ago now, I had such good intentions. I was going to read Serious Books. Books which were Good for Me by writers who were lauded as being the best. I looked at the Booker long lists, I chose, I read, I ploughed on. I took up Reading Challenges. I made copious lists. I look back and think WHY? It was exhausting and the realisation crept up on me that I was reading in order to Keep up with the Joneses and to make people think of me as a serious reviewer.
Well I wasn’t and I am not. I am a book blogger who loves reading and wants to share that with my loyal readers. I don’t wish to write thoughtful dissertations on the Booker list, the Costa List, the Asda List or any other list (ok I made the last one up). I want to read because I enjoy what I am reading not because I want to appear an intellectual. Mind you, it took a few years before this realisation dawned on me but I got there eventually.
So what have I read in 2019. Over 240 books and I can honestly say that the Litterati would turn up their noses but I really don’t care. I have found over the last few years that I have returned with a vengeance to my first love - Crime. When I was a teenager I discovered Agatha Christie and I have never looked back. But what has made this genre so enjoyable is the discovery of new Golden Age crime writers of whom I have never heard.
The main reason for this rediscovery is the wonderful British Library Crime Classics library about which I have rhapsodised for the past five years or so and will continue to do so. Through them I have discovered Freeman Wills Croft, E R Lorac (which led me on to books written by this author under another name Carol Carnac), Alan Melville, George Bellairs, Miles Burton to name but a few. I am not saying that all that I have read I have enjoyed, some of them I have found a trifle ponderous and feel there was a reason why they languished in obscurity for years, but the main thing is that we are being given a chance to discover them again and it is wonderful.
Then an email one day from Dean Street Press - would I like to try some books by Moray Dalton a long forgotten crime writer? Well silly question. Yes please I say and off I go and I loved them. There are more to come in March and please do check them out.
I have also read all the Peter Diamond books of Peter Lovesey set in Bath. Now I have already apologised to Peter as I first read his books years ago and I honestly had not read any more and thought he was dead....
Yes I know. Well Peter got in touch with me to say he was alive and well and the 19th Diamond book is due out next year. I wish Peter continued health and a long life so he can continue writing.....
I am also going to revisit his Inspector Lovesey books which I have not read for years.
This year we saw the death of Andrea Camilleri author of the Inspector Montalbano books which I love dearly and I collect them all in hardback as they come out. I saw a delightful programme about him a few years ago and he said that he already written the last in the series, but there were a few more to come and he had written them well in advance so there would be plenty after he had gone. Now that is what I call forward thinking and I am very grateful to him.
In between I have read AN Wilson’s biography of Prince Albert which I freely admit I found a bit of a curate’s egg, Kenneth Rose diaries, deliciously gossipy and lighthearted and, naturally, when all else fails I have turned to my beloved Victorian literature. This year I have re-read David Copperfield and Great Expectations and loved them all over again. I am determined to read Dombey and Son next year - I keep starting it and giving up. I am not sure why.
And I have also read Jane Austen who soothes the soul like nobody else.
So no Book of the Year, just a hugely enjoyable twelve months of reading. I have given up on a lot of crappy books, I no longer waste my time with them. And I can tell you now I know within a page if I can carry on with a book - when a book is crap then it is crap and that is that.
And I hope UK readers have noticed that I have refrained from writing about the BBC new “darker” version of a Christmas Carol which they showed at Christmas. I wish to end the year on a nice happy joyous note and if I get started on this, well, it ain’t gonna happen.
Just take my word for it - it was AWFUL (to be fair quite a few people did like it but the majority did not).
I may save it up for a rant in 2020.
