A Reading Malady, a Book Haul, a Book Launch, and a TBR Challenge
A bit of a miscellany today, as a placeholder until I finally have some more reviews to share.
Stuck in the Middle
I’ve been reading up a storm in 2021, of course, but I’m having an unusual problem: I can’t seem to finish anything. Okay, I’ve finished three books so far – Intensive Care, my first read and only proper review so far of the year; In These Days of Prohibition by Caroline Bird, a surprising and funny poetry collection about mental illness and the crutches people turn to, including drugs and sex; and one more poetry book, a recent release I’ll round up later in the month – but compare that to January 2020, when I’d finished 11 books within the first 11 days. Half a month gone and I’m way behind on my Goodreads challenge already.
Most of you know that I take multi-reading to an extreme: I currently have nearly 30 books on the go, plus piles of set-aside and occasional-reading titles that I try to reintroduce a few at a time. All in all, that’s nearly 60 books I’m partway through, whether by a mere 10 pages or over 200. These stacks represent thousands of pages read, but no finished books. By the end of this month, I will at least have finished and reviewed the five more January releases, but it’s still an awfully slow start to the year for me. Maybe I’ve spread myself too thin.
Current Stars
I often stretch the definition of “currently reading” in that most days I don’t sit with every book on my stack; instead, I end up spending time with a changing subset of 10‒15. Some books I have barely touched since Christmas. But there are others that consistently hold my attention and that I look forward to reading 20 or more pages in each day. Here are some of the highlights on the pile:
Spinster by Kate Bolick: Written as she was approaching 40, this is a cross between a memoir, a social history of unmarried women (mostly in the USA), and a group biography of five real-life heroines who convinced her it was alright to not want marriage and motherhood. First was Maeve Brennan; now I’m reading about Neith Boyce. The writing is top-notch.
America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo: Set in the 1990s in the Philippines and in the Filipino immigrant neighborhoods of California, this novel throws you into an unfamiliar culture and history right at the deep end. The characters shine and the story is complex and confident – I’m reminded especially of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work.
Some Body to Love by Alexandra Heminsley: Finally pregnant after a grueling IVF process, Heminsley thought her family was perfect. But then her husband began transitioning. This is not just a memoir of queer family-making, but, as the title hints, a story of getting back in touch with her body after an assault and Instagram’s obsession with exercise perfection.
The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard: We’re reading the first volume of The Cazalet Chronicles for a supplementary book club meeting. I can hardly believe it was published in 1990; it’s such a detailed, convincing picture of 1937‒8 for a large, wealthy family in London and Sussex as war approaches. It’s so Downton Abbey; I love it and will continue the series.
Outlawed by Anna North: After Reese Witherspoon chose it for her book club, there’s no chance you haven’t heard about this one. I requested it because I’m a huge fan of North’s previous novel, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, but I’m also enjoying this alternative history/speculative take on the Western. It’s very Handmaid’s, with a fun medical slant.
Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud: It was already on my TBR after the Faber Live Fiction Showcase in November, but my interest was redoubled by this recently winning the Costa First Novel Award. Set in Trinidad, it’s narrated, delightfully, in turn by Betty, a young widow; Solo, her teenage son; and Mr. Chetan, their lodger. Perfect for fans of Mr Loverman.
Acquiring More
Last week I ordered 21 books in one day. (In my defense, only 18 of them were for me.) It started like this: “Ah, must find a clearance 2021 calendar. Waterstones had a good selection last year…” And indeed, I found the perfect calendar, for half price. But then I continued browsing the online sale items and before I knew it there were also seven books in my basket. While I was at it, I went onto Awesomebooks.com and put together an order of secondhand books by authors I’ve been wanting to try or read more by. Add to that a couple more review books coming through the door and a couple of giveaways from neighbors (the Nicolson in the first photo, and Stoner for me to reread) and it’s been a big week for book acquisitions.
Attending a Book Launch
My fifth book launch since March 2020; my first to take place on Instagram. Hosted by Damian Barr, who runs a literary salon, it was for one I’ve already mentioned, Some Body to Love by Alexandra Heminsley, which came out on the 14th. (Barr and his husband are the book’s dedicatees.) “I am not ashamed of what happened,” she said about how her family has changed, adding that writing about such recent events has been a way of solidifying how she felt about them. Her ex has not read the book but wrote to Chatto & Windus saying she completely trusted Heminsley and consented to the publication. Some of her offers were for a more mass-market memoir about the marriage, whereas the book ended up being more diffuse, including other medical experiences and challenges to self-belief. It was amusing to hear that after the BLM movement her manuscript went through a “Karen edit” to make sure she hadn’t taken her privilege for granted.
A New TBR Challenge
“Hands. Face. Space.” is a current UK public health campaign slogan. It inspired me to trawl through my TBR shelves for appropriate covers and titles. I don’t know if I’m actually serious about reading these particular books I selected (I could have chosen any of dozens for the Face covers), but it was fun to put together the photo shoot. I had two replies from people on Twitter who came up with their own trio of titles.
And to cap off this miscellany, something non-book-related…
Top 5 albums from 2020
I originally wrote this little note for Facebook.
Banana Skin Shoes, Badly Drawn Boy – His best since his annus mirabilis of 2002. Funky pop gems we’ve been caught dancing to by people walking past the living room window … oops! A track to try: “Is This a Dream?” (psychedelic music video)!
Where the World Is Thin, Kris Drever – You may know him from Lau. Top musicianship and the most distinctive voice in folk. Nine folk-pop winners, including a lockdown anthem. A track to try: “I’ll Always Leave the Light On.”
Henry Martin, Edgelarks – Mention traditional folk and I’ll usually run a mile. But the musical skill and new arrangements, along with Hannah Martin’s rich alto, hit the spot. A track to try: “Bird in a Cage.”
Blindsided, Mark Erelli – We saw him perform the whole of his new folk-Americana album live in lockdown. Love the Motown and Elvis influences; his voice is at a peak. A track to try: “Rose-Colored Rearview.”
American Foursquare, Denison Witmer – A gorgeous ode to family life in small-town Pennsylvania from a singer-songwriter whose career we’ve been following for upwards of 15 years. A track to try: “Birds of Virginia.”
How is your 2021 reading going?
Final 2020 Statistics and Retrospective / 2021 Reading Goals
In 2020…
My mother was supposed to visit us in May – my first visit from family in 13 years – and we were meant to be in the States for Christmas. These planned trips had to be cancelled, of course, and many gigs and regular events we would have attended in London and elsewhere couldn’t go ahead.
We managed two mini-breaks, one to Dorset and Devon and one to Hay-on-Wye, as well as a daytrip to Avebury and Silbury Hill, a night out at an Oxford comedy club, a few meals out, and some outdoor meet-ups with family and friends.
It was also the year we finally started doing video chats with family in America, and we kept up with certain friends better than ever thanks to Zoom meetings.
All told, I have no grounds for complaint about the year that has just passed. I know we are lucky to have had good health, stable employment and a wonderful town and community.
Moreover, I was spoiled for choice with online bookish and musical content last year:
- 45 livestreamed gigs (28+ Bookshop Band, 4 Duke Special, 3 Edgelarks and Megson, 2 Switchfoot, and 1 each by Bellowhead, Krista Detor, Lau, Mark Erelli and Nerina Pallot)
- 8 neighborhood book club meetings
- 8 literary festival events
- 8 quizzes (mostly general trivia; 1 bookish, run by Penguin – I did well among the hundreds of entries!)
- 6 literary prize announcements
- 4 festivals, mostly of folk music
- 4 book launch events
- 3 book club/preview events
- 2 conferences (mostly book-related)
I’m also lucky that, unlike many, my reading was not affected by a stressful year. My reading total was very close to the previous year’s (343), which means that after five years above 300 and climbing, I’ve now figured out what my natural limit is. Next year I will aim for 340 again.
Some interesting additional statistics, courtesy of Goodreads:
First read of the year: Last read of the year:
This was my Christmas book haul thus far (I have a feeling more may be marooned at my in-laws’ house), including money to spend the next time I can get to Bookbarn. I started a few of them right away.
My husband reads between one-fifth and one-quarter of what I do in a year, but by anyone’s accounting, 76 books is a lot in a year, especially considering that he has a busy full-time university lecturer job, is a town councillor, and is on lots of other voluntary committees. We overlap in some of our reading tastes (nature and travel writing, and some literary fiction) and I pass a lot of my review copies or library books his way, but he’s less devoted to new books and more likely to pick up books with heavier historical, political, or scientific content. If you’re interested, his rundown of his reading, including his top 3 reads of the year, is here.
2021 Reading Goals
My immediate priorities are to clear my set-aside pile (20 books) and everything I’m currently reading, start some January releases, and get back into some university library books to last me while I have limited access to our public library.
These are the 2021 proofs and finished copies I have received thus far:
Looking further ahead, I plan to continue and/or participate in many of 2020’s reading challenges again, as well as join in Liz’s Anne Tyler readalong for the novels I own and haven’t read yet. (The first one for me will be The Clock Winder in mid- to late February.)
Genres in which my achievement often lags far behind my intentions include literature in translation, biographies, and travel books. To address the first one, I’m going to set up a shelf in my house for unread works in translation, as a visual reminder and area to select from. I’ll start with the one below left as part of my “M” 4-in-a-Row.
I would be happy to read even one biography this year, since they often take me many months to read. I’m going to make it the one above, of Janet Frame. Standard travel narratives intimidate me for some reason; I get on with them much better if they are in essays or incorporate memoir and/or nature writing. We have a whole shelf of unread travel books, many of which are of the more traditional going somewhere and reporting on what you see type. I want to clear the shelf to give them to my father-in-law, who expressed interest in reading more travel books. I’ll start with the 2018 Young Writer of the Year Award winner, above.
A “Classic of the Month” and “Doorstopper of the Month” are regular features on my blog, yet I don’t always manage to complete one each month. My aim will be to have at least one classic and one doorstopper on the go at all times, and hope that that translates to one a month as much as possible. Here’s my first pair:
I can see that lots of other book bloggers are prioritizing doorstoppers and backlist reading in 2021. Apart from the modest goals I’ve set here, I expect my reading to be as varied and over-the-top as ever. I know I’ll read lots of 2021 releases, but backlist books are often more memorable, so I’ll try to arrange my stacks and choose my challenges so as to let them shine.
What are some of your reading goals for 2021?
Another Birthday & An “Overhaul” of Previous Years’ Gifted Books
I thought a Wednesday would be a crummy day to have a birthday on, but actually it was great – the celebrations have extended from the weekend before to the weekend after, giving me a whole week of treats. Last Saturday we planned a last-minute trip to Oxford when I won a pair of free tickets to the Oxford Playhouse’s comedy club, their first live event since March. It featured three acts plus a compere and was headlined by Flo & Joan, a musical sister act we’d seen before at Greenbelt 2018. Beforehand, we had excellent pizzas at Franco Manca. Oxford felt busy, but we wore masks to queue at the restaurant and for the whole time in the Playhouse, where there were several seats left between parties plus every other row was empty.
My husband was able to work from home on the day itself, even though he’s been having a manically busy couple of weeks of in-person teaching and labs on campus, so we got to share a few meals: a leisurely pancake breakfast; fresh-baked maple, walnut and pear upside-down cake, a David Lebovitz recipe from Ready for Dessert (recreated here); and a French-influenced dinner at The Blackbird, a local pub we’d not tried before. In between I did some reading (of course), helped hunt in the garden for invertebrates for the labs, and did a video chat with my mom and sister in the States.
Today, since he had a bit more time free, he has made me Mexican food, one of my favorite cuisines and something I don’t get to have very often, plus a second cake from a Lebovitz recipe (luckily, the remnants of the last one had already gone in the freezer), this time a flourless chocolate cake topped with cacao nibs.
Just three books came in as gifts this year, though I might buy a few more with birthday money and vouchers. (A proof copy of Claire Fuller’s new novel, forthcoming in January, happened to arrive on my birthday, so I’ll call that four books as presents!) I also received chocolate, posh local drink, and the latest Alanis album.
An Overhaul of Previous Years’ Gifted Books
For a bit of fun, I thought I’d go back through the previous birthday book hauls I’ve posted about and see how many of the books I’ve read: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Simon of Stuck in a Book runs a regular blog feature he calls “The Overhaul,” where he revisits a book haul from some time ago and takes stock of what he’s read, what he still owns, etc. (here’s the most recent one). With permission, I’ve borrowed the title and format.
Date of haul: October 2015
Number of books purchased: 7 [the bottom 3 pictured were bought for other people]
Had already read: 2 (the Byatt story collections, one of which I reread earlier this year)
Read since: 2 (reviews of the Jerome and Zola appeared on the blog)
Still to read: 3 – It’s high time I got around to the Byron and Dinesen books after five years sat on my shelves! I DNFed the first Gormenghast book, though, so may end up jettisoning the whole trilogy.
Date of haul: October 2016
Number of books purchased/received: 6
Read: ALL 6! I am so proud about this. Reviews of the Brown, Taylor, and Welch have appeared on the blog.
Still own: Just 2 – I resold the Brown and Holloway after reading them, gave the Mercer to a friend, and donated the Taylor proof.
Date of haul: October 2017
Number of books received: 11
Read: 4 (reviews of the Cox, Hay, and Hoffman appeared on the blog)
DNFed and resold: 2
Still to read: 5
Date of haul: October 2018
Number of books received: 10
Read: 8! Another fine showing; only the Giffels and Winner remain to be read. Reviews of the Groff, one L’Engle, and Manyika & Richardson appeared on the blog.
Still own: 8 – I resold the Hood and Petit after reading them.
Date of haul: October 2019
Number of books received: 14
Read: Only 2. Hmm. (I reviewed the Weiss, and the Houston appeared on my Best of 2019 runners-up list.)
Currently reading/skimming, or set aside temporarily: 4
DNFed and resold: 3. D’oh.
Still to read: 5
Are you good about reading gifted books quickly?
What catches your eye from my stacks?
Hay-on-Wye Trip & Sixpence House Reread
We found Hay-on-Wye fairly bustling on an early September weekend. Not all of the bookshops are operational or have reliable opening hours, so we missed our chance to go in a few of them this time. Still, nine was plenty to be getting on with. The castle currently has scaffolding up for necessary renovations, and many eateries were offering little or no indoor table service. Masks are not actually compulsory in Wales, but we wore ours inside shops anyway, and half or more of the other customers and booksellers were doing the same.
Day 1: Drive there; Clock Tower Books, Oxfam, a great haul from the honesty shelves by the Castle (everything’s £1); ice cream cones from Shepherds; dinner at The Globe.
Day 2: A walk up Hay Bluff; roast lunch at the Three Tuns pub; Broad Street Book Centre, Hay Cinema Bookshop.
Day 3: Cinema outdoor area, Booth’s, British Red Cross shop, back to Oxfam, back to Clock Tower Books, Green Ink Booksellers; ice cream cones from Shepherds (again); drive home.
“To look for a specific book in Hay is a hopeless task; you can only find the books that are looking for you, the ones you didn’t even know to ask for in the first place. … What you mean to find matters less than what you do find.”
~Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, Paul Collins (see below)
I bought 26 books in total (though one is an omnibus, so you could call it 28), at an average spend of £1.81 per volume. (My husband bought 10 nature books. We also found a gift for my father-in-law’s birthday next week – whew!) I’m particularly pleased with the Robertson Davies novels and the memoirs, some of which have been on my wish list for a long time. My interests in animals plus foodie and medical themes come through clearly. Some authors here I’ve never tried but have been meaning to; others are familiar names I was interested to read more by. I only noticed later on that Ghosts, the John Fuller poetry book, is a signed copy.
What I read
From last year’s book haul: The first 30 or so pages in Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller and Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres. I’ll probably only skim the Spowers travel book (another one I only just noticed is signed). I have to read a different Dunmore first, towards my Women’s Prize reading project, as it’s requested after me at the library, but I’ll try to get to Talking to the Dead before too much longer.
I got through another 90 pages in Mike Parker’s On the Red Hill, about life in the house he and his partner inherited in the Welsh countryside from another gay couple. I also read about half of Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales, Anna James’s second middle-grade novel about a girl who disappears into books and interacts with the characters, and the remainder of A.N. Wilson’s The Tabitha Stories, a cute chapter book with illustrations about a kitten learning how to be a cat.
Mostly, I focused on rereading the whole of Paul Collins’s memoir Sixpence House. I’ve listed this as one of the landmark books in my life because, as I was getting ready for my year abroad in England in the late summer of 2003, it was one of the books that whetted my appetite for traveling, and particularly for visiting Hay-on-Wye. (We first went in 2004; this was our seventh trip.)
In 2000 Collins moved from San Francisco to Hay with his wife and toddler son, hoping to make a life there. His parents were British and he’d enjoyed trips to the Book Town before, so it wasn’t a completely random choice. The place suited his interest in the oddities and obscure figures of literature and history. In fact, he’d just finished writing Banvard’s Folly, a fun book containing 13 profiles of thinkers and inventors whose great ideas flopped. (I should reread it, too.)
As he edits his manuscript and hunts for the perfect cover and title, he is also unexpectedly drawn into working for Richard Booth, the eccentric bookseller who was responsible for creating the world’s first book town and crowned himself King of Hay. Booth hired him to sort out the American Studies section – but if you ever went in the pre-2007 Booth’s you’ll know how impossible it would have been to make order out of its chaos. He comes across lots of interesting books time has forgotten, though (I first learned about W.N.P. Barbellion’s The Journal of a Disappointed Man from this book; why have I still not read it?!), and muses on counterfeiting, cover designs, bookbinding, and the sadness of the remainders bin.
Renting an apartment above Pembertons, which no longer exists but was at that time the town’s only new bookshop, Collins and his wife look at various properties and fall in love with a former pub. But when the survey comes back, they realize fixing all the damp and rot would nearly double its £125,000 price tag. (That sure looks good these days! The B&B next to the Airbnb flat where we stayed was for sale for over £700,000. Cusop Dingle is full of large, posh houses – Collins’s landlady referred to it as the “Beverly Hills of Hay.”) Buying one of the new-build houses on the edge of town just isn’t their dream.
In the end, after six months or so in Hay, they admit defeat and move back to the States. So in a sense this is – just like Banvard’s Folly, the book being shepherded into publication within it – a book about an experiment that turned out to be a noble failure. It’s warm, funny in a Bryson-esque way, and nostalgic for a place that still exists but a time that never will again. I loved spotting familiar landmarks, even if the shops have changed hands or are no longer there. This was probably my fourth read, but it all still felt fresh. An enduring favorite of mine. 
I’d be intrigued to know what Collins would make of Hay 20 years later. In 2000 it had 40 bookshops; now it’s only 12, with online sellers, book-related businesses, and shops further afield pushing the listings in the annual leaflet to 26. Whereas then Collins felt they were the only young family in town, it’s very much a hipster place now and we saw many groups of teens and twentysomethings. A tapas bar, boutique stores, turmeric chai lattes … it’s not just a musty antiquarian book lover’s paradise anymore, and that might sadden some like Collins. Yet gentrification and the Festival may be the only things that have kept the town alive. Richard Booth died last year, but the book town vision should live on.
I miss Hay already. I hate to think of all the time that might pass before I can get there again, and what will (or won’t) have changed by then. A few years can seem to go by in an instant these days. My vow is to go again before I turn 40.
Making Plans for a Return to Hay-on-Wye & A Book “Overhaul”
Somehow it’s been nearly 3.5 years since our last trip to Hay-on-Wye, the Book Town of Wales (I wrote about that April 2017 visit here). This coming weekend will be our seventh trip to Hay, one of our favorite places. We’ve booked an Airbnb in nearby English hamlet Cusop Dingle for two nights, so it’s a pretty short break, but longer than the weekend away we managed last month – reduced to only 36 hours by the cat’s poorly timed but ultimately minor one-day illness.
I’ve acquired many, many books from the free mall bookshop over the past year. (It’s now closed permanently, alas.) And I had no shortage of additional incomers during lockdown, via the unofficial Little Free Library I started and orders I placed with independent bookstores and publishers. So you could say I don’t need a book-buying trip to Hay. But 1) it’s never a question of need, is it? and 2) We want to continue to support the town, which will have been hit hard by temporary closures and by its annual literary festival being purely online this year.
I have no particular plans for what to buy this time, so will just see what takes my fancy. There are noticeably fewer bookshops than when we first started visiting Hay in 2004, but among the dozen or so remaining are some truly excellent shops like Addyman Books, the Hay Cinema Bookshop, and Booth’s Bookshop. Our best bargains last time were from the Oxfam charity shop and the honesty shelves around the castle, so those will likely be our first ports of call, and from there we’ll let whimsy be our guide. Saturday and Monday will be for wandering the town and book shopping, while Sunday will include countryside walks around Hay Bluff. We also hope to explore some eatery options we’ve not tried before.
An Overhaul of Last Trip’s Book Purchases
Simon of Stuck in a Book runs a regular blog feature he calls “The Overhaul,” where he revisits a book haul from some time ago and takes stock of what he’s read, what he still owns, etc. (here’s the most recent one). With his permission, I’m borrowing the title and format to look back at what I bought in Hay last time.
Date of haul: April 2017
Location: Hay-on-Wye
Number of books bought: 18
Had already read: (3/18)
- How to Age by Anne Karpf
- From Heaven Lake by Vikram Seth
- Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds – It’s on my shelf for rereading.
Have read since then: (5/18)
- Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge [resold]
- Fillets of Plaice by Gerald Durrell
- A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay (!)
- The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson
- Cats in May by Doreen Tovey
BUT also read from my hubby’s pile (not pictured):
- Sold for a Farthing by Clare Kipps
- All the Presidents’ Pastries by Roland Mesnier
- Second Nature by Michael Pollan
- A Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks
DNFed: (3/18)
- Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee [resold]
- We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates – Might try this one again another time.
- Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott [given away]
Resold unread: (1/18)
- Family and Friends by Anita Brookner – I’d added it to the Oxfam pile to make up a 5 for £1 stack, but then didn’t enjoy Booker winner Hotel du Lac enough to try another by Brookner.
Total still unread: 6
Total no longer owned: 4
This is not too bad a showing overall, though it does reveal my habit of buying books and letting them sit around for years unread. (Surely I’m not alone in this?!)
The six purchases still to read are two cat-themed anthologies for reading piecemeal, plus these four – two fiction and two non-:
- Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore
- Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
- Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
- A Year in Green Tea and Tuk-Tuks by Rory Spowers
To force myself to get to them, these are the four I’ve packed for reading in the car and while in Hay. I’m also bringing, to read on location: 1) On the Red Hill by Mike Parker, a Wainwright Prize-shortlisted memoir about life in the Welsh countryside (I’m about 40 pages into it already); and 2) Sixpence House, which I’ve read several times before and consider among my absolute favorite books; it’s Paul Collins’s memoir about finding a temporary home and work among the bookshops of Hay.
I’ll be back on Tuesday with this year’s book haul plus photos and notes on how we found the town this time around. (But first, Six Degrees of Separation will post on Saturday while I’m away.)
Bookbarn Book Haul & More
We’re back from our weekend in Bristol and Exeter to hang out with university friends and attend our goddaughter’s dedication service. On the way (ish) down, we stopped at Bookbarn International, one of my favorite places to look for secondhand books. The shop is always coming up with new ideas and ventures – a rare books room, a café, stationery and store-brand merchandise, new stock alongside the used books, and so on – and has recently been doing some renovating of the main shop space. I contributed to a crowdfunder for this and got to pick up my rewards while I was there, including the items at right and a £10 store voucher, which, along with the small balance of my vendor account, more than covered my purchases that day.
We arrived around noon so started with a café lunch of all-day veggie cooked breakfasts plus cakes and coffee. Delicious! Then it was time for some dedicated browsing. All of the books on the main shop floor are £1 each; they’re working on restocking this area after the refurbishment. I found 12 books here, and ordered another two (the Janet Frame biography and Gail Godwin’s nonfiction book Heart) from the warehouse for £2 each.
From my book haul, I’m particularly pleased with:
- The sequel to another Robertson Davies novel I own
- The Frame biography – I loved her three-part autobiography and have also been dipping into her fiction; it will be fascinating to learn the ‘truth’ behind how she presented her life in memoir and autofiction. This copy looks to be in new condition, too.
- The Tulip by Anna Pavord, which I’ve long meant to read
- Another Carolyn Parkhurst novel – I loved The Dogs of Babel and Harmony
- Another Wendy Perriam novel – I read my first last year and have been hoping to find more
I also bought copies of two of my favorite memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Journal of a Solitude (though I own a copy in America, I’d like it to be part of my rereading project this year). I now own two unread novels each by Candia McWilliam and Michèle Roberts and three by Rose Tremain, so I’ll need to be sure I read one from each author this year. I also have a bad habit of hoarding biographies but not reading them, so I want to at least read the Frame one before the year is out.
Between Bristol’s charity shops and Book-Cycle in Exeter, I bought another five novels during the weekend, including the Vann to reread and several by authors I want to increase my familiarity with. (Smug points for not buying the £2.50 copy of Boyle’s The Women at Bookbarn and then finding it at Book Cycle for 50 pence instead.) Total weekend spend on 19 books: £2.12.
Picked up any good secondhand bargains recently?
Holiday Book Haul and Final 2019 Statistics
This is the stack I got for Christmas – along with a £30 Waterstones voucher to buy more books! I haven’t spent it yet, but I’m contemplating some combination of Be My Guest by Priya Basil, Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, The Glovemaker by Ann Weisgarber, a pre-order of the paperback of Benjamin Myers’s The Offing, and a cheap 2020 calendar.
2019 was my most prolific reading year yet! (I’m sure I said the same thing the last two years.) People sometimes joke, “why not aim for a book a day?” but that’s not how I do things. Instead of reading one book from start to finish and then beginning another, I almost always have 10 to 20 books on the go at a time. I tend to start and finish books in batches – I’m addicted to starting new books, but also to finishing them.
Some interesting additional statistics courtesy of Goodreads:
How did 2019 turn out for you reading-wise?
America Reading & Book Haul, Etc.
The wedding of a college friend – who I calculated I’ve known at least half my life – was the excuse we needed to book a trip back to the States for the last two weeks of May. Along with the classy nuptials in the Fell’s Point area of Baltimore, we enjoyed a day’s sightseeing in Philadelphia, a couple of outings to watch birds and other wildlife on Cape May (a migration hotspot in New Jersey), two meet-ups with other friends, and plenty of relaxation time with my mom and sister, including a Memorial Day picnic at my mom’s retirement community and a tour of Antietam Battlefield. It was much hotter than anticipated, including some days in the high 80s or even 90s, and the hayfever, ticks and mosquitoes were bad, too, but we survived.
While back in Maryland I continued the intermittent downsizing process I’ve been going through for a while now. After being on the market for nearly a year, my family home finally sold and went to closing while we were over there. So that provided a scrap of closure, but my current estrangement from my father (we don’t even know where he’s living) means there’s a lot of continuing uncertainty.
In any case, I managed to reduce the number of boxes I’m storing with my sister from 29 to 20 by recycling lots of my old schoolwork, consolidating my mementos, reselling one box of books and donating another, donating a box of figurines and decorative bottles to a thrift store, displaying some at my mom’s place, giving away a few trinkets to a friend’s kids, and packing a bunch of stuff – photo albums and decorations as well as 64 books – in our various suitcases and hand luggage to take back to the UK.
And I also acquired more books, of course! A whopping 46 of these were free: eight review copies were waiting for me at my mom’s place; three were from the outdoor free bin at 2nd & Charles, a secondhand bookstore; one was found in a Little Free Library near our friends’ place in New Jersey (Emerald City by Jennifer Egan, not pictured); and the rest were from The Book Thing of Baltimore, a legendary volunteer-run free bookshop. I mostly raided the biography section for an excellent selection of women’s life writing; the fiction is unalphabetized so harder to find anything in, but I picked up a few novels, too. My only purchases were new (remainder) copies of one novel and one memoir from Dollar Tree. Total book spending on the trip: just $2.12.
What I Read:
Two that I’d already started but finished on the plane ride over:
The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl: (As featured in my spring reading list.) “Love and flowers, death and flowers.” Poetic writing about small-town Minnesota life, a tense relationship with her late mother, and her late father’s flower shop. 
- The Girls by Lori Lansens: I love reading about sister relationships, and the Darlen girls’ situation is an extreme case of love and jealousy given that they literally can’t get away from each other. Not as good as the two other conjoined-twin novels I’ve read, Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, but I would read more from Lansens, a solid Oprah Book Club sort of author.
Three review books that will be featuring here in the near future:
- Goulash by Brian Kimberling
- Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously by Jessica Pan
- Mother Ship by Francesca Segal
A few quick reads:
A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir by Sandra Gail Lambert: (A proof copy passed on by an online book reviewing friend.) A memoir in 29 essays about living with the effects of severe polio. Most of the pieces were previously published in literary magazines. While not all are specifically about the author’s disability, the challenges of life in a wheelchair seep in whether she’s writing about managing a feminist bookstore or going on camping and kayaking adventures in Florida’s swamps. I was reminded at times of Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson. 
No Happy Endings: A Memoir by Nora McInerny: (Borrowed from my sister.) I didn’t appreciate this as much as the author’s first memoir, It’s Okay to Laugh, though it’s in the same style: lots of short, witty but bittersweet essays reflecting on life’s losses. Within a year of being widowed by cancer, she met a new partner and soon was – surprise! – pregnant with his baby. Together they formed a blended family of four children ranging from 0 to 15 and two wounded adults. McInerny also writes about her newfound spirituality and feminism. The problem with the essay format is that she cycles through aspects of the same stories multiple times. 
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey: (Free from 2nd & Charles.) Trethewey writes beautifully disciplined verse about her mixed-race upbringing in Mississippi, her mother’s death and the South’s legacy of racial injustice. She occasionally rhymes, but more often employs forms that involve repeated lines or words. The title sequence concerns a black Civil War regiment in Louisiana. Two favorites from this Pulitzer-winning collection by a former U.S. poet laureate were “Letter” and “Miscegenation”; stand-out passages include “In my dream, / the ghost of history lies down beside me, // rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm” (from “Pilgrimage”) and “I return / to Mississippi, state that made a crime // of me — mulatto, half-breed” (from “South”).
I also read the first half or more of: The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, my June book club book; Hungry by Jeff Gordinier, a journalist’s travelogue of his foodie journeys with René Redzepi of Noma fame, coming out in July; and the brand-new novel In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow – these last two are for upcoming BookBrowse reviews.
But the book I was most smug to have on my reading list for the trip was the recent novel Cape May by Chip Cheek. What could be more perfect for reading on location? I asked myself. Unfortunately, it stood out for the wrong reasons. In October 1957 a young pair of virgins, Effie and Henry, travel from Georgia to New Jersey for an off-season honeymoon in her uncle’s vacation home. They’re happy enough with each other but underwhelmed with the place (strangely, this matched my experience of Cape May), and even consider going home early until they fall in with Clara, a friend of Effie’s cousin; Clara’s lover, Max; and Max’s younger sister, Alma. Effie and Henry join the others for nightly drunken revelry.
[SPOILERS!] As the weeks pass Effie, ill and dejected, almost seems to disappear as Cheek delves into Henry’s besotted shenanigans, described in unnecessarily explicit sexual detail. When Effie makes a bid or two for her own sexual freedom late on, it only emphasizes the injustice of spending so much time foregrounding Henry’s perspective. Despite the strength of the period atmosphere and seaside location, this ends up being dull and dated. If you’re after a typically ‘trashy’ beach read and don’t mind lots of sex scenes, you may get on with it better than I did. 
Reading a few pages of Cape May over an ice-cold G&T at the wedding reception.
Bonus bookishness:
Vineland, New Jersey was on the way from our friends’ house to Cape May, so we stopped to take my proof copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered to its spiritual home. Alas, Vineland is an utterly boring small American town. However, Mary Treat at least appears on a painted mural on a building on the main street. The Historical Society, where Kingsolver did her research, was closed, but we photographed the outside.
What’s the last book you read ‘on location’? Did it work out well for you?
American Book Acquisitions and 2019 Reading Goals
We arrived in the UK on January 1, after an overnight flight from Baltimore. There was no midnight announcement, no complimentary champagne; nothing. Clearly I had my hopes too high. So we’re feeling a bit cheated out of our New Year’s Eve experience and will be doing a recreated countdown and toast when we have houseguests over for this Epiphany weekend.
It was a low-key, relaxing couple of weeks back in the States, the majority of it spent seeing family and friends. We also made it into D.C. to see the new Obama portraits. Mostly I enjoyed doing not a lick of work. And I acquired books, of course: a secondhand and remainder stack that, after my trade-in of some cast-off books, cost just $4; and a few ARCs I’m excited about.
2019 Goals
I’m feeling restless in my career, like if someone gave me permission to quit all my gigs I would do it tomorrow. But, of course, only a fool would do so with no plan to replace them with other remunerative work. The year is likely to involve a lot of rethinking for me as I evaluate which of my proofreading and writing jobs feel worthwhile, and what’s taking me in the direction I want to go (not that I currently know what that is).
Life is awfully hard to plan out. Reading is much easier! So here are my fairly modest reading goals for the year, some of them overlapping:
- I plan to reinstate the Classic and Doorstopper of the month features I ran in 2017, since otherwise I hardly ever read them. I’m starting with Annabel’s readalong of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, which is just over 500 pages but also conveniently falls into one of the below categories.
The doorstoppers I have around to choose from.
- I’ll make a second attempt at getting through some of the travel books and biographies I own, though I won’t hold myself to any particular target. At least five of each would be nice.
- I’m determined to up my literature in translation ratio. These are all the books I own that were originally published in other languages – pitiful! – but I will get hold of more through the library and publishers.
- Re-reading is something I undertake very reluctantly. I have friends who swear by it, but to me it can feel like a waste of time. Last year I re-read just four books: Little Women, Give Me Everything You Have, Crossing the Moon, and Diary of a Bookseller. In each case, on the second reading I rated the book a star lower. That suggests that, far from appreciating books more on a second reading, I have less patience with them and find more flaws! All the same, I’ve chosen four books to re-read in 2019. The Collins is a longtime favorite about moving to Hay-on-Wye; the Thomas is one of the books that first got me into reading memoirs. I’ve been let down by Lamott’s latest three books so wanted to go back to one of her spiritual classics; I’ve gotten into L’Engle’s writing for adults and want to revisit her most famous children’s book (which I don’t think I comprehended at age nine or whatever I was).
- I have a bad habit of racing through self-help and theology books rather than taking my time mulling over them and fully exploring how I might apply them in my life. This was especially true of The Artist’s Way, one of my bibliotherapy prescriptions. I started out with the aim of completing the daily “morning pages” of free writing (though for me they were ‘evening pages’; I’m not a morning person) and each chapter’s self-knowledge exercises. But soon I’d given up on the writing and contemplation and begun just reading the book straight through, which is not the point of it at all. So this year I mean to go back through the Cameron and Rubin books more mindfully, and use the McLaren devotional as it is intended, reading the recommended Bible passages alongside the weekly reflections.
What are some of your goals (reading-related or otherwise) for 2019?
American Book Acquisitions
Now, part of the purpose of my recent three weeks in America was to shed stuff – and I did, lots of it, but that will be the subject for a longer post next week once I’ve shaken off a bit more of my jetlag- and heatwave-induced sluggishness.
It seems inevitable that when I set foot inside a bookstore, even if my primary reason for being there is to sell back loads of books, I’m going to spot some that I want to buy, too. I had some terrific finds this time around, especially at two branches of Dollar Tree. If you’re not regularly hitting up the dollar stores near you for book bargains, you’re missing out! (I always check Poundland when I’m in town here, but haven’t found anything good for ages.)
Dollar Tree / 2nd & Charles stack (not pictured: four books from Dollar Tree that I’ll give as Christmas gifts)
Wonder Book stack (all bargain books, 95 cents each; one memoir on top and the rest fiction)
Dollar Tree haul #2 (the last thing I needed to do on the day before I flew back was acquire three more books, but I couldn’t resist these, and they fit in my suitcases!)
Free books acquired on this trip (three review books [the bottom two come out in October] plus a Rebecca Brown novella swiped from a Little Free Library)
Book-themed gifts from a family friend (pencil case and cushion)
My mom paid for a second suitcase on my flight back as an early birthday present. Even so, fitting everything in was quite the challenge. I was pretty impressed with what I managed to get back in my two cases, backpack and purse, including 49 books – a mixture of favorites I want to reread, signed copies, review books, recent acquisitions, and stuff I’ve been meaning to read forever; if you want to be technical, since the Baker is two books in one and the Updike is three, I actually got 52 books over – as well as a selection of mementos, gifts and useful stuff, a lot of which didn’t even make it into the photo.
Review books waiting for me when I got back (Red Clocks for Nudge; How to Build a Boat for TLS; the rest for blog reviews)
What can I say? I’m happiest when surrounded by stacks of books.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.