Ersatz TLS discussion

This topic invites lists of books you've especially enjoyed in 2020. It will stay open until the end of the first week in 10 January.

Really excited for the this thread, thanks Justine! Hearing what people in this forest consider their books of the year is a genuine highlight of December for me.

I’d lead by example, but I’m fully immersed in the travails of famille Buddenbrook. Should be finished in a few days to post my books of the year, though. If Mann misses out on a top ten spot, he can consider himself very unlucky...

I have to be pretty predictable and submit The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. A superb and fitting final book in the series. I have never read a book where I have felt so much in the room with the characters.

I’m also really interested by this thread.
Please name a few if you feel so inclined; for example, best published this year, best older books, best international, best non fiction, and other highlights and comments about your year of reading.
I’ll do mine on NYE.. it’s become a tradition with a glass of something suitable.
You can record (cut and paste..) to a section on ‘Year Ends’ on this site too, here
It’ll be interesting to see the books with the most mentions.

Andy (4) wrote: "I’ll do mine on NYE."

Cool! I'll join you.

giveusaclue wrote: "I have to be pretty predictable and submit The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. A superb and fitting final book in the series. I have never read a book where I have felt so much in the room w..."

I couldn't agree more... for weeks after finishing it, everything else I read was pale in comparison!

While I have read a number of new books this year, I've been best able to cope by rereading old favorites.

Lord of The Rings and the entire list published by Christopher Tolkien
The Green Knowe books
Moomin
My collection of children books-Puffins mostly and getting fragile
The Judge Dee Mysteries
Jane Eyre and associated material on the Brontes.

AB76's list, reposted here from the maim thread:

My Top 3 Books of 2020


Classic Fiction:

AS STRANGERS HERE by Janet McNeil
Discovered as i browsed for post-war Ulster fiction, this was a real suprise for its quality of writing, the evocative descriptions of late 1950s Belfast and the religious tensions, quietly simmering. McNeil creates characters you believe in, matched to a harsh and unflinching portrayal of life, for working and middle class Belfast people

Modern fiction:

THE BAGHDAD EUCHARIST by Sinon Antoon
A short novel dealing with a day in the life of a Iraqi christian family, using flashback devices to the lives they led in Iraq through the last 50-60 years.

Non-fiction:

CONFEDERATE CITIES
A medium length collection of essays looking at the Confederate South from roughly 1850s to 1870s,(ie before and after as well as the war). Looking at the urban south that normally gets less attention than the rural south, the book covers all areas of urban life( white and black). It is tinged with sadness that the tales of african-americans reclaiming their lives somewhat was to be dashed on the rocks of Jim Crow by the 1880s and 1890s

AB76's list -
A really interesting list AB76. Thanks.
Is Confederate Cities by David Goldfield?

2020 Favourite Books

New novel Echoes of the City by Lars Saabye Christensen

Old Novel Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France

Crime Snow by John Banville

Poetry The Palm at the End of the Mind by Wallace Stevens
The Major Works; Gerard Manley Hopkins . Poems, journals and letters.

Non-Fiction Crocodile; Evolution’s Greatest Survivor by Lynne Berry

giveusaclue wrote: "I have to be pretty predictable and submit The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. A superb and fitting final book in the series. I have never read a book where I have felt so much in the room w..."

Sandya wrote: "While I have read a number of new books this year, I've been best able to cope by rereading old favorites.

Lord of The Rings and the entire list published by Christopher Tolkien
The Green Knowe bo..."
I have to agree it's The Mirror and the Light for me this year certainly. I started reading the day it arrived, then had a short pause and read the entire trilogy - I still shed a tear at the end after the second time..

Leslie wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I have to be pretty predictable and submit The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. A superb and fitting final book in the series. I have never read a book where I have felt s..."
I have to agree, it's definitely The Mirror an the Light for me this year. A wonderful achievement.
Andy wrote: "I’m also really interested by this thread.
Please name a few if you feel so inclined; for example, best published this year, best older books, best international, best non fiction, and other highli..."

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke was my absolute favorite read of the year, followed by The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel.

Honorable mentions: Telephone by Percival Everett, Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Four by Four by Sara Mesa, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.

From around 20 books, I would have to say Parable of the Sower was the stand out read for me this year.

Francis wrote: "From around 20 books, I would have to say Parable of the Sower was the stand out read for me this year."

Oooh, interesting....Butler's Kindred will end up being in my top 3 of the year. I'll have to get to her Parable books soon

I shared my year’s highlights on the final TLS, and my list hasn't really changed. My highlights, in the order I read them, were as follows:

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens
Love and Mr Lewisham by H.G. Wells
Plays and Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
Selected Poems by Kenneth Slessor
Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse
Tuff by Paul Beatty

Ten highlights from 47 books, three short of my target of 50 (strike rate 0.2). I abandoned two books, also irritating. This has been an unsatisfactory reading year in a sense (the second half that is), because circumstance has influenced my reading considerably. I had originally planned to read more short books, so I’m going to try again next year.
My reading year has been notable for quite a few Australian classics, the best of which were Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Selected Poems of Kenneth Slessor, and Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. But I think the best of the best were Sketches by Boz, a startling early Dickens collection, and Tuff, a gorgeous novel by Paul Beatty.

Well, I'm about halfway through the doorstop book with which I'll close out the year (Life And Fate), so I'm ready to declare it amongst my year's best. I think I can faithfully say that my favorites of 2020 are, in order of love from absolute unconditional to long embrace are:


The Collected Stories of Grace Paley by the voice in my head in which I still hear my Gramma speak to me
Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
The Makioka Sisters by Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki
Heat And Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala set to the beat of an infant heart monitor

The worst, by a long shot:
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Friggin' Mann

Overall, it's been a pretty good reading year. I started off on record pace, but reading a lot that only tangentially inspired me. Life intervened in unexpected ways, some cruel, some fantastic to synergize in new ways and allowed me to connect more deeply with what I was reading. Despite everything, this has been a wonderful year for me due to the arrival of my little Luca, and while it has been hard fought and full of loss and exile, I wouldn't trade it for another year.


This has also been the year in which I decided my Italian was good enough to just start buying most of my books translated into Italian (or getting them from the library) which makes it SO much easier to find the more obscure foreign authors I've wanted to read for so long.


Now, it's time to rest as much as the little stinker who wakes me up at 4 in the morning laughing hysterically will allow.

Thanks Pam, Merry Christmas to you as well! I tend to imagine that my Gramma is spending too much time correcting the slovenliness that Grampa allowed to set-in in the 25 years he had to himself.

Paul (17) wrote: "Well, I'm about halfway through the doorstop book with which I'll close out the year (Life And Fate) to declare it amongst my year's best. So, I think I can faithfully say that my favorites of 2020..."

Paul: It lifted my heart to read your positive words! Really! And congratulations on your advances in Italian. A world of new reading awaits you, whenever the 'little stinker' allows it!

2020 seemed to affect book-lovers in one of two ways; either people struggled to read in their usual way due to the strange circumstances or they found a refuge in books and read more than ever. In my case, happily, it was the latter, but I appreciate that I’ve been lucky in that regard.

This year I read a record total of 81 books, most of which I really enjoyed. That means I’ve had to expand my Books of the Year to 25 this year. I’ve put a brief description of each of the top five, but just listed the names of the rest, for space reasons.

1. Colum McCann - Apeirogon. This felt like the perfect subject and form for McCann’s style, allowing him to include all sorts of fascinating snippets and digressions, but tying them back to the emotional core of the book - the story of two men, one Palestinian, one Israeli, who had lost their daughters to acts of violence and the choices that they made as a result. This book could have gone wrong in so many ways - it could have felt exploitative, or maudlin, or like a liberal bedtime story. Instead, it was the most powerful, moving, clear-eyed account of humanity’s capacity for both brutality and empathy that I’ve read in years. It’s brilliant and everyone should read it.

2. Hilary Mantel - The Mirror and the Light. There’s not much to say about this book that hasn’t been said already. As someone who tends to enjoy the first book of trilogies far more than the following ones, I was taken aback by The Mirror and the Light. It’s potentially the best book of the trilogy which, taken together, represents one of the shining masterpieces of modern fiction. You don’t just enter Cromwell’s world, you walk around in it, as the candlelight flickers on the tapestries and an increasingly unstable king rages. It’s an astonishing, mesmerising achievement.

3. Salman Rushdie - Midnight’s Children. I expected this to be heavy, pretentious and difficult going. Instead, it was a book full of fizz, fireworks and laughter, with Rushdie the brilliant, mad conjurer. In addition to producing a spellbinding novel, Rushdie pretty much creates a new way of writing one, using the mellifluous cadences of Indian English and the oral tradition of storytelling to create one of the freshest, most distinct narrative voices I’ve ever read. A technicolour, enchanting novel to gulp down in greedy 100 page chunks.

4. Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita. Speaking of technicolour novels, I adored this hilarious romp through Moscow, featuring gun-wielding cats, Soviet bureaucrats and neurotic poets. A Country Doctor’s Notebook was one of my Books of the Year last year, but The Master and Margarita is even better. Bulgakov is one of the most joyful, strange, brilliant writers I’ve come across and I plan to read everything that he wrote.

5. Brian Sewell - The White Umbrella. In some part of my brain, I accept that a novel about a man impulsively rescuing a young donkey in Peshawar and their journey back to the UK isn’t actually better than the likes of Dorian Gray, Pride and Prejudice and Buddenbrooks. But every other part of synapse shouts with joy every time I think of this book. It takes an experience that many of us will have had (witnessing an animal suffering and wishing to intervene) and runs with it in the most endearing, enchanting way possible. I’m not sure how this book didn’t end up a sacharrine, unbelievable mess, to be honest. But I’ve very glad that it didn’t.

6. Margaret Kennedy - Troy Chimneys
7. Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals
8. Vikram Seth - Collected Poems
9. BS Johnson - Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry
10. Gabriela Cabezon Camara - Slum Virgin
11. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
12. Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
13. Parisa Reza - The Gardens of Consolation
14. Jorge Amado - Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
15. Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks
16. Mario Vargas Llosa - The Bad Girl
17. Margaret Drabble - The Radiant Way
18. AE Ellis - The Rack
19. Bernard Schlink - The Reader
20. Gabriela Aleman - Pozo Wells
21. Nella Larsen - Passing
22. Sylvia Townsend Warner - Lolly Willowes
23. Italo Calvino - The Baron in the Trees
24. Erico Verissimo - Time and the Wind
25. Audur Ava Olafsdottir - Miss Iceland

Wow, 81? That's a heck of a year, and an interesting one as I have never read 20 out your top 25. All this love for Apeirogon has me intrigued

Paul wrote: "Wow, 81? That's a heck of a year, and an interesting one as I have never read 20 out your top 25. All this love for Apeirogon has me intrigued"

I feel like I want to encourage you towards Apeirogon. As I have had some trouble reading actual books these last few months I have relied more on the radio, and my own peccadillos/doors to entertain me, along with short articles and reviews, but Radio 4 did Apeirogon a couple of months back, and I was hooked, it really is thoughtful and interesting examination of what we might have in common and what drives us, as humans, apart!.. well worth the effort to me.

You might also be interested in Simon Mawer, an ex-pat like you, living in Italy. I have read both 'The Glass Room', and 'Mandel's Dwarf', though the one i am suggesting to you is the one I am about to start 'Prague Spring'... Have a, hopefully, much better 'New Year' than the last one has been...

Thanks for the recommendation. As fate would have it, my wife has The Glass Room translated into Italian on her bookshelf. I'll give him a shot one of these days

AlbyBeliever wrote: "Instead, it was the most powerful, moving, clear-eyed account of humanity’s capacity for both brutality and empathy that I’ve read in years. It’s brilliant and everyone should read it...."

Indeed.

Unlike Rick/AlbyBeliever, this was not a banner reading year for me. I'm not sure, 'cuz I only managed to get one book posted to my GR 'Read' list, but I expect I only managed to read five this year. So here is my top five list for 2020:

1. Apeirogon
2. Apeirogon
3. Apeirogon
4. Apeirogon
5. Apeirogon

Lljones wrote: "Unlike Rick/AlbyBeliever, this was not a banner reading year for me. I'm not sure, 'cuz I only managed to get one book posted to my GR 'Read' list, but I expect I only managed to read five this yea..."

If you only got to read ONE book, that one would be worth it!

I'm not a great one for these sort of lists - not for myself, though I find other people's can be interesting. Anyway, I consulted my notebook to find that what really made an impact was Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy; Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends, an intricately woven tapestry gradually revealing the truth of the lives of the major (and some minor) characters.

A close second is Matthew Kneale's Pilgrims, which at the moment may be the funniest book I have ever read. Notwithstanding moments of slapstick, the characters have depth and much of the humour is subtle.

As for The Mirror and the Light, what can I say apart from I die happy!

Magrat wrote: "I'm not a great one for these sort of lists - not for myself, though I find other people's can be interesting. Anyway, I consulted my notebook to find that what really made an impact was Jane Garda..."

Thanks Magrat. I may be wrong, but I've read a recent review by Tom of Breath by Tim Winton, and I thought you might have been championing it a while back, was it you?

Paul wrote: "All this love for Apeirogon has me intrigued"

Same here. It'll be out in paperback in February. I hope I will have gotten back my reading mojo then, otherwise I'll wait until I do!

Gladarvor (29) wrote: "Magrat wrote: "I'm not a great one for these sort of lists - not for myself, though I find other people's can be interesting. Anyway, I consulted my notebook to find that what really made an impact..."

I can recommend Breath, both the book and the film, but I haven't reviewed or actively promoted it.

Magrat wrote: "I can recommend Breath, both the book and the film, but I haven't reviewed or actively promoted it."

Thanks Magrat. Maybe championing is too strong a word, but yes, it made enough of an impression for me to remember it (or maybe the fact that it was peripherally about surf and with silly prejudice on my part that I couldn't imagine you liking it).

All wrote: "Well a funny old year in which I did read a lot in the end including some big old monsters: A Suitable Boy, Moby Dick and a reread of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Not a good year for new nove..."

Impressive reading, All(worthy)! I must get round to Snow, Dog, Foot myself. It's right there on the shelf, waiting for me!

And hope you will join us upstairs at the Weekly thread in the New Year.

Gladarvor (32) wrote: "Magrat wrote: "I can recommend Breath, both the book and the film, but I haven't reviewed or actively promoted it."

Thanks Magrat. Maybe championing is too strong a word, but yes, it made enough o..."

Well, if it's Tim Winton it's got to be worth reading whatever it is. But now you've got me wondering about where you get your perception of me ;-D

Russell's list, copied from the Weekly TLS

Russell wrote: Sorry, couldn’t find the Special Topic for our books of the year, so I’ll put them here. I've had a good few memorable and stirring reads over the last twelve months, including quite a few re-reads that totally measured up. Here are the ones that will probably linger the longest:

The Odyssey Homer, trans. Emily Wilson
Yevgeny Onegin Alexander Pushkin, trans. Anthony Briggs
The Glass Hotel Emily St John Mandel
Foundation Peter Ackroyd
Coleridge, Vols 1 & 2 Richard Holmes
Natasha’s Dance Orlando Figes
Lost Time Jozef Czapski
A Child’s Christmas in Wales Dylan Thomas, illus. Trina Schart Hyman

Just signing in to let you know I enjoy reading this and am sure I will revisit this thread many more times.
Those last days, I find myself unusually reluctant to sum up this year (anyone wonder why?), this year’s reading included, somehow.
But thank you so much for posting your finds!
And I am glad this thread stays open for a bit longer, so I might add my finds after all.

I, too, find myself disinclined to come up with a "best of" list this year, despite the fact that I probably read more newly published books in 2020 than in most previous years.

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Just signing in to let you know I enjoy reading this and am sure I will revisit this thread many more times.
Those last days, I find myself unusually reluctant to sum up this year (anyone wonder wh..."

Hope you will share your faves with us - even after the discussion closes.

Bill wrote: "I, too, find myself disinclined to come up with a "best of" list this year, despite the fact that I probably read more newly published books in 2020 than in most previous years."

Spoilsport!

I read fewer books this year than in each of the last three, but I feel they have also left deeper marks on me.

Of my three great new author discoveries of 2020, one is the Irishman Colum McCann, to whom I was introduced via his splendid novel of New York, Let the Great World Spin. And then his latest, Apeirogon, which others have mentioned already, probing the seemingly unresolvable problem of Israel and Palestine, two nations squeezed together in anguish and anger, and two men reaching out for peace (and justice) despite their own deep wounds.

Next is the classic American writer Sinclair Lewis, whose works I ought to have read decades ago. Both Main Street (1920) and Elmer Gantry (1927) throw an uncomfortable light on pre-World War II America, create vivid yet nuanced characters, and tell a grand story.

The third, initially recommended by AB76, contents herself with a smaller canvas than the two above: Janet McNeill’s novels, Tea At Four O'Clock (1956) and As strangers Here (1960) illuminate domestic and, in the latter work, political tensions in Protestant Belfast. Painfully delicious.

I didn’t read as much translated work as I should have – must do better in 2021! – but among several superb novels Kokoro (1916), Natsume Soseki’s enigmatic character study, stood out, a real gem. Translated by Edwin McClellan in 1968.

And there’s always time in my life for a certain kind of crime novel: this year The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei (translated by Jeremy Tiang), was especially to my liking as it followed two Hong Kong policemen in six loosely interrelated episodes travelling backward though the island-city’s history, from 2013 to 1967.

I could go on and on, as so many books this year left a deep impression on me, by authors such as Dorothy Whipple, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hiromi Kawakami, Alfred Hayes, Ismail Kadare, Margery Sharp, Lionel Trilling, Eka Kurniawan, Lion Feuchtwanger, Hilary Mantel and Christopher Isherwood … but the overall winner has to be:

Living (1929) by Henry Green. Saying that this is the story of factory workers doesn’t even begin to explain its originality, humanity and beauty. You have to experience it by reading. So if you haven’t done so already, give it a try!

Just enoyed a pleasant couple of hours putting this together, with a glass of something appropriate of course..
A happy and adventurous 2021 to all.. full of tremendous reads I hope..

I'm up on the total reading for the year by more than 30 (total of 314); a result of those spring days without sport on the TV and no big bike trip...
I've tried to read wider, from more countries, and oustide what I saw as my comfort zone, but, that zone is changing - less crime, more non-fiction, and more weird stuff, particularly non-monster horror.
43% female writers, up from 33% last year. 2 books by non-binary writers.
From 49 countries, up from 45 last year. (new being... Armenia, Belarus, Congo Brazzaville, DR Congo, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Haiti, Qatar, Tibet, Tunisia).
Leading countries.. France 31, Japan 13, Argentina 11, Italy 8, Mexico 8, Spain 6.

So here we go: (my reviews are at the links to the books)
Top 6 novels
6 Three-Fifths by John Vercher
5 The Wild Laughter by Caoillin Hughes
4 A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
3 Into Bones like Oil by Kaaron Warren
2 High Skies by Tracy Daugherty
1 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Top 2 non-fiction
2 A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (Jane Degras translator, Pushkin 2019, though originally in 1938)
1 The Unremembered Places: Exploring Scotland's Wild Histories by Patrick Baker

Ten in Translation (in alphabetical order)
Children in Reindeer Woods by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Lytton Smith translator, published 2012 - Iceland
Distant Light by Antonio Moresco, Richard Dixon translator, published 2016 - Italy
Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre, Kaiama Glover translator, published 2017, though originally in 1988) - Haiti
Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Frances Riddle translator, published 2018 - Argentina
The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch, Sean Gasper Bye translator, published 2020 - Poland
The Matiushin Case by Oleg Pavlov, Andrew Bromfield translator, published 2014 - Russia
Theory of Shadows by Paolo Maurensig, Anne Milano Appel translator, published 2018 - Italy
The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits, Orr Scharf translator, published 2020 - Israel
The Winterlings by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade, Samuel Rutter translator, published 2016 - Spain
Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, Lisa Hayden translator, published 2020 - Armenia

Old stuff, new to me
Barbara Comyns - read 3 this year, my favourite so far The Vet's Daughter
Charles Bukowski - rationing myself to a couple a year...Post Office
Larry Brown - Joe
Barry Hannah - Ray

Justine wrote: "I read fewer books this year than in each of the last three, but I feel they have also left deeper marks on me."

Very interesting Justine, I wish you a great new year of reading. I've read all of McCann's story collections and This Side of Brightness, which was fantastic. I'm waiting for a new release of Songdogs in a couple of months, which is short. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is also on the cards, so I've noted your endorsement of Main Street. Thank you for all the work you've done this year maintaining Ersatz TLS.

Yes, Justine and Lisa, as SydneyH says, the year shouldn't close without kudos to both of you for your efforts here. No amount of thanks seems adequate for your work.

I'll second that - thanks ever so much to Justine and Lisa for their much appreciated efforts in curating this site.

One book stood out for me this year - the best, funniest, most moving book I have read in very many years - Un Certain M. Piekielny by Francois-Henri Deserable. I have bored on at length about this book already - so, for anyone who has managed to avoid those comments, this is a brief recap: the book deals with Romain Gary's life, his relationship with his mother (as recounted in La Promesse de l'Aube) and his relationship with the truth. Deserable draws parallels between Gary's life and his own - mainly concerning dominant mothers - and tracks Gary 's ghost down to his early home in Vilnius, formerly 'the Jerusalem of the North', where another chapter of the Holocaust was written...
Disgracefully, this book has yet to be translated into English (as far as I know), though a German edition is available.

Other than that - these books impressed me in various ways:
Distant Star by Roberto Bolano
After the Fire by Henning Mankell
The Return by Hisham Matar

The crime shelf also welcomed a number of authors new to me - Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson, Ray Celestin, Chester Himes and Abir Mukherjee whose books will provide light relief for some time to come - and we certainly need that at the beginning of 2021!

I'd also like to add my thanks to Justine and Lisa. It's a great pleasure to have found a book-lovers' community online with such diverse reading interests.

I've read fewer books this year and you can see them all (I hope) here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

The most memorable were:

Pat Barker's Union Street for its unflinching portrayal of the lives of working class women.

Charles Portis's True Grit for the language and the story.

Hannah Mitchell's autobiography, The Hard Way Up - The Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell Suffragette and Rebel.

Here's to another great year of reading!

Cabbie’s post gave me the idea that, rather than attempting a 2020 summary, I could let Goodreads do the work for me. So here’s my 2020 in books, updated as of yesterday with my review of The Search Warrant. (I must say, I did enjoy re-reading the generous sample of quotes from Eduard Hanslick I stuffed into my first review of the year.)

In my own summaries, I’m always interested in the “most popular” and “least popular” statistics, especially the latter as I tend to think of myself as reading off the beaten path. This year I scored a direct hit in that category: The headshrinker's test has not been shelved by any other readers. I doubt that my review will create a stampede to do so, though I see I gave the book 4 stars. Why was I feeling so generous? Perhaps I liked that the book kept me off-balance, defying my expectations and forcing me to wrestle with its tone and meaning throughout.

Thank you Bill and Cabbie for after reading the above I found my year in books
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

I had not realised it was there.
Ooh it’s snowing here, beginning to settle. We dashed to the shop this morning, about three miles away, the roads were eerily quiet with very little traffic and only another three people in the supermarket keeping their distance. This new variant seems to have everyone worried.
Looking at the review brought back some lovely memories of books enjoyed although I wouldn’t change my favourites as mentioned early in this thread

and
And

CCCubbon wrote: "Thank you Bill and Cabbie for after reading the above I found my year in books
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

I had not realised it was there."

Wow, hard to believe that the year included Life and Fate and it wasn't your longest book of the year.

'My Year in Books' - Interesting! I'll wait till next year, as I got started late this time, so the list is very incomplete.

Glad to have been of help :-)

Here goes for some of my favourite reads of the year. I see Andy has beaten me in the total of books read (c.250 for me). I've had fun drawing up my list.

Non-fiction
Kathleen Jamie - Sightlines
Alex Kerr - Lost Japan

Fiction
Christine Dwyer Hickey - Last Train from Liguria
Bernadine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Blue Flower
Madeline Miller - Circe
R.C. Sheriff - The Fortnight in September

In translation
Lars Saabye Christensen - Echoes of the City (transl. Don Bartlett)
Sayaka Murata - Konbini (transl. Mathilde Tamae-Bouhon) Convenience Store Woman
Yoko Ogawa - La formule préférée du professeur (transl. Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle) The Housekeeper and the Professor
Amos Oz - Une histoire d'amour et de ténèbres (transl. Sylvie Cohen) A Tale of Love and Darkness
Juli Zeh - Nouvel An (transl. Rose Labourie) Neujahr